The reason that John Kerr took the blame is that he acted completely by himself (which he had the authority to do). He wasn't acting as the Queen's representative - in fact, he took a number of steps to prevent Whitlam from "ante-ing up" and bring the Queen in directly, and violated a policy of non-intervention that the Queen had directed him to follow.

Note that Kerr couldn't dismiss Parliament on his own accord; that power is reserved for the Queen. All Kerr could do was dismiss the Prime Minister and appoint another - one who would request the dismissal. He appointed Fraser, Fraser arranges for the supply legislation (the Budget, essentially) to go through, informs everyone he's PM, then disappears. The House of Representatives declared no-confidence in him (which would have made it impossible for Fraser to request the dissolution of Parliament), but then Kerr refused to be told about the no confidence motion until he had signed off the budget and then accepted Fraser's request (made _after_ the no-confidence motion).

Kerr deliberately involved himself in the politics of the day, not least due to a personal animosity towards Whitlam (who, frankly, wasn't the nicest of politicians around). If Kerr had wanted to avoid the situation, he could have arranged an alternative without having to put Fraser in as a dummy PM. The Queen, furthermore, had already made her position clear to Kerr - to pursue a policy of non-intervention. Failing that, he could have made it clear it wasn't about job security (Kerr pointed out repeatedly that he didn't warn Whitlam, because Whitlam could have asked the Queen to sack him) by tendering his own resignation, to take affect once the special elections were over and a new government sworn in.

The '75 dismissal needed to happen. Whitlam deserved to lose the subsequent election, particularly because of how bad his campaign was. I would argue that the Liberal and National Coalition didn't deserve morally to win - their obstructionist tactics of the previous three years had caused the crisis in the first place - but Whitlam took what should have been an ironclad victory and pissed it away by allowing himself, and the rest of the ALP, to wallow in rage and vengeance.

Interestingly enough, the Coalition still plays by this handbook - for the first half of this year (when they controlled the Senate), they played the same nasty obstructionist tactics. Tactics that were never practised by the ALP when the Coalition was in power (to be fair, the Democrats had the balance of power during that period, so the ALP didn't have a chance).

I voted for the republic too, because I personally feel that we should have an Australian head of state. However, if the Queen decided to pass the throne of King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Defender of the Faith to William and the King of Australia to Harry (and he then moved down here to live), I would have no problems with that. Harry's children would be Australian, and as for Harry himself - well, it's not like there aren't a lot of other poms around the place. ;)

New Zealand can have Beatrice.

(The Monarchy of Australia is a separate office to the Monarchy of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as is the Monarchy of New Zealand and the Monarchy of Canada - not to mention the 13 other monarchies in the Commonwealth).

Service to the Arts has always been a valid category for honours to be awarded. Note that it's not enough to write a lot of books yourself (or songs, or paint a bunch of pictures, etc); it's also necessary to actively inspire and help others.

It also reflects a solid career in doing so, not merely a flash-in-the-pan fad star.

More than one universe. L-Space theory shows that there are 10 to the power of N possible books, where N is the number of possible universes. This is why there is never enough shelf space.

It's even possible that they could have used this gear to go, at the time of the incident, and fetch the toolkit - however, it's plainly obvious that the risk wouldn't be worth it.