After the most dramatic day in his life, Sir John Kerr retired to his study on 11 November 1975 to write to the Queen, Australia’s head of state, to explain his dismissal of the Whitlam Government, an action he took in her name. The emotional and constitutional showdown with Gough Whitlam at 1 p.m. that day remained, he said later, ‘engraved upon my mind’.1 It would shape the rest of his life. For the Governor-General it had been a busy day—honouring the fallen on Remembrance Day and conducting his own constitutional execution.
By Kerr’s standards this letter was brief. But writing to the Queen was central to his constitutional duty. Throughout the crisis Kerr informed the Palace of the events—but Kerr operated on one overarching principle: if vice-regal intervention was required, it would be his decision alone and done in his way.
As a proud man who had become Governor-General after having once dreamt of becoming Prime Minister, Kerr would now leave his own mark on history. ‘I did not tell the Queen in advance that I intended to exercise these powers on 11 November,’ Kerr said later. ‘I did not ask her approval.’2 Seeking such approval would have been constitutionally flawed, politically dangerous and beneath Kerr’s pomposity.
Kerr knew the Queen had no legal role to play in the crisis. The powers of the sovereign are exercised in Australia by the Governor-General. Indeed, this was the basis on which Kerr took the job. He did not become Governor-General to outsource his influence to Buckingham Palace. His obsequious cultivation of the Palace had one constant motive—to buttress his own autonomy. The dismissal, in each of its cumulative decision-making steps, was an Australian project.
In his letter written after the dismissal, Kerr now informed the Queen through her private secretary, Sir Martin Charteris, of something truly remarkable—an elaborate, secret and extraordinary plan he had implemented, none of whose components he had previously disclosed to the Palace.3 These were: that he had decided on a 11 November dismissal in a Government House ambush; that Whitlam had come to request a half-Senate election that Kerr would deny him since there was no guarantee of supply; that he had consulted Chief Justice Sir Garfield Barwick the previous day thereby tying the High Court to his dismissal; that Barwick had advised Kerr his intention was consistent with ‘your constitutional authority and duty’; that he would deny Whitlam any genuine opportunity to go to an election as Prime Minister; that his plan had involved commissioning Malcolm Fraser as caretaker and minority Prime Minister to provide advice to the Governor-General; and that, acting on Fraser’s advice after supply had been secured, he had dissolved the parliament for an election.
Before 11 November, Kerr had told the Palace none of the above—absolutely nothing. The Queen was hostage to Kerr. None of the incendiary steps that he took that turned 11 November into the biggest constitutional and political controversy in Australia’s history was cleared with the Palace. The Queen was not told he had decided to dismiss Whitlam nor the extraordinary manner of the dismissal—cutting Whitlam down in a constitutional strike at Yarralumla. History tells us this was not the way the Palace behaved.
The Governor-General wrote lengthy letters to the Palace, but what he didn’t say was far more important than what he did say. The Palace was informed about his thinking and his options. It was told nothing about his elaborate plans that were being put in place from 6 November onwards. Keeping the Palace in ignorance was a deliberate strategy.
Kerr attached to this 11 November letter the critical documents for the Palace—his dismissal letter to Whitlam, his statement as Governor-General, his letter commissioning Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister and the letter of affirming advice from the Chief Justice. In his letter Kerr said: ‘I should say that 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 that it was better for Her Majesty not to know in advance, though it is, of course, my duty to tell her immediately.’4 He provided the briefest account of the exchange with Whitlam at the point of dismissal, saying that, on being informed, Whitlam said: ‘I shall have to get in touch with the Palace immediately.’ Kerr told him that would be useless as he was at that time no longer Prime Minister. In subsequent years, both Kerr and Whitlam offered a fuller account with different versions.
The key point was the Governor-General’s determination to have the issue resolved then and there in his study. He was determined not to let Whitlam get away from Yarralumla without an election. Whitlam was on Kerr’s territory. He was alone—without staff, without support. The Queen was asleep in her Buckingham Palace bed when Kerr terminated the Prime Minister.
According to Whitlam, Kerr passed him the dismissal letter and Whitlam asked: ‘Have you discussed this with the Palace?’ Kerr replied: ‘I don’t have to and it’s too late for you. I have terminated your commission.’ He told Whitlam that ‘the Chief Justice agrees with this course of action’. Whitlam shot back: ‘I advised you that you should not consult him on this matter.’ According to Whitlam, Kerr shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘We shall all have to live with this’ and Whitlam replied: ‘You certainly will.’5
Kerr’s account is more dramatic. He claimed that during the exchange he gave Whitlam an opportunity to save himself. The Governor-General’s assertion is that after telling Whitlam he had decided to dismiss him but before giving him the letter, Whitlam had an opportunity to change his mind and advise an election as Prime Minister. This seems dubious in the extreme. What sort of opportunity was this, just a few seconds with Whitlam in a state of shock? Kerr said: ‘Mr Whitlam jumped up, looked urgently around the room, looked at the telephones and said sharply: “I must get in touch with the Palace at once.” … I therefore made my final decision to withdraw his commission.’ Whitlam repudiated Kerr’s account, branding as a ‘concoction’ the notion that he was looking for a phone to ring the Palace.6 Obviously, the Palace could not save him.
Both men agreed on the final exchange. Kerr wished Whitlam good luck in the election. Kerr told the Palace a few days later that he said: ‘I think you could well win the election. Good luck.’ Kerr extended his hand. Whitlam accepted it. They shook hands. Whitlam walked out of the study as a deposed Prime Minister.
Could Whitlam have torn up the letter? Kerr said: ‘The lawyer in Mr Whitlam would have told him this was impossible.’7 But Whitlam’s instinctive question about the Palace is revealing. Obviously, he felt the Palace would not have agreed to his dismissal in this way.
It is noteworthy Kerr told Whitlam the Chief Justice agreed with the dismissal. But he made no comment about the Palace. If the Palace had agreed in advance—as some commentators assert—then surely Kerr would have said so. He would have loved to have upstaged Whitlam by telling him the Palace was on his side. But Kerr said nothing of any ‘royal green light’ from the Palace, for the obvious reason that there was no such prior approval.
The Palace was first informed of the dismissal late at night when David Smith, Kerr’s official secretary, rang during the afternoon of 11 November, Australian time. His call was taken by William Heseltine, assistant private secretary under Charteris, and an Australian. Heseltine said: ‘I was asleep in my virtuous bed in an apartment in St James’ Palace when the telephone rang. I said, “Hello David, what on earth are you ringing for at this time of night?” And he said, “Well, the Governor-General has dismissed the Prime Minister.” The double-take of all time. I can’t remember what I said to him but the reaction was stunned surprise.’8
Whitlam also rang the Palace and spoke to Charteris. In his letter to Kerr written six days later, Charteris described the phone conversation:
Mr Whitlam prefaced his remarks by saying that he was speaking as a ‘private citizen’; he rehearsed what had happened, the withdrawal of his Commission, the passing of Supply and the votes of no confidence in Mr Fraser and of confidence in the Member for Werriwa, which had been passed by the House of Representatives, and said that now Supply had been passed he should be re-commissioned as Prime Minister so that he could choose his own time to call an election. He spoke calmly and did not ask me to make any approach to The Queen, or indeed to do anything other than the suggestion that I should speak to you to find out what was going on.9
Interviewed in June 1995, Charteris said the ‘sole purpose’ of Whitlam’s call was to inform the Palace of his dismissal. Asked if Whitlam made any requests or complaints to the Palace, Charteris said: ‘He didn’t ask me to do anything.’10
But the Charteris letter offers only one interpretation: Whitlam wanted Charteris to speak to Kerr on his recommissioning as Prime Minister. Whitlam omitted this point from his own account when he said: ‘After the drama of the day I telephoned a good friend in London, Sir Martin Charteris, soldier, diplomat, sculptor and Private Secretary to The Queen. It is a fact that The Queen’s representative in Australia had kept The Queen in the same total ignorance of his actions as he had the Prime Minister of Australia.’11 Whitlam did not believe the Palace had any role in his dismissal.
The Queen was informed of the dismissal at a meeting with Charteris and Heseltine at the Palace in the early morning. Heseltine said: ‘I can’t remember whether she was in her dressing gown, I think she had got dressed already for breakfast … I think she was indeed surprised, as surprised as we had been. She certainly gave no indication to me that there had been any thought that something like this would happen.’ Asked about the Queen’s view of the dismissal, Heseltine said: ‘Ha, ha, I think she is an old and wily bird about her own views … I’m reasonably confident myself that she thought it could have been handled better.’12
Drawing upon her experience in studying the Palace, Anne Twomey said:
For all her reign, The Queen has protected her self interest in not becoming involved in political or constitutional controversies. Whenever a constitutional crisis has arisen including a ‘race to the Palace’ the Queen has employed the tactic of ‘masterly inactivity’ in the hope that the crisis would be resolved domestically so that she would not have to become involved. Normally that tactic is successful.13
Former minister and historian Sir Paul Hasluck spent five years as Governor-General, enjoyed good relations with Charteris and was a confidant with access to the Palace after his departure. ‘The wisdom of constitutional monarchy is to avoid confrontation,’ Hasluck said, describing the culture of the Palace. Criticising Kerr in a subsequent discussion with Charteris, Hasluck said the task was to ‘never let an issue come to a crisis in a political sense’.14 Avoiding confrontation served the mutual interest of the Queen and Governor-General, a principle Kerr violated.
In the prelude to and during the crisis, Kerr was the busy correspondent with the Palace, writing far longer letters than Charteris. This is understandable because Kerr was informing the Palace about the crisis. A careful reading of the letters shows they rested on two shared assumptions—that the Queen had no constitutional role in the crisis and sought no role, and that the responsibility for any involvement or intervention by the Crown rested entirely with the Governor-General. These are the understood rules of Australia’s constitutional monarchy.
But the letters transcend such axioms. They are stamped with the different personalities of the two principals, Kerr and Charteris. The stakes were high. The 1975 crisis had the potential to put Australia’s constitutional monarchy on the path to extinction. As the crisis approached, Charteris was encouraging and supportive of Kerr. On 24 September he wrote: ‘As I have had occasion to remind you on previous occasions, the Governor-General of Australia does not seem to lie on a bed of roses and it is clear that you may be faced with some difficult constitutional decisions during the next month or so.’15 On 2 October, with Kerr preoccupied with a potential crisis, Charteris wrote: ‘In all these difficult matters I am sure you are right to keep your options open and not to decide now what you will do in any given circumstances. When an actual crisis comes the circumstances are so often subtly yet decisively different from what was envisaged.’16
Once supply had been blocked, Charteris reinforced these sentiments—the Crown wanted the issue resolved without a constitutional confrontation and expressed its confidence in Kerr. Obviously, it could say nothing less. Charteris wrote:
We must of course still hope that the crisis will somehow become de-fused and I am sure you are doing all that you can, properly, to see that this happens. I fear, however, that you are dealing with two resolute and obstinate men … Your friends in this house can take comfort that your long training in the law equips you singularly well to cope with it.17
As the potential crisis neared, with a growing prospect of some form of intervention by the Governor-General, Charteris was emphatic: ‘I think it is good that people should know that The Queen is being informed but, of course, this does not mean that she has any wish to intervene, even if she had the constitutional power to do so. The crisis, as you say, has to be worked out in Australia.’18 It was the last letter from Charteris before the dismissal.
This was the essential position of the Queen and the Palace, repeated endlessly—the issue must be resolved in Australia. This reveals not the strength of the Palace but its weakness. Charteris was not master of events in Australia. The Queen, restricted by the Constitution, by geography and by outlook, was little short of a passive but interested observer. The Palace had no option but to rely upon Kerr, to trust Kerr, to declare its confidence in Kerr, to hope Whitlam had appointed a Governor-General of discretion and judgement. It is hardly an exaggeration to say the Queen was hostage to Kerr since he would act in the Queen’s name.
In the past several decades the most visible change in the office has been the acceptance that only an Australian would be appointed as Governor-General. The office is now nationalised. The Governor-General’s main task is to represent the nation to itself, an idea advanced by former occupant Sir Ninian Stephen. Whitlam sought to promote the office to advance Australian sovereignty. But the appointment of Kerr revealed that an Australian, deeply versed in law and politics, confident in his judgement and ambitious in his aspirations, was capable of using the Crown’s powers in a way the Queen herself would not have acted.
By having the confidence of the Palace, Kerr maximised his own discretion, confident that the Palace would support what he decided. This is apparent from the start. The month before the budget was blocked, Kerr wrote: ‘If the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition get into a battle in which the Senate has defeated the budget, the Prime Minister refuses to recommend a dissolution, my role will need some careful thought …’19
A few days later, still three weeks before the blocking of the budget, Kerr in a long letter told Charteris: ‘You will note that in what I have written I have expressed no view of what I may do in various contingencies. I think it better to keep my mind and my options open so that if the worst happens I can decide at the last moment what to do. I am however thinking hard.’20
On 17 October, in his first letter to the Palace after the crisis began, Kerr provided Charteris with a long account. Right from the start he identified the real issue, saying Fraser ‘takes the view that I have ample power, before chaos develops too far, to dismiss the government and produce an election’. Kerr concluded: ‘I have appreciated very much the letters which you have written to me. I do not know what will happen or what I shall end up by doing but the country is set on a collision course now of historic proportions. I shall keep Her Majesty fully informed.’21
He was watching, waiting, contemplating, aware he was the monarchical player.
On 20 October, Kerr told Charteris the Liberal leaders expected him to intervene. But he said: ‘I do not propose, at this stage, to try to mediate.’22 On 27 October, he wrote that if supply was still rejected and the money was about to run out ‘the question will ultimately arise as to what I should do’. He quoted from Sir Paul Hasluck’s 1972 lecture on the role of the Governor-General that in a crisis the Governor-General ‘can check the elected representatives’. But Kerr then said of his own role: ‘any vice-regal decision either to act or not to act in this kind of situation will be, I suppose, the subject of debate and criticism. I am simply looking into the future and exploring options. I have still not made up my mind.’23
Nobody could doubt from the letters that Kerr was the agent for any action. But Kerr, from time to time, sought counsel from Charteris, and Charteris, in turn, was occasionally prepared to offer such counsel. For instance, in his 27 October letter, sensing the crisis deepening, Kerr protected himself with the Palace. He put to Charteris his view that the Queen ‘would be anxious—or at least so I assume—for this crisis to be worked out in Australia’. Having established the essential operating principle, he then wrote: ‘However anything I may do or not do could indirectly affect the Monarchy in Australia and I should welcome any observations on a private and personal basis which you may care to make and which, as you see it, should be taken into account in the interests of the Monarchy in Australia.’24 Kerr was not saying his job was to defend the monarchy. But he invited Charteris to put forward any views. Kerr, clever and calculating, was covering himself with the Palace.
As 11 November approached, however, Kerr’s correspondence with the Palace dried up. After his 27 October letter, there was only one further letter to Charteris—on 6 November—before the dismissal. The tone of this letter was different. The gravity of the crisis had a deeper dimension. This is a shorter letter, just two and a half pages. Kerr’s mind was sharper and his conclusions were tougher. In the penultimate paragraph he told Charteris: ‘The crisis is now a very serious one and if both parties and their leaders remain adamant, an important decision one way or the other may have to be made by me this month.’25
But Kerr was now pulling his punches with the Palace. His focus was Australia, not London. The Palace could wait. Kerr had serious business to address. This was the day he had conversations with Whitlam, Fraser, Attorney-General Kep Enderby and the Treasurer, Bill Hayden. His 6 November letter was written after all these conversations with Kerr saying they were ‘to keep up to date’. Yet Kerr declined to reveal his real thinking to the Palace. Of course, he was under no obligation to do so.
The crisis was nearing climax. At his meeting with Fraser that day, 6 November, the Opposition Leader had threatened Kerr that if he did not intervene to sack Whitlam then Fraser would publicly criticise him. After Kerr’s meeting with Hayden, the Treasurer was so alarmed that he drove immediately to Parliament House and insisted on seeing Whitlam. Hayden told Whitlam: ‘My copper instincts tell me that Kerr is thinking of sacking us and calling an election.’ There was another sign when Kerr met Enderby. The Attorney-General told the Governor-General that Liberal senators were looking for an excuse to back down. Kerr replied: ‘That’s certainly not what Fraser tells me.’ Enderby felt Kerr was convinced on that point.
Kerr may not have yet decided to dismiss Whitlam, but he was closing the circle. The 6 November letter is that of a Governor-General preparing to intervene but keeping the Palace at some distance from that conclusion. The next five days saw Kerr engage in a series of extraordinary and unprecedented moves. He had told the Palace that any intervention was his responsibility and he acted on that basis.
After the dismissal, on 12 November, the Speaker of the House of Representatives Gordon Scholes wrote to the Queen saying: ‘I would ask that you act in order to restore Mr Whitlam to office as Prime Minister in accordance with the expressed resolution of the House of Representatives.’26 This letter was excusable but extremely unwise. It left Labor in the position of asking the Queen to intervene in Australia, secure the dismissal of Fraser and the reinstatement of Whitlam. The Queen had no constitutional power to do this. She would never have contemplated such action. It would have been contrary to the principles on which she operated as monarch and such a political intervention would have threatened Australia’s constitutional monarchy.
In his 17 November reply to Scholes, Charteris, speaking for the Queen, said: ‘The only person competent to commission an Australian Prime Minister is the Governor-General and The Queen has no part in the decisions which the Governor-General must take in accordance with the constitution.’ He said that ‘it would not be proper for her to intervene in person in matters which are so clearly placed within the jurisdiction of the Governor-General by the Constitution Act’.27
At his dramatic media conference on the afternoon of 11 November Whitlam revealed his deepest instinct: ‘Let’s be frank about it—the Queen would never have done it … There’s no Act which says it can’t happen, but it hasn’t happened for 200 years in the Westminster System.’28
In her claim of Palace intrigue, Hocking rejects the position of the Queen, the Governor-General, the deposed Prime Minister and the incoming Prime Minister that the Palace did not play a role in the dismissal. She called the Charteris letter to Scholes ‘a carefully constructed sophistry’ in which ‘every word’ had been chosen ‘with a singular purpose—to mask the truth of British involvement’ in Whitlam’s dismissal.29 These are extraordinary claims—that the Queen and the Palace were lying to the Australian people.
After the release of the letters in July 2020 a spokesperson for Buckingham Palace said:
At Her Majesty’s Coronation on 2 June 1953, the Queen swore an oath to govern the Peoples of Australia ‘according to their respective laws and customs’.
Throughout her reign, Her Majesty has consistently demonstrated this support for Australia, the primacy of the Australian constitution and the independence of the Australian people, which the release of these letters reflects.
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 of Australia confirms that neither Her Majesty nor the Royal Household had any part to play in Kerr’s decision to dismiss Whitlam.30
This confirms what the Palace has always said. In response to queries about the Queen’s knowledge of or involvement in the dismissal at the time, Palace officials in the royal press office replied upon notes which said: ‘The Queen was informed by the Governor-General of his action after [he] had taken it.’ They also emphasised that the ‘UK government is not involved’.31
Interviewed for this book, Paul Keating recalled his audience with the Queen at Balmoral in September 1993 when he advised her that Australia would embark on a course to become a republic. When he finished she said: ‘You know, my family and I have always tried to do their best by Australia.’ Keating replied: ‘Yes, I know that, Ma’am.’32
Asked about the 1975 crisis, Keating expressed the view that the Queen ‘has never contrived, on this occasion or others, over the long course of her reign to undermine governments’. Keating rejects the conspiracy that the Queen was involved in the dismissal of Gough Whitlam. Keating said: ‘Kerr usurped the kingly powers reserved to a monarch, unused for centuries, and made the Palace hostage to his plan.’ Asked whether he felt the Queen had always done the right thing by Australia, the champion of the republic replied: ‘I do.’33
The Palace letters confirm from both the Palace and the Governor-General that the Queen had no prior knowledge of, and was not an authorising agent for, the dismissal. They confirm that Kerr’s deliberate purpose was to ensure the Queen was not involved in the decision.
Given this has been established, the question then becomes whether the Queen and the Palace were implicated in an indirect way by encouraging Kerr at an earlier stage in his calculating of a dismissal strategy that became elaborate and conspiratorial. The next chapter addresses this proposition.