By James Simons
A legal battle is underway over secret letters that could reveal what the Queen knew about her representative’s plans to oust the Australian government in 1975
Historian Jenny Hocking has asked the Federal Court to force the National Archives of Australia to release the letters between the British monarch, who is also Australia’s constitutional head of state, and her former Australian representative, Governor-General Sir John Kerr. The Archives which have been classified as ”private”, would normally prevent its contents from ever being released to the public. The letters would reveal what the Queen knew about Sir John Kerr’s plans to dismiss Gough Whitlam’s government in order to resolve a Parliamentary deadlock at the time
MYSTERY
The case could finally solve a mystery behind the country’s most dramatic political crisis.
Historian Jenny Hocking has asked the Federal Court to force the National Archives of Australia to release the letters between the British monarch, who is also Australia’s constitutional head of state, and her former Australian representative, Governor-General Sir John Kerr.
The Archives have classified the letters as “personal”, meaning they might never be made public.
The letters would reveal what, if anything, the Queen knew about Sir John’s plan to dismiss prime minister Gough Whitlam’s government in 1975 to resolve a deadlock in Parliament.
HISTORY
This was the first and only time in Australian history that a democratically elected federal government was dismissed on the British monarch’s authority.
The dismissal was met with disbelief, and led to calls for Australia to break its colonial ties to Britain and become a republic. Before 1975, few Australians realised the governor-general – whose role is largely ceremonial – had the power to fire a prime minister during a constitutional crisis. The 1975 constitutional crises was sparked when Mr. Whitlam rejected pressure from the opposition party to force Mr. Whitlam to call general elections by blocking routine legislation in the Senate that allowed the government to pay public servant salaries and provide services.
RIGHT
Ms Hocking, who is a Whitlam biographer, insists that Australians have a right to know the details of their history, and that the letters written in the months leading up to the unprecedented dismissal are key to unravelling the truth. Lawyer, Antony Whitlam- who is Whitham’s son- is representing Ms Hocking free of charge. “It needs to be settled once and for all,” she said during a court recess. There is a lot of uncertainty about this’’, he said.
The letters could be available immediately if they lose their “private” and “personal” classification, they are free to be made public 30 years after they were written like other government documents held in the Archives.
DISTINCTION
Lawyer Tom Howe, who is representing the Archives, argued that there was a distinction between the institution of the governor-general and the governor-general himself.
The governor-general himself, Mr Howe argued, is not a national institution, and thus his personal records are owned by him and are not subject to the Archives Act, which permits the release of official records.
Sir John has always claimed to have unilaterally taken the decision to oust Mr.Whitlam alone, but conspiracy theories have long circulated about the true motive of the dismissal.