Gough Whitlam may well have the last laugh from the 1975 constitutional crisis: a British academic is using the Dismissal as a reason to abolish the monarchy.
Oxford University's Professor Iain McLean will use a seminar at the Australian National University today to discuss the ''Australiafication'' of British politics.
He said then governor-general Sir John Kerr's decision to sack the Whitlam government and replace it with Malcolm Fraser's opposition was undemocratic and could have profound implications here and in Britain.
''The monarchy was, probably fatally, undermined in Australia in 1975,'' he said.
Professor McLean said the Dismissal showed how dangerous it could be to have a hereditary head of state who could intervene in a democracy.
''Politicians must settle their differences between themselves,'' he said. ''They were playing brinkmanship over who would blink first ... one would have backed down and that's how a democracy should work.''
Professor McLean said documents just issued by the National Archives of Australia showed the Fraser government studied attempts by the British conservatives to make King George V sack the government of prime minister H.H.Asquith in 1913.
''The attorney-general's department working for Fraser prepared a 340-page dossier, at the National Archives, discussing whether a governor-general can dismiss a government,'' he said.
Professor McLean supports two other possible ''Australiafications'' to British government: a proportional representation voting system and a British version of the Commonwealth Grants Commission, the independent body that decides how federal funding is split between the states, for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.
Professor McLean's seminar is in the ANU's Coombs Building, Fellows Road, from 4pm.