Jenny Hocking: The Australian historian who took on the Palace and won

[Disir]

On Tuesday morning, at home under virus lockdown in Melbourne, historian Jenny Hocking finally laid eyes on the secret letters she had fought for years to see.

The scans on her screen were 45-year-old correspondence between the Queen and her representative in Australia, Governor-General Sir John Kerr, during a time of political tumult.

Specifically, the 1975 sacking of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, a charismatic, progressive leader who had been re-elected with a majority just 18 months earlier.

In a political ambush on 11 November, he was dismissed and his government dissolved by Sir John Kerr - who represented the Queen but was supposed to act on the advice of the Australian prime minister.

Conspiracies and debate over the decision have raged ever since. Did Sir John have the right to do this? Was the Queen influential in any way?

A trove of "Palace letters" hidden away in Australia's national archives was said to contain the truth.

But when Prof Hocking, researching almost a decade ago, went to retrieve them, she found them blocked under a royal decree that might never be lifted.

Jenny Hocking: The Australian historian who took on the Palace and won

Australia's PM was sacked in 1975 under a murky legal decision which has only now been fully revealed.

www.bbc.com

That's interesting.

 

[ThirdTerm]

Australia is a constitutional monarchy with the Queen as head of state, which gives her constitutional power to dismiss a government that is unfit to rule under Section 64 of the Constitution. The Queen was not directly involved but her private secretary, Martin Charteris, discussed the prospect of dissolving parliament with the governor-general, who may have been given the greenlight by the Palace. The Labor government only had a small majority and it refused to call a general election to break the political deadlock. If this had happened in Britain, the Queen could have done the same thing by dismissing the government. Australia has a short history as an independent country since 1901, when it was no longer a penal colony, and Britain's political intervention may still be necessary to keep it a viable democracy.