The revelations this week by The Guardian UK of the Queen’s secret intervention in political matters to protect her personal fortune are simply extraordinary. New documents from the UK Archives set out in excruciating detail the power of the monarch to vet legislation in her own interests. Under the guise of exercising the arcane ‘royal consent’, long considered a mere formality taken only on ministerial advice, the Queen and Prince Charles can secretly alter any Act that might affect the monarch personally. This they have done with alacrity.
More than 1,000 pieces of legislation have been amended by the Queen during her reign in order to protect, aggrandise and conceal the ‘embarrassing’ wealth of the royal family from her less fortunate subjects. Since almost all legislation, from inheritance to social security and even car parking, can be deemed to affect royal wealth even in the most tangential way, the Queen and Charles have personally vetted an immense range of legislative measures to suit themselves. This anachronistic feudal command over legislation, not for any public good but to cement inherited aristocratic privilege and personal fortune, is genuinely shocking.
Perhaps the most egregious of these private financial benefits is that arranged by Prince Charles, the future King of Australia, to prevent his tenants buying their homes, thereby protecting and enhancing his already stupendous income. Using the same personalised royal vetting service as his mother, Charles ensured that his personal estate, the £1billion Duchy of Cornwall, was excised from legislation that would have enabled residents to buy their existing homes, forcing them instead to continue paying rent – to him. Nice work if you can get it.
Just as troubling is the revelation of the sham, essentially deceptive, process through which the Queen’s intervention has been kept hidden from public view. In a royal round-robin from Palace to parliament the Queen is sent a draft Bill, she proposes amendments to it, the Bill is amended accordingly and only then is it put before the parliament. In the cynical sophistry of the consent process, the Queen can publicly claim to be acting on ministerial advice, without ever revealing that she herself has already determined the nature of it.
The Guardian described this process in relation to the financial transparency legislation: “Following the Queen’s intervention, the government inserted a clause into the law granting itself the power to exempt companies used by ‘heads of state’ from new transparency measures.”
This is perhaps the most unsettling aspect of these revelations, the artifice of ‘acting on advice’. It is a textbook example of a constructed ‘plausible deniability’, crafted to distance the Queen from her own actions and yet palpably untrue, the denial of which sits uncomfortably close to deception.
True to form, Buckingham Palace duly released a robust denial, firmly denying that it had ‘blocked legislation’ – which The Guardian had never suggested – and failing to address the critical revelation of the Queen’s vetting of legislation: “Queen’s consent is a parliamentary process, with the role of sovereign purely formal. Consent is always granted by the monarch where requested by government. Any assertion that the sovereign has blocked legislation is simply incorrect.” Nothing to see here.
This now undeniable evidence of the Queen’s intervention ends once and for all the absurd insistence by some that the Queen does not intervene in political matters. In doing so it has exposed the charade of the Queen’s claimed political neutrality, the routine assertion by Buckingham Palace that the Queen plays merely a ‘ceremonial and symbolic’ role and acts on ministerial advice.
As head of a constitutional monarchy the Queen is, according to constitutional theory and Buckingham Palace, politically neutral and cannot become involved in domestic politics. This is the essence of a constitutional monarchy in a Westminster system, squaring the inherent contradiction between a hereditary monarchy and parliamentary democracy, by giving primacy to the wishes of the people through their elected representatives.
These documents, like others released in recent years, show that the quaint picture of the monarch as a political naïf devoid of political interest and playing a ‘purely formal’ role, is untrue and self-serving. I have long argued that the myth of royal political neutrality and non-involvement is just that, a myth, maintained by secrecy which has concealed an evident and, in many ways, inevitable political role.
The only remarkable thing is that it has taken so long for this myth to be accepted as such. And it is not only UK legislation that is royally vetted. We have known for some time, as I revealed in these pages, that the Palace vetted the former Governor-General Sir John Kerr’s memoirs to ensure there was no mention of Kerr’s discussions with the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Martin Charteris, regarding the dismissal of the Whitlam government. This took royal intervention to a new level – from the intervention itself to the written history of it, a secret vetting of our historical record that would have remained hidden had Kerr’s letters to Buckingham Palace discussing his memoirs not been released.
There is a clear pattern at work here, one familiar to us in the denials and obfuscation surrounding the release of the Palace letters between the Queen and Governor-General Kerr on the Whitlam’s dismissal. We have known for many years from Kerr’s papers in the National Archives of Australia that the Queen, Prince Charles and Sir Martin Charteris were aware since September 1975 that Kerr was considering dismissing the government and that they had discussed with Kerr his concerns over his position as Governor-General should he do so.
Extracts from some of the Queen’s correspondence with Kerr, a note among Kerr’s papers referring to ‘Charteris’ advice to me on dismissal’ and Kerr’s 1980 Journal, revealed in my biography Gough Whitlam: His Time, clearly showed the involvement of the Palace in Kerr’s deliberations and in his eventual decision to dismiss Whitlam.
The release of the Palace letters following the High Court’s landmark decision in the ‘Palace letters’ case, Hocking v Director-General National Archives of Australia, confirmed that involvement. As the NSW solicitor-general, Michael Sexton QC, has described: ‘Kerr’s likely course of action was known to the Palace and so to the Queen, but completely secret from Whitlam and his ministers’. How else to read Charteris’s final letter before the dismissal, assuring Kerr that if he exercised the reserve powers against the government ‘you cannot do the monarchy any avoidable harm … the chances are you would do it good’. Which, as Malcolm Turnbull concludes, is precisely why Charteris’s letters ‘can be read as encouraging Kerr’ to dismiss Whitlam.
Yet there remain some who continue to cling, determinedly and limpet-like, to the now impossible view that the Queen was not involved in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. For them, the suggestion that the Queen played any part in Kerr’s decision to dismiss the government is a mere ‘conspiracy theory’, to be derided and denounced in turn, despite the clear text of the Palace letters telling us otherwise.
In what can only be described as an unorthodox analysis, it has even been claimed that ‘the Queen was hostage to Kerr’. Ah yes, Kerr’s obsequious, fawning, ‘stomach-churning’ letters, his desperate need for royal approbation, masked the canny cultivation of a politically powerless monarch in the thrall of her dissolute vice-roy, his helpless hostage. What arrant nonsense.
For those still ‘living in the ‘70s’, insisting that the Queen does not intervene in political matters and unwilling or unable to accept the recent transformation of the dismissal history, these revelations of the Queen’s political interventions have been a humiliating rebuff.
Jenny Hocking is emeritus professor at Monash University, Distinguished Whitlam Fellow at the Whitlam Institute at Western Sydney University and award-winning biographer of Gough Whitlam. Her latest book is The Palace Letters: The Queen, the governor-general, and the plot to dismiss Gough Whitlam. You can follow Jenny on Twitter @palaceletters.
Comments
19 responses to “A royal abuse of political power”
Can anyone please tell me why the Queen uses the term ‘block’ re legislation contra to Jenny’s use of the term ‘involvement/intervention’?
This entire discussion astonishes me. Where is the perspective? Where is the real world focus?
The manipulation of Australia can be identified in 19 elements, by my count, and clearly with more to be revealed. Control of our government is one such element, and a single chapter in that story is the sacking of Whitlam, of which a portion involves the Queen and the greater role being that of the CIA. Or is Hocking about to suggest that Christopher Boyce was imprisoned for 22 years by a Pentagon outraged that he had maligned the good Betty? Hardly.
There will never be proof, but it is clear that London and Washington (MI6 and CIA) worked together to get rid of Whitlam, and that the timeline was regulated by Whitlam’s intention to name in Parliament, the several prominent Australians who worked for the CIA: Sir Arthur Tange, Doug Anthony, Peter Ables, Bob Hawke, and Richard Stallings (who built Pine Gap). This is the real story, with more chapters to be published. How many more Australians were in breach of the Constitution by assisting a ‘foreign power’ to disadvantage Australia.
Another question, one pondered over by every Australian in the wake of the sacking: “Why does Gough not fight back”? Only one explanation makes sense to me, he was told to shut up or else. He was threatened and his family was threatened. Just as every other leader who attempted to provide his country with national sovereignty, was threatened. Those who did not back down are dead, like Patrice Lumumba and Chile’s Allende.
Right now, with events overtaking us, the real question is how many politicians and senior public servants are there left who actively represent the will of Australians. My TV set tells me there is one, but I am hoping there are more… no doubt futilely. The life of an Australian patriot is getting very lonely.
Tony – your claims fascinate me. Can you provide evidence to back them?
Sure, Charles, but all this is pretty common knowledge these days. John Pilger has covered much of this in his books on Australia, and if you peruse GunshoeNews.com.au, their archive contains most of the evidence. The editor, Dee, is very obliging and will redirect you. If you want the whole box & dice, my website oziz4oziz.com/ and the pages on globalisation, will provide details.
A recent Australian demographic phenomenon is that all university graduates of 1975 onwards, have been taught a parallel history of Australia… essentially, that from 1940 to 1975 this nation languished in poverty and industrial chaos, caused by the evil trade unions. The real history is cameoed in the website, but any working class or former middleclass Aussie over the age of 75 will confirm that from 1948 to 1975, Australia was the most prosperous and egalitarian nation in the world, with zero unemployment, and every worker had access to full time work, paid annual holidays, sick leave and paid public holidays.
Every family could achieve home ownership and most had a new or newish car.
As a result of the university indoctrination, all professionals, journalists, academics, scientists, executives, and social scientists see the world in the same light, believing unemployment is only 7% and that we were recently enjoying unprecedented prosperity.
By my surveyed measurement (2001, 2004, 2007, 2010) actual unemployment was 17%, 19%, 21% and 23%. In 2010, 54% of Aussies knew this. Today, unemployment is around 60% and 3 million are homeless. To kick your skeptical research ball off, easily confirm that the 1999 Newsweek-Bulletin survey measured a national unemployment level of 23%, but then they were more penetrating than me, thanks to editor extroadinaire Max Walsh.
It is surprising how Australia, so fiercely determined for independence with the creation of Federation in 1901, is today so infatuated with feudalism and the feudalistic State of Great Britain. -A State with which we tried to cut the umbilical cord all those years ago.
Jenny Hocking describes how the Monarch has the right to veto all legislation before it is presented to the House of Commons. Not countersign the legislation after it has been approved by Parliament and then into law, as we all naively believed!.
It was not until Winston Churchill on the 10th August 1911 forced the House of Lords, to forgo its veto over all legislation of the House of Commons that the United Kingdom became a true democracy (11 years after Australia).
Now Jenny Hocking informs us we are not a democratic monocracy at all, but rather part of some feudalistic system that has its origins back in the in the dark ages.
Not surprising at all really. Balmoral in Scotland where the Queen and her family like to spend the summer and where she is particularly at home, is a feudalistic State if ever there was one, with only 14 families owning most of the country side. No clear land titles like we have in Victoria since the 1862 Duffy Land Act. Just agreement between the Lairds that our boundary is that “yon hill, river or stream”.
Why do we want to strive to be part of such a decadent system? Can any one explain?
Lovely piece of writing Jenny. Amazing that we are even having this discussion in Australia in 2021 – monarchy V democracy. I see Betty is considering shifting one of her grand-daughters to Australia to live among her loyal objects, lest we become too restive. I guess they will create some sort of duchy or rather to raise funds to keep her and her family in a manner befitting their entitlement.
If we had leaders, the path to a Republic is an open road.
If we had ham, we could have a ham and cheese sandwich, if we had cheese.
Hello Jenny: If I am still alive when Australia becomes a Republic you get my vote for President.
Or, at the very least – an A. C..
It’s not the first time that HRH has been politically active regarding ‘affairs of state’.
‘The Crown’ gives you an insight into how the powers exercised by the Queen have been nothing but self-seeking.
Post Mountbatten’s retirement from Chief of Defence Staff by Harold Wilson’s labor Government, The Crown was facing a coup by her own, by none the less than Mountbatten himself https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/lord-mountbatten-did-prince-philip-uncle-attempt-lead-coup-harold-wilson-government-crown-true/
“Five Key Elements of a successful coup: Control of the Media, Control of the Economy, Capture of Administrative Elements, Loyalty of Defence, and Legitimacy (Mountbatten). No coup d’état can
succeed unless The Crown lends its support. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
This we have also experienced with the ructions of 1975 and its concomitant effects up until this very day.
We the people, should be proud with your efforts of seeking the truth and holding truth to power.
The big fib is, they’re “above politics”. We see yet again, they play it for keeps, on an industrial scale.
As with the Black Spider Memos or Palace Letters, Charles and Elizabeth have no choice but to keep up the fibs. “We didn’t mean anything really.” “You’re imagining stuff, reading too much into it.” “That’s not how things actually happen.” “Most likely you did it to yourself.” Yep, we’re being gas-lighted, in an abusive relationship. Yet Chief Royalist Morrison eagerly awaits his King Charles. With no questions asked.
Beyond the details of grubby civil administration, the process that this article outlines has enormous and uncanny similarities with the ‘appointment-process” of Bishops to the Church of England, It would form the basis for a lovely PhD study in the similarities and differences between the two processes. Over to you, Jenny.
Your hate for Whitlam driven by right wing religious madness in turn filled with 19th Century yellow peril hate and white supremacist views as reflected in your history of comments, makes it obvious as to where you are coming from. It ain’t ‘Joy’ either Mary333. (Or is it 666?).
Of course Whitlam is also another target for you because you also hate him for recognising the PRC as the sole legitimate Chinese government in 1972, having made a trip to China back then as well, and having embraced and celebrated multiculturalism in Australia. You make that very clear in your previous comments, but you try to disguise your motivations once again.
The IPA that sent its directives to the Liberals and Tony Abbott after he was elected in 2013 called the list of 150 directives “Be like Gough”. I suggest that was code for radically getting rid of everything Whitlam ever did and stood for. Recognizing the PRC by Whitlam is something they still have not accepted either.
Jenny Hocking has done and is doing, a great job. It’s the biased ms media that fell over like rag dolls to shut down debate over the palace letters. One of the best things that ever happened to this country was Whitlam, and it helped to correct our racist views as a country.
You are attempting to bring them back.
You might argue “freedom of speech”, but what you really want is freedom to hate any one who is not white.
Dear me! What a “Triggered” Maoist response!
In this post, I NEVER mentioned Whitlam, nor his Treasonous and destructive PRC/CCP Policies towards Federation Australia.
You forget I have read everyone of your comments before, I know where you are coming from, and it is exactly as I state.
Maybe we can forgive 333, George. What I’ll never forgive is Plibersek, on behalf of Murdoch and Morrison, saying the Palace had “no role” in the Dismissal.
Have you actually read MaryJoy333’s other comments?
These revelations from the Guardian make me wonder if she’s had her mitts in Australian politics and how much property or ties to business she has here.
We’ll never know because that information is unavailable.
She is the biggest non institutional shareholder of CRA.