Australia has suffered a “national humiliation” according to Monash University professor Jenny Hocking. This is because of the continued cover-up of British queen Windsor’s involvement in the 1975 dismissal of the government of Gough Whitlam by former governor-general John Kerr. The governor-general is the representative of the queen in Australia,
Professor Hocking has led the court battle to win release of letters between Windsor and Kerr prior to the dismissal of prime minister Whitlam. She made the comment after a federal court ruled that the correspondence should continue to be treated as personal rather than public.
Despite being held in the Australian national archives the court ruling means that the letters cannot be made public before 2027. Even then Windsor’s private secretary will be able to issue a veto.
A reader’s comment on the Web site of The Australian newspaper summed up the humiliation thus: “How can this be right? A dear old dotty thing based in London can stop Australians looking at archive material from 46 years ago”.
Professor Hocking said that Kerr “was writing to the queen regularly, sometimes four or five times a day, almost obsessively telling her details about his conversations with the prime minister Gough Whitlam. All of this secret from the prime minister … and also discussing the possibility that he might need to or decide to dismiss the prime minister.”
She added that “It’s more than 40 years since the dismissal of the Whitlam government and its extraordinary that we’re still waiting to see absolutely vital information about that dismissal of an elected government”.
Once again a need to keep the people in the dark about the Windsor family’s ability to corrupt democracy has won. The democratic right of the people to know what the people in power are doing or have done has been overridden by feudal privilege.