“I remarked, ‘Kerr has assumed the regal authority typically reserved for the monarch’,” Keating stated.

“He might have done so with the monarch’s awareness, or perhaps not. I believe it’s reasonable to suggest to the Queen that she consider appointing a different governor-general.”

“While this issue didn’t originate from the Queen, it was indeed up to the Queen to address it,” Keating explained. “My proposal was for Gough to advise the Queen to accept his recommendation for a new governor-general. If Kerr opposed, I told Gough he should be placed under police arrest.”

Keating, who later became prime minister from 1991 to 1996, admitted that such an approach could have led to a conflict between the police and the Australian Defence Force.

Keating, who went on to serve as prime minister from 1991-1996, conceded that course of action could have put the police at odds with the Australian Defence Force.

“I said, ‘The only thing you’d have to be sure about, Gough is, of course, Kerr is technically the commander-in-chief of the soldiers’,” he said.

“‘Do not end up in a fight with the police.’

“In other words, you’d have to have the soldiers with you for this to happen…

“That’s what I certainly would have done if I’d have been prime minister.”

He added that Whitlam would then have to call an election.

The future treasurer and prime minister was the most junior member of Whitlam’s front bench at the time, having been appointed minister for northern Australia just three weeks earlier.

He said Whitlam was “a bit shocked” by his advice, and didn’t give it much consideration.

“He said, ‘Thank you, you know-all, for that advice’,” Keating recalled.

“He wasn’t of a mind to take the advice. He was a constitutionalist, Gough, he wasn’t into blood and gore.”

Half a century after the controversial dismissal, debate continues over Kerr’s decision to sack the Whitlam government, after the Coalition, led by then-opposition leader Malcolm Fraser, blocked supply in the Senate for weeks and demanded a fresh election.

It remains the first and only time an Australian government has been dismissed.

Speaking to ABC radio this morning, Keating’s successor as prime minister, John Howard – who was given his first cabinet position by Fraser following the dismissal – said Kerr had been left with no choice but to sack Whitlam.

“Kerr… was the meat in the sandwich between two very powerful, determined men who each behaved in their own way in a very ruthless pack,” he said.

“I felt that the action Kerr took was the only one that could have resolved the situation, absent either Fraser backing down in blocking supply or Whitlam advising a general election for both houses of parliament.”

However, current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – who announced the government will commission a new statue of Whitlam to mark 50 years since the dismissal – gave a scathing appraisal of Kerr in a speech last night.

“Make no mistake: November 11th, 1975, was not a ‘constitutional crisis’ – it was a partisan political ambush,” he said.

“There was no real precedent – and no legitimate pretext.

“The opposition orchestrated a parliamentary gridlock over the budget and then secretly prevailed upon the governor-general to break it by sacking the prime minister…

“But in truth, the opposition had preyed upon Sir John Kerr’s desire to be at the centre of events.”

Keating, for his part, was even blunter.

“In every respect, it was a coup. A coup by an individual,” he said.