How a court decision could unlock secrets of Whitlam's dismissal

Australia’s highest legal tribunal has effectively decided voters are entitled to know more about the sensational dismissal of the Whitlam Labor government by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, on November 11, 1975.

Friday’s 6-1 High Court decision ordering the National Archives to reconsider its refusal to allow political historian Jenny Hocking access to the 211 letters between Kerr and Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles and her private secretary, Sir Martin Charteris, in the months leading up to the dismissal should lead to crucial information being revealed about Kerr’s motivation in taking such an extraordinary action.

Key questions include why Kerr decided to act in secret against a democratically elected prime minister, and if there was any explicit prior support from the Queen, Sir Martin, who was her private secretary from 1972-77, or from the heir to the throne, Prince Charles, for his intended action.

Information contained in the extensive correspondence could also, possibly, include the names of other figures Kerr consulted before taking such dramatic action amid Australia’s worst constitutional crisis.

The background to the dismissal is that the Liberal-National Party opposition, then led by Malcolm Fraser, blocked the government’s supply bills in the Senate, and publicly called on Kerr to dismiss Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and order an election.

After three weeks of rising tension and wild rumours, November 11 began as a beautiful Canberra day, but by lunchtime the government was gone.

Kerr dismissed Whitlam without warning and made Liberal party leader Malcolm Fraser prime minister on condition that he advise calling an election.

On December 13 Whitlam's Labor was thrashed at the polls, and received another electoral drubbing two years later, ending Whitlam’s political career.

Kerr’s action spawned more than 20 books, numerous articles, even more conspiracy theories and a TV mini-series, and sowed the seeds for a nascent republican movement. The latter reached its zenith in the mid-90s, although the demand for an Australian head of state was decisively rejected in a November 1999 referendum.

Agreed with advice

Hocking, who has penned biographies of Whitlam and his one-time attorney-general and later High Court judge Lionel Murphy, is the inaugural Distinguished Whitlam Fellow with the Whitlam Institute, an emeritus professor at Monash University, a former director of its National Centre for Australian Studies, and has been remorseless in pursuing material on the dismissal.

She earlier revealed that High Court Justice Anthony Mason agreed with the advice of the then Chief Justice, Sir Garfield Barwick, who was also a former Liberal government attorney-general, that Kerr was constitutionally entitled to sack Whitlam.

However, Mason also advised Kerr that he should give Whitlam due warning of his thinking and intentions – an action Kerr never took.

Friday’s decision follows a four-year legal battle mounted by Hocking to secure access to the correspondence, including two rebuffs at the hands of the Federal Court. According to legal commentator Richard Ackland, “how can you make letters setting out why you want to dismiss a democratically elected Prime Minister private?".