Howard urges Ley to ‘get together’ with PM on four-year federal parliamentary terms – as it happened

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John Howard says the Whitlam episode empowered Australians to better decide the country's future

RN's Sally Sara spoke to former prime minister John Howard this morning about his own reflection on Gough Whitlam's removal. Howard called Whitlam an outstanding parliamentarian", and one of the best he ever saw.

I think the greatest lesson is that we have a very durable and workable constitution, which ultimately allowed the people of Australia to decide the country's future.

And there wasn't any doubt that once the Australian people had a clear run at deciding who was going to govern their affairs, what their answer was.

For someone like my mum, who'd waited a long, long time, 23 years to see the election of a Labor government, it was seen to be this intervention that was very unfair, that was something that they didn't expect could ever happen in Australia.