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Corrs advises on landmark ‘Palace letters’ case
Australian independent law firm, Corrs Chambers Westgarth, has assisted Professor Jenny Hocking in her successful High Court case to obtain access to the “Palace letters”.
Tony Zhang
Source: http://archives.anu.edu.au/events/2019-professor-jenny-hocking-archival-secrets-and-hidden-histories
Historian Ms Hocking had won the landmark case after campaigning for the release of secret letters between Queen Elizabeth II and then Australian governor-general Sir John Kerr about the dismissal of Gough Whitlam.
“Access to the correspondence will likely provide critical insight to the inner workings of the decision by the governor-general to dismiss the government.
“It has been a long, hard battle which we have been engaged in since 2016.”
On Friday, 29 May the High Court ruled that the Commonwealth was wrong to withhold the so-called “Palace letters”, a series of more than 200 exchanges between the Queen, her private secretary and Kerr, the then-governor general, in the lead-up to the 1975 dismissal of Whitlam, the then-Australian prime minister.
Ms Hocking is now calling on the National Archives of Australia to immediately release the 211 letters, saying the public deserves to know the full history of the greatest political and constitutional crisis in Australia’s history.
The historian spent four years attempting to secure the release of the letters through the courts, a bid resisted by the archives.
Ms Hocking had previously found evidence that the Palace knew of Kerr’s intention to dismiss Whitlam and was involved in deliberations. She believes the Palace letters could reveal what the Queen said and whether she influenced Kerr’s actions.
But the letters are embargoed from public release by the Queen until at least 2027 and potentially indefinitely.
That being said, the High Court’s ruling will now mean that the letters are Commonwealth records and property of the Commonwealth, and ordered the archive’s director-general to reconsider Ms Hocking’s request.
“Five justices in the majority held that in the statutory context of the Archives Act the term ‘property’ connoted the existence of a relationship in which the Commonwealth or a Commonwealth institution had a legally endorsed concentration of power to control the custody of a record,” the High Court said in a statement.
