The 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, also called the Dismissal, culminated with the dismissal of the prime minister, Gough Whitlam of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), by Sir John Kerr, the governor-general of Australia, on 11 November 1975. Kerr then commissioned the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Fraser of the Liberal Party, as prime minister on the condition that he advise a new election. It has been described as the greatest political and constitutional crisis in Australian history.