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SYDNEY (Reuters) – Britain’s Prince Charles sent a handwritten letter of support to Australia’s governor-general in 1976, endorsing his controversial firing of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, local media reported on Saturday.
The letter, published on Saturday by The Australian newspaper, is dated four months after Queen Elizabeth’s representative in Australia, John Kerr, took the unprecedented step of firing Whitlam without first warning the palace or prime minister.
“Please do not be discouraged,” the heir to the British throne wrote in the handwritten letter to Kerr on March 27.
“What you did last year was good and it was a brave decision, and the majority of Australians seemed to back your decision when the time came.”
The letter was revealed in an excerpt from a book “The Truth of the Palace Letters: Deceit, Ambush and Firing in 1975” by Paul Kelly and Troy Bramston, to be published next month.
Whitlam’s firing remains one of the most polarizing political events in the country because it represented an unmatched level of intervention by the Commonwealth.
Historians say the country was never told the full story behind Whitlam’s impeachment during a political deadlock over the budget and, in 2016, a historian sued the National Archives of Australia over access to letters between Kerr and the Queen.
In July, the 211 so-called “palace letters” were published, removing the veil from one of the great mysteries of Australian politics and reigniting a conversation about whether the country should sever ties with Britain and become a republic.
(Information from Paulina Duran; Lincoln Feast edition.)
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