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A missing link in Australia's political history — correspondence between the Queen and Australian governor-general Sir John Kerr in the lead up to the dismissal of the Whitlam government — will be released to the public today.
Until now the 211 letters, known as the "Palace letters", have been locked up inside the National Archives of Australia in Canberra, which refused to release them because they were labelled as private documents.But a High Court decision in May deemed the letters between the Queen and the then-governor-general to be the property of the Commonwealth, and now historians and political junkies alike are hoping the correspondence answers some of the questions surrounding Australia's biggest constitutional crisis.
Letters to be released online this morning
Photo: Queen Elizabeth departing Australia in 1973, farewelled by then-prime minister Gough Whitlam. (National Archives of Australia)
The letters, penned between 1974 and 1977, will be released online by the National Archives at 11:00am AEST today.
Very few people are more excited for their release than Whitlam biographer Jenny Hocking, who took the case to court and has been trying to get access to the Palace letters since 2016.
Under the law, Commonwealth documents are released after 30 years — but Professor Hocking's efforts to see them had been blocked.
In 2016 the National Archives told her they were "private", rather than "Commonwealth records", and therefore not covered by the rules, which would have seen all of the letters made publicly available in 2008.
A Federal Court decision backed that up, finding that the letters could be held for the time set down by the original owner.
In the case of the Palace letters, then-governor-general Sir John Kerr had nominated December 8, 2037, which was later changed to December 8, 2027 by the Queen, who added a proviso that any release was subject to approval from the then-secretaries of the Sovereign and the Governor-General.
So, a few months ago, when Professor Hocking took her fight to access the documents to the High Court of Australia and the full bench ruled in her favour, she was ecstatic.
Now Professor Hocking hopes, along with her, Australians will be able to find out exactly what the Queen knew about the sacking of Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam and what advice or conversations occurred around it.
She said prior to the High Court decision, the Australian public were in "the most extraordinary situation where pivotal historical documents were kept in our own archives and embargoed by the Queen".
She said the historic decision had overturned that, "reasserting Australian law over Australian archives".
"It also challenges … royal secrecy, where the activities of the monarch have been able to be shrouded in secrecy through the notion of confidentially and personal records," Professor Hocking said in May.
'There's no doubt they were in very close contact'
The reasons for the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975 have long been debated, and Professor Hocking believes the Palace letters could hold the answers."It's a story that has been absolutely clouded in secrecy, in distortion and in so much unknown," she said."I'm really looking forward to see what they'll tell us."
Professor Hocking said she first became aware of the letters while trawling through Sir John's papers in the National Archives.
"What I found there was absolutely extraordinary," she said.
"Really important revelations, including of the role of the then-High Court Judge Sir Anthony Mason in Kerr's decision and actually in the dismissal itself, which were completely unknown as well."
Just what is contained in the letters will not be known until later today, but Professor Hocking said there had been glimpses.
"We know a little bit about them because of the way in which Sir John refers to them throughout his other papers," she said.
"We do know that he was in very close consultation with Buckingham Palace over that time."He writes in his papers how he benefited from the advice of the Queen's private secretary on the dismissal. So there's no doubt they were in very close contact about, at the very least, the prospect of the possibility of dismissal."
Letters to be released 'in full'
Despite the High Court's ruling in May that the letters should be released publicly, the National Archives of Australia said it needed several weeks to screen the documents in case they contained material private to others still living, or even national security information."We are not like a library or a museum," National Archives director-general David Fricker said at the time.
"I am required to diligently go through those things and just make sure that our release of these records is responsible, it's ethical and it complies with the law."
Photo: The Queen had given a direction that the letters not be released until 2027, and not without approval from the reigning monarch. (Supplied: Buckingham Palace via AP)
Last week the National Archives announced it would release all of the letters without exemption.
And while Professor Hocking has not been granted any special first glimpses, she is delighted the correspondence is finally about to be in the public domain.
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