The Palace letters and the Whitlam government dismissal

Emeritus Professor Jenny Hocking is an award-winning biographer, the inaugural Distinguished Whitlam Fellow with the Whitlam Institute at Western Sydney University and an Emeritus Professor at Monash University. She is the author of several biographies including the two-volume biography of former Australian Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam – Gough Whitlam: His Time and Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History published by Melbourne University Publishing – winner of the Fellowship of Australian Writers’ Barbara Ramsden Award and shortlisted for several major literary awards including the National Biography Award, The Age Book of the Year, and the Prime Minister’s Awards for Literature.

Professor Hocking is a frequent media commentator and public speaker and has appeared on radio, television and film and at numerous Writers’ Festivals. Her latest book is The Dismissal Dossier: Everything You Were Never Meant to Know About November 1975 – the Palace Connection (2017) and her next book The Palace Letters will be published by Scribe in November 2020.

In 2016 Professor Hocking initiated legal action in the Federal Court against the National Archives of Australia, seeking the release of the secret ‘Palace letters’ between the Queen and the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, regarding the 1975 Whitlam dismissal, which were embargoed by the Queen until at least 2027 and potentially indefinitely.

In a land-mark decision in May 2020, the High Court of Australia ruled that the ‘Palace letters’ are official ‘Commonwealth records’, overturning the Queen’s long-standing embargo over them and paving the way for their public release. The High Court decision ended decades of Royal secrecy over a key aspect of the dismissal – just what the Queen knew before Kerr dismissed, without warning, the elected Whitlam government. The letters were released on 14 July to immense media and public interest and extensive commentary.

The ‘Palace letters’ case was conducted with a senior legal team working on a pro bono basis led by Antony Whitlam QC at trial, Bret Walker SC at the Full Federal Court and the High Court, with Tom Brennan throughout, and Corrs Chambers Westgarth instructing. The National Archives spent close to two million dollars contesting the case.

Professor Jenny Hocking will speak about her four-year legal battle against the National Archives, the federal Attorney-General, and Buckingham Palace, to secure the release of these historic letters.

What are the Palace letters, what have they revealed and how will they change the history of the dismissal of the Whitlam government?