What did the Queen know about the Whitlam dismissal?
Shortly after becoming prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull promised he would get to the bottom of one of Australia’s most enduring political mysteries – what did Queen Elizabeth know about the 1975 dismissal of the Whitlam government?
The letters between Buckingham Palace and former governor-general Sir John Kerr are housed in the National Archives of Australia. The letters are deemed "personal", not official correspondence, and will not be released until 2027.
But if Buckingham Palace decides to exercise its power of veto over their release, they may never see the light of day.
Fairfax reports that Malcolm Turnbull does not believe the letters are private but has not revealed if he will write to Buckingham Palace asking for the release of the documents.
Next month, historian Jenny Hocking will challenge the National Archives of Australia in the Federal Court, arguing the letters are important historical documents that should be made public.
Hocking, a research professor with the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University, says the letters are documents exchanged "between people of extraordinary significance, status and power".
She decided to take legal action after being denied access to the letters by the National Archives of Australia and when her freedom of information requests to the Office of the Governor-General were unsuccessful.
"That means people can't access them. It's a very, very important principle about our control over historical records," Professor Hocking explains.
"There's effectively an embargo that's still at the Queen's discretion. This is wrong. It should not be for the Queen to decide when we can know and have access to critical documents in our own history. We all deserve to know the truth of the dismissal and what really happened at that time."
If the letters remain locked away, Australians may never know whether the Queen's representative in Australia warned Her Majesty ahead of time of his consideration of the dismissal.
Professor Hocking believes the Queen knew what might happen to the government before it happened
"[Sir John] was, at times, writing to the palace several times a day in the weeks leading up to the dismissal. He considered himself close to Prince Charles in particular," Hocking says.
"This is Kerr letting key people in key institutions know of his thinking about what he might do … That he's laying out his plan is staggering. He's trying to flag to the palace what might happen to him."
Hocking wants the letters to be made public as it would reveal whether Sir John was, in effect, asking for the Queen's permission to dismiss the Whitlam government, and what the Queen's advisers told him in response.
"I think that's the precise point," Hocking says.
"Whitlam was completely in the dark. I think it's really critical and it does raise serious questions about what we understand our position as a colony to be. This is a quirky pocket of residual control."
Perhaps Australians will never know what exactly happened in the event leading up to what is still the greatest constitutional crisis in Australian political history.