John Kerr (governor-general) - Kerr's Career

Kerr's Career

Kerr was born in Balmain, a working-class suburb of Sydney, where his father was a boiler-maker. He entered the Fort Street High School (formerly Fort Street Boys' High School). He won scholarships to the University of Sydney and graduated in law with first class honours and the University Medal, being called to the New South Wales bar in 1938. At Fort Street, he met Dr H.V. Evatt who later became a judge of the High Court of Australia, and became a protege of his for many years. In 1938 Kerr married Alison Worstead, with whom he had three children. He spent World War II working for an Australian intelligence organisation, the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs, a fact that later gave rise to many conspiracy theories. In 1946 he became principal of the Australian School of Pacific Administration and the first Secretary-General of the South Pacific Commission.

Kerr returned to the bar in 1948, becoming a prominent lawyer representing trade union clients and a member of the Australian Labor Party. He intended to seek Labor endorsement for a parliamentary seat at the 1951 election, but withdrew in favour of another candidate. After the Labor split of 1955, however, he became disillusioned with party politics. He disliked what he saw as the leftward trend of the Australian Labor Party under Evatt's leadership, but was not attracted to the breakaway group, the Democratic Labor Party. During the decade of the 1950s, he joined the anti-communist advocacy group established by the United States' CIA, the Association for Cultural Freedom, joining its Executive Board in 1957.

In the 1960s Kerr became one of Sydney's leading industrial lawyers. In the 1950s he had become a QC. In 1964 he was one of a group of lawyers (which also included future NSW Premier Neville Wran) who lent their expertise to the defence of the publishers of the satirical magazine Oz when they were prosecuted for obscenity.

In 1966 Kerr was appointed a judge of the Commonwealth Industrial Court and, later, to several other judicial positions. During this period his political views became more conservative. He became a friend of Sir Garfield Barwick, the Liberal Attorney-General who became Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia in 1964. Kerr was the first chairman of the Law Association for Asia and the Western Pacific (LawAsia), founded by Justice Paul Toose and John Bruce Piggot in 1966. Kerr served as chairman of that organisation until 1970.

Kerr was appointed Chief Justice of New South Wales in 1972. He was knighted in the New Year's Honours of 1974. Sir Paul Hasluck was due to retire as Governor-General in July 1974, and the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, needed to find a suitable replacement. His first choice, Ken Myer, declined; he then offered the post to Sir John, who accepted on condition that he could expect to have ten years in the office, and that he could represent Australia overseas as Head of State. Kerr was announced as Governor-General-designate on 27 February 1974. Kerr did not know Whitlam well, but he had remained friends with several ministers in Whitlam's government, such as Jim McClelland and Joe Riordan. Kerr's wife Alison was a fellow student of Margaret Whitlam during university days. Whitlam seems to have believed that, because of Kerr's former membership in the Labor Party, he was still politically "reliable", without realising that Kerr's political views had changed and that he had come to see the role of Governor-General differently from Whitlam.