Royal letters on Australian PM’S 1975 exit released
● Palace not informed by representative of Whitlam’s dismissal
The Queen’s representative in Australia dismissed Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975 “without informing the Palace in advance”, newly released correspondence shows.
The removal of Mr Whitlam, who had failed to pass a budget and then opted not to resign or call an election, has been the subject of ongoing speculation in the 45 years since.
And the letters, which were released following legal proceedings, showed then governor-general Sir John Kerr did not give Mr Whitlam a chance to call an election because he feared he would be sacked himself.
In one of the letters, addressed to the Queen’s private secretary Sir Martin Charteris, Sir John Kerr admitted to taking unilateral action to remove Mr Whitlam without first seeking the Queen’s express permission.
He wrote: “I should say I decided to take the step I took without informing the palace in advance because, under the Constitution, the responsibility is mine, and I was of the opinion it was better for Her Majesty not to know in advance, though it is of course my duty to tell her immediately.”
The letters have been released by the National Archives of Australia - which tweeted its website was “temporarily unavailable” on Tuesday due to high demand - following a ruling in the Australian High Court which overturned an earlier decision that deemed the correspondence as “personal”.
In a letter more than a week after the dismissal, and dated 20 November 1975, Sir John writes that Mr Whitlam had told him the crisis could end in a “race to the Palace” and the governor-general “simply could not risk the outcome for the sake of the monarchy”.
He said: “If, in the period of say 24 hours, during which he (Mr Whitlam) was considering his position, he advised the Queen in the strongest of terms that I should be immediately dismissed, the position would then have been that either I would, in fact, be trying to dismiss him while he was trying to dismiss me an impossible position for the Queen.”
In response to the release of the documents, a Buckingham
Palace spokeswoman said: “While the Royal Household believes in the longstanding convention that all conversations between Prime Ministers, Governor Generals and the Queen are private, the release of the letters by the National Archives Australia confirms that neither Her Majesty nor the Royal Household had any part to play in Kerr’s decision to dismiss Whitlam.”
The newly sacked Mr Whitlam famously said on the steps of Parliament House in Canberra: “Well may we say ‘God save the Queen’ – because nothing will save the governor-general.”
Sir John resigned in December 1977 and eventually moved to London.