AUSTRALIA SIR JOHN ROBERT KERR

• Document Type: SPECIALCOLLECTION
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 02436820
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: March 16, 2022
• Document Release Date: September 16, 2016
• Case Number: F-2016-02060
• Publication Date: February 27, 1976

Approved for Release: 2016/09/08 CO2436820
Sir John Robert KERR AUSTRALIA
Governor General
Addressed as:
Sir John
Sir John Kerr, 61,
was sworn in as Governor
General of Australia on
11 July 1974. A well-
known lawyer and public
servant, he had been
Chief Justice and
Lieutenant Governor of
New South Wales since
1972. The post of
Governor General, the
Queen's representative
in Australia, is charac-
teristically apolitical, but Sir John, a onetime
Labor Party man who left the party in 1954,
astounded the country in November 1975 with a
controversial and unprecedented decision to dis-
miss the man who had appointed him to his post,
Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam; appoint a
caretaker government under Liberal Party Leader
Malcolm Fraser; and call for general elections in
December.
A boilermaker's son, John Kerr grew up in a
working-class section of Sydney. He graduated
from the Law School of Sydney University in 1936
and was admitted to the bar in 1938. After mili-
tary service during World War II, Kerr became
principal of the Australian School of Pacific
Administration and organizing secretary of the
South Pacific Commission. In 1948 he returned to
his law practice and a series of distinguished
judiciary posts, eventually receiving appoint-
ments in 1966 as justice of the Commonwealth
Industrial Court and the Australian Capital Terri-
tory Supreme Court.
Sir John is a gregarious man who entertains on
a prodigious scale and works hard to keep in touch
with people and events. He was knighted in 1974
and awarded the insignia of Chancellor of the
Order of Australia, one of the country's highest
honors, in January 1976. Sir John's first wife,
by whom he had a son and two daughters, died in
1974; he remarried in 1975.
27 February 1976
CR M 76-10606
Approved for Release: 2016/09/08 CO2436820