The letters between Kerr and Buckingham Palace were made public after a yearlong court battle, but ultimately did not contain the smoking gun that some observers expected – that the Queen had directly ordered Whitlam’s removal.
Kerr, who died in 1991, He said he made the decision on his own, only later informing the Queen, because “it was better that (she) did not know.”
“I decided to take the step I took without informing the Palace in advance because, according to the Constitution, the responsibility is mine and I thought that it was better that His Majesty did not know it in advance, although, of course, it is my duty to tell him immediately” Kerr wrote, according to the documents.
Whitlam’s removal from the Crown’s lead agent in Australia, while legal, outraged the community and strained relations with the UK, though in a subsequent election, the public overwhelmingly endorsed Kerr de Fraser’s election as leader, and Labor suffered a crushing defeat.
Documents released Tuesday, including 211 letters amounting to 1,200 pages of correspondence, show that Kerr was in extensive contact with the Palace before and during the move, but ultimately acted on his own.
Kerr appears to have been concerned that a lack of action could have resulted in his loss of position. In a letter, sent to the Palace on October 17, 1975, Kerr warned that “the country is on a collision course now of historic proportions.”
The Queen’s personal secretary, Martin Charteris, replied that Kerr was playing his “vice regal” hand with “skill and wisdom.” As part of her role, Charteris was the official channel between Kerr and the Queen.
“The fact that you have powers is recognized,” Charteris added. “It is also clear that you will only use them as a last resort.”
Which he did a month later. In a letter to the Palace notifying them of Whitlam’s dismissal, Kerr wrote that “Whitlam came to see me … (and) I told him that he had decided to end his commission.”
“He said, ‘I will have to contact the Palace immediately.’ To this I replied that this would be useless since at that time I was no longer Prime Minister,” added Kerr.
If Whitlam had advised the Queen to dismiss Kerr as Governor-General, he would have had no choice but to do so, or risk an even greater constitutional crisis. While not addressed directly, this appears to have been a concern for Kerr in failing to warn Whitlam in advance of his plans, or in giving him an opportunity to demonstrate that he could maintain Parliament’s trust.
In response to Kerr, Charteris approved his decision not to tell the Queen in advance, and appeared to support the move to fire Whitlam.
Court battle
The declassification of the documents follows a year-long legal campaign by Australian academic Jenny Hocking, who sued the National Archives for accessing them in 2016.
During his time in office, Kerr boasted of his strong ties to the Palace, and it was long speculated that his correspondence with the Queen may have revealed his involvement in the elimination of Whitlam, Hocking said.
During a press conference on Tuesday, the Director General of the National Archives, David Fricke, praised Hocking’s tenacity and said that while the two were on opposite sides of a “remarkable” court battle, they finally agreed on the importance of the documents. in question.
“We are a pro-disclosure organization but we do things in accordance with the law,” Fricke said, referring to the Archives Act that governs disclosure of classified documents. “We are and must continue to be a trusted public institution.”
“It was also the importance of asserting the right of public access and control over our most important archival records,” he said, adding that, as in the immediate case, the decision “provides a rare challenge to the thoughtful demands of ‘ real secret ‘(in Australia) and elsewhere. “
“Its implications will be felt widely in other Commonwealth nations and possibly in the United Kingdom, where the Royal Archives are firmly closed to public access except with the permission of the monarch,” he wrote. “Equally important is that the High Court ruling has brought the Palace letters firmly under Australian law, ending the humiliating quasi-imperial imposition of the Queen’s embargo on our archival records and on our knowledge of our own history” .
Despite the Palace’s current objections, however, the High Court ruled that the documents should be made public as official documents related to the Australian government.
Hilary Whiteman and Angus Watson of CNN contributed to the reports.
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