About the Palace Letters Case

On 11 November 1975 the Governor General, Sir John Kerr, sacked the democratically elected Prime Minister of Australia, Gough Whitlam. Yet remarkably, more than four decades later, critical historical documents about the dismissal remain hidden from us, under the embargo of the Queen. The secret ‘Palace letters’, between the Governor General and the Queen regarding the dismissal, are held in the National Archives of Australia in Canberra and closed to the Australian public. We cannot see the letters until the Queen tells us we can.

In December 2016, Professor Jenny Hocking initiated a Federal Court action against the National Archives of Australia, seeking the release of these historic ‘Palace letters’. The legal action is supported by a crowd-funding campaign through Chuffed with a legal team working on a pro bono basis led by senior barristers Antony Whitlam QC at trial and Bret Walker SC at the Appeal with Tom Brennan, instructed by Corrs Chambers Westgarth. The Federal Attorney-General has joined the Archives in contesting the case and the government has spent close to a million dollars fighting access to the letters and protecting their continued secrecy. The Palace letters case has gone all the way to the High Court of Australia, and in February 2020 the full bench of the High Court heard the case on appeal, and the decision is currently pending.