The Palace Letters

The Queen, the Governor-General, and the Plot to Dismiss Gough Whitlam

What role did the queen play in Governor-General Sir John Kerr’s plans to dismiss Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975, unleashing one of the most divisive episodes in Australia’s political history? And why weren’t we told?

Under the cover of being designated as private correspondence, the letters between the queen and the governor-general about the dismissal have been locked away for decades in the National Archives of Australia, and embargoed by the queen - potentially forever. This ruse has furthered the fiction that the queen and the palace had no warning of or role in Kerr’s actions.

In the face of this, Professor Jenny Hocking embarked on a four-year legal battle to force the Archives to release the letters. In 2015, she mounted a crowd-funded campaign, securing a stellar pro bono team that took her case all the way to the High Court of Australia.

Now, drawing on never-before-published material from Kerr’s archives and her submissions to the court, Hocking traces the collusion and deception behind the dismissal, and charts the secret role of High Court judges; the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Fraser; and the queen’s private secretary in fostering and supporting Kerr’s actions.

Hocking also reveals the obstruction, intrigue, and duplicity she faced, raising disturbing questions about the role of the National Archives in preventing access to its own historical material and in enforcing royal secrecy over its documents.

©2020 Jenny Hocking (P)2021 Blackstone Publishing

Hard fought for historical context.

Quite amusing to read Malcolm Turnbull’s preface to a story that, as well as uncovering the traitorous grovelling character of a Governor General that set Australia on the sadly curtailed course to a potentially very different destination, but that also revealed the extent of his own spinelessness in materially doing anything while in the “top job” to assist with the disclosure of the material for the historical record. There are many graves fit for public toiletry in the sycophantic sphere of Australia’s political puppetry. They multiply with time, regardless which master they flatter to our detriment.

A tale that almost didn't get told

Thanks to Australia's National Archives preventing Professor Hocking from gaining access to the Palace Letters - an endeavour that cost them a reported AUD2 million in court costs and supported by the worst Prime Minister of our country in my lifetime, Scott Morrison,, whose party the Liberal Party Of Australia usurped power from the subject of this book's government - Gough Whitlam's Australian Labor Party - we very nearly, but for the good professor's persistence did not get to know what we now know.

Morrison and Australian Archives were protecting the interests of the late Queen of England after she embargoed the release of the letters that clearly demonstrate she was anything BUT uninvolved in the Whitlam dismissal.

What unfolds in the book (which is extremely well written and narrated) is that our obsequious and sycophantic royalist former governor general John Kerr did not do HIS job and sacked the most progressive and socially significant government that Australia has witnessed. If we had stayed on that path, Australia could be Norway by now . . . .

Why this book was not at front and centre last year with the anniversary of the dismissal is beyond me. And on that note, why does Bramston's recent biography on Whitlam denigrate the efforts of the good professor? Her evidence is clear: the palace WAS involved.

There are elements revealed in this book about other players and intrigues that I was previously unaware of too. If you are reading this Jenny, can you do audiobooks of your two volume Whitham books as well, preferably with the same narrator?

Interesting recount into the search for truth

Well narrated and interesting look into an important time in Australia’s history. Definitely worth a listen.