Gough Whitlam biographer calls for complete access to history of government’s dismissal

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Much of what we know about former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam’s dismissal is thanks to the work of historian and author Jennifer Hocking. As Whitlam's biographer, she's revealed previously unknown players in the affair, and in 2016 launched a long and ultimately successful legal bid to release critical correspondence between then governor-general Sir John Kerr and Buckingham Palace.

Transcript

00:00Well, firstly, I think it's quite extraordinary that 50 years after an event we see so much

00:07interest in it, so much discussion about it, and I do think that what's happened in the

00:12last couple of decades in particular is that the narrative around the dismissal has started

00:18to shift and I think now, given the new material we've seen, we recognise that the dismissal

00:24is a much more complex and protracted and carefully planned episode than what we originally understood

00:34it to be, where it was really presented to us as a sort of contingent event, you know,

00:40the supplies had been blocked for four weeks and the Governor-General was forced to make

00:44a decision.

00:45It's far more complex than that, there are other people involved and that's one of the

00:49things we did not know at the time.

00:52And so it's a much more, in some ways, intriguing and also I suppose more interesting story,

00:59a much more disturbing one in many ways, 50 years later, but it's one we need to have

01:04told and it's one we need to have all of the archives open, which they're not at the moment,

01:09but we do need to have full archival access to fully understand it.

01:13So Jenny, can you take us through why you decided to take that legal action to force the National

01:18Archives to release the letters from the Palace about events around the dismissal?

01:22And at the time, did you realise the enormity of what you were doing?

01:26I did know that they were very significant letters.

01:29I'd spent a lot of time in Sir John Kerr's papers, looking at his many, many notes and

01:37discussions about the dismissal.

01:39He was quite obsessed with it.

01:41And he made many long notes about his correspondence with the Palace.

01:45There were even some extracts from his letters to the Queen.

01:49And when I saw these, I realised just how dramatic they were.

01:52It was very clear that they were discussing matters that went to the heart of the dismissal,

01:57that they were discussing the use of the reserve powers.

02:00They were discussing the capacity of a Governor-General to force a dissolution.

02:05These are things that had not been used in England for nearly 200 years.

02:09And that in fact, our own Solicitor-General gave Kerr an opinion that very strongly said,

02:14in no uncertain terms, that there was no basis for the Governor-General to intervene.

02:19Nevertheless, Kerr was taking advice from elsewhere and including the Palace.

02:23When I read all of that, I knew that these were quite explosive.

02:26I knew that they were critical to history.

02:29And I had a wonderful legal team, a pro bono legal team, that also shared the view that

02:34there was a very strong legal argument as to why the National Archives should open them

02:38for us, which I'm very grateful they did.

02:41And Jenny, we talked about unknown players in the introduction.

02:44You described them as other people.

02:46Who did you discover had a hand in proceedings?

02:50The most important person, of course, which we did not know at the time and didn't know

02:55for nearly 40 years, was Sir Anthony Mason.

02:58Mason was a sitting High Court Justice at the time.

03:00He went on to be appointed a Chief Justice of the High Court by the Hawke Labor Government.

03:09And one of the Hawke Ministers said to me that they would never have appointed him Chief Justice,

03:13had they known of his role in the dismissal.

03:15And it's one of the very disturbing aspects that Mason did not want his name revealed.

03:22He pleaded with Kerr not to reveal it.

03:24Kerr had left a really detailed, typed note, setting out all of his conversations with Mason

03:31about the pending dismissal, which go back to early 1975.

03:37And through all of those months, he had been taking what he calls guidance and support from

03:42Sir Anthony Mason.

03:43It's a complete breach of the separation of powers, not to mention personally deceptive

03:48of the Prime Minister by both of them.

03:51And extraordinarily, Mason actually drafted a letter of dismissal for Kerr.

03:55I mean, it's hard to think of something that is more destructive of the proper relationship

04:01between the arms of governance than this.

04:03And so Mason's role was critical.

04:05And I had found that in 2012.

04:08It was revealed with my second volume of my biography of Gough Whitlam, his time.

04:13And that did create an absolute, I think, transformation of the way we looked at the dismissal.

04:20We understood it from that point on as something far more controversial and something that did

04:26involve other people.

04:27As you say, you were Gough Whitlam's biographer, Jenny, what was his reaction to what you found

04:32out?

04:33Look, his reaction was one of really deep distress.

04:36I think one of the really sad things about the dismissal, apart from the fact that it destroyed

04:41Gough Whitlam's professional life, something he had worked for the previous 20 years in

04:46the Parliament to achieve, was the extent of the deception of people that he worked with

04:53and that he thought would have behaved properly in their senior positions of governance, heads

04:58of department or in Barwick and Mason's case, members of the High Court.

05:03And this shocked and distressed him greatly.

05:07He had often pointed to Sir Anthony Mason as an honourable High Court judge, as he used

05:14to say, in contrast to the Chief Justice, Sir Garfield Barwick, who we know had also been

05:19secretly giving advice to Kerr, but had only done so in the last day before the dismissal.

05:26Mason's secret advice and discussions with Kerr went right back to the very first weeks of

05:311975.

05:32They were persistent, they were pushing Kerr all the way along to the eventual dismissal

05:38of Whitlam and they were ensuring that he accepted that he had the power through the

05:44reserve powers, which, as I say, hadn't been used for nearly 200 years, to dismiss the government

05:49and appoint the opposition into government.

05:52Finally, Jenny, as you said, there are still unreleased documents relating to the dismissal.

05:57What might they reveal?

05:59Well, of course, it's impossible to say what they reveal until we have them.

06:04But the point is that we can't access them.

06:07And I think this is one of the remaining issues with our National Archives of Australia.

06:12The dismissal is now 50 years old.

06:16The records of the National Archives are meant to be in the open access period after just 20 years.

06:22I've applied for many, many records that are still in Kerr's papers that I'm waiting to

06:27have opened.

06:28But to go through the process of the archives, where you can only ask for 15 documents at

06:32a time, I estimate would take at least a decade even to put your applications in, let alone

06:37to wait for the archives to open them.

06:39It's time for the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, to ask the archives to now open all of the

06:46remaining records in Sir John Kerr's papers so that all Australians can have the full story

06:51of the dismissal of the Whitlam government.

06:52We know how very important archival access is to history and it's time we had a complete

06:57history of the dismissal of the Whitlam government.

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