Jenny Hocking

When the Murdoch media launch into its ritualistic ‘Labor leadership tensions’ routine it can only mean there’s an election on the horizon. But with a poll showing states rated ahead of the feds regarding administering the vaccine, it would appear trust is an issue that will continue to bedevil the Coalition. 

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The National Archives of Australia is set to release decades of correspondence between the Queen and Governors-General, from Sir Richard Casey in 1965 to Bill Hayden in 1996. The decision follows the High Court’s ruling in my landmark ‘Palace letters’ case against the Archives which, in May 2020, overturned the Queen’s embargo over her correspondence with Governor-General Sir John Kerr, much of it relating to the dismissal of the Whitlam government. (more…)

The Palace letters have brought Kerr’s extensive, even obsessive, ‘reporting’ to the Queen into sharp relief, placing Kerr himself and his peculiar conception of his role as Governor-General under intense scrutiny. (more…)

History will be made this week with the release of hundreds of secret letters between the Queen and the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, relating to Kerr’s 1975 dismissal of the Whitlam government. (more…)

In an emphatic 6:1 decision the High Court has ruled that the ‘Palace letters’ between the Governor-General and the Queen relating to the 1975 dismissal of the Whitlam government are Commonwealth records, ending the Queen’s embargo over them and opening them for public access under the Archives Act. (more…)

The final act in the landmark ‘Palace letters’ case seeking access to the Queen’s secret correspondence with the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, relating to Kerr’s dismissal of the Whitlam government will play out in the High Court later this month. (more…)

Echoes of the Governor-General Sir John Kerr’s vice-regal dismissal of the Whitlam government reverberated across the High Court this week, as the long-running Palace letters case came before the full bench on appeal. (more…)

As the Queen reels from one family crisis to another, Buckingham Palace would be looking on a little anxiously as the ‘Palace letters’ case is heard by the full bench of the High Court next week. (more…)

Letters between Sir John Kerr and Buckingham Palace show that the Palace pressured Kerr to omit from his autobiography his secret exchanges with the Queen’s private secretary before his dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. This Royally sanctioned erasure is one of several crucial omissions from Kerr’s autobiography, which raise key questions about the ‘Palace letters’ between Kerr and the Queen leading up to the dismissal. (more…)

There is a growing air of desperation in the cross-party efforts to stymie British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s threat to by-pass parliament, and even to ignore a motion of no confidence against him and his government by the House of Commons, in order to force through a no-deal Brexit. It is remarkable that in all the analyses of this political rupture and how best to avert it, the one example of the successful use of the very strategy that Johnson has laid out has been entirely overlooked.  (more…)

There have been dramatic revelations from the National Archives of Australia with the release of letters between the Governor-General Sir John Kerr and Buckingham Palace following Kerr’s dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. These letters provide remarkable and disturbing new material on the dismissal of the Whitlam government and the role of the Palace. They not only confirm that Kerr was in secret contact with the Queen’s private secretary Sir Martin Charteris in the months before the dismissal, they also reveal that the Palace and Kerr then agreed to keep these ‘exchanges’ with Charteris hidden from public view, and from our history, by omitting any mention of them in Kerr’s later memoirs.  (more…)

Professor Jenny Hocking’s long-running case against the National Archives of Australia seeking the release of the secret ‘Palace letters’ about the 1975 dismissal of the Whitlam government by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, stepped up again this week with the announcement of a Special Leave hearing in the High Court of Australia on 16 August. (more…)

As the media debated the political precedents for the Morrison government’s historic defeat in the House of Representatives last week – some pointing to the Bruce government in 1929, and others to the Fadden government in 1941 – largely forgotten was the more recent, and far more compelling, example of the 1975 defeat of the Fraser government in a crucial vote in the House of Representatives. At 3.15pm on 11 November 1975, the newly installed Fraser government comprehensively lost a confidence vote – not a legislative vote as Morrison did but a formal ‘want of confidence’ motion – by 10 votes. That Fraser’s historic parliamentary defeat has largely gone unnoticed despite its obvious relevance, says much about the persistent historical amnesia about the dismissal of the Whitlam government.  

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Historical myths die hard. And historical myths have plagued our understanding of the dismissal of the Whitlam Labor government by the Governor General, Sir John Kerr, on 11 November 1975. Chief among these foundational myths is the claim that the dismissal was a solo act by Kerr, a lonely and isolated decision, that no other person was involved in its planning or knew of its execution. Not the leader of the Opposition, not the High Court justices, and certainly not the Queen.   (more…)

The long-running ‘Palace letters’ case over the Queen’s secret correspondence regarding the 1975 dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam heads back to court on Wednesday 28 November, with an appeal hearing before the full bench of the Federal Court in Sydney.  (more…)

The ghosts of the dismissal of the Whitlam government 43 years ago were on display at an appeal hearing before the full bench of the federal court last week: Gough Whitlam, the deposed prime minister; Sir John Kerr, the governor general who dismissed him; Malcolm Fraser, the leader of the opposition appointed by Kerr to replace Whitlam; and David Smith, the governor general’s official secretary. (more…)

The long-running ‘Palace letters’ case over the Queen’s secret correspondence regarding the 1975 dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam heads back to court on Wednesday 28 November, with an appeal hearing before the full bench of the Federal Court in Sydney.  (more…)

Scott Morrison is an unlikely Prime Minister. The day before the latest Liberal leadership change Morrison appeared in a memorable photo, arm casually draped around then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s uncomfortable shoulders, and proclaimed his support; ‘This is my leader. I’m ambitious – for him!’. Two days later Morrison emerged from a rancorous party meeting, brought on by the failed plotter and would-be Prime Minister Peter Dutton and his vengeful side-kick the deposed Prime Minister Tony Abbott, to become the third Liberal Prime Minister in as many years. The image and its aftermath have defined our 30th Prime Minister as duplicitous, disloyal and clearly ambitious – for himself. (more…)

This month’s federal court ruling that the ‘Palace letters’, between the Queen and the Governor-General at the time of the Whitlam dismissal, are ‘personal’ and not subject to the Archives Act means that this historic correspondence will remain under lock and key in the National Archives and embargoed ‘on the instructions of the Queen’, potentially indefinitely.  (more…)