Palace Letters: Sir John Kerr and Buckingham Palace |
Tuesday 14th of July 2020 sees the release of the Palace letters between Sir John Kerr and Buckingham Palace that led to Gough Whitlam's sacking in 1975 and dismissal of the Whitlam government.
Hundreds of potentially explosive letters that will shed light on what Buckingham Palace knew in the lead-up to Gough Whitlam's 1975 dismissal will be released exposing one of the most pivitol moments in Australia's polictical history.
Australia will learn more of a pivotal moment in its history when the socalled Palace letters - sent between former governor-general Sir John Kerr and Buckingham Palace in the period before the dismissal of the Whitlam government - are released in full next week.
More than 1000 pages of documents , including 200 letters, will be made available on Tuesday, the National Archives of Australia said yesterday , and could shed new light of the role of the royal family in former prime minister Gough Whitlam's sacking in 1975.
Monash University Professor Jenny Hocking, who fought a 3/2-year legal battle to have the letters released, said the archives had done "the right thing" by releasing the letters without redaction. "It's a terrific victory," she said. "It's amazing . We've had a lot of very intense discussions with the archives and the right decision has been made.
"There have been decades of writing the history of the Dismissal and the Whitlam government without this critical material," Professor Hocking, a biographer of political figures , including Mr Whitlam, said.
The federal government and archives had argued before the courts the letters were personal property rather than owned by the Commonwealth and should therefore stay secret for longer and only be released with the Queen's permission.
David Fricker, the archives' director-general , said his institution was "proud to function as the memory and evidence of the nation, to preserve and provide historical Commonwealth records to the public" . The records contain 1000 pages of documents including 95 letters from Buckingham Palace to Sir John and 116 letters from Sir John to the Palace. The records will be released simultaneously online and at an event on Tuesday.
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