McMahon ministry
46th ministry of government of Australia
The McMahon ministry (Liberal–Country Coalition) was the 46th ministry of the Australian Government. It was led by the country's 20th Prime Minister, William McMahon. The McMahon ministry succeeded the Second Gorton ministry, which dissolved on 10 March 1971 following the resignation of John Gorton as Prime Minister. The ministry was replaced by the First Whitlam ministry on 5 December 1972 following the federal election that took place on 2 December which saw Labor defeat the Coalition.
As of 1 May 2025, Ian Sinclair is the last surviving member of the McMahon ministry; Sinclair is also the last surviving minister of the Menzies, Holt, McEwen, and Gorton governments, as well as the First Fraser ministries. Tom Hughes was the last surviving Liberal minister, and Malcolm Fraser was the last surviving Liberal Cabinet minister. Tony Street was the last surviving assistant minister.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “McMahon ministry” is 46th ministry of government of Australia. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through McMahon, ministry and 46th, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “46th ministry of government of Australia” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q15778629. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971, 1972 and 2025.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “McMahon ministry”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow McMahon ministry primary sources, McMahon ministry archive and McMahon research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “McMahon ministry”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “McMahon ministry” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.