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Aprofessor has urged King Charles to apologise to the Australian people after His Majesty appeared to support the dismissal of Gough Whitlam nearly 50 years ago. The 21st Prime Minister of Australia was sacked by governor-general Sir John Kerr, following a string of scandals and economic turbulence in 1975. The move plunged the nation into a constitutional crisis.
Four months after the historical decision, the 27-year-old Prince of Wales expressed sympathy for the outgoing PM.
He wrote: “Please don’t lose heart. What you did last year was right and the courageous thing to do and most Australians seemed to endorse your decision when it came to the point.”
However, nearly 50 years later, an academic has urged the King to apologise for the comments.
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Professor Jenny Hocking, a historian and expert on Whitlam, dubbed the comments “utterly improper” and has called for a proper apology from the Crown.
Speaking to hosts Andrew Lownie and Phil Craig on The Scandal Mongers Podcast this week, she said: “Charles was very much involved because of that critical conversation that he relayed to the Queen about the prospect of a possible dismissal, but also because he wrote a letter which was only released after my legal action in 2020 … which was an astonishing letter, some weeks after the dismissal congratulating Kerr on his actions and saying ‘stay strong’- because Kerr was considering resigning after the uproar of it all.
“He said, ‘What you did was the right and proper thing to do.’ So we have a letter very strongly from our current head of state congratulating or at least encouraging the governor-general in the notion that this was the correct action to take.
“I’ve been calling for our head of state – the recently announced King Charles III – to make an apology to the Australian people for ever engaging with our governor-general in those discussions, and for his lack of political foresight by breaching neutrality in encouraging him subsequently in the way that he did.
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“I think he needs to apologise to us and to acknowledge that that sort of political intervention was utterly improper.”
In 2020, the Palace revealed that the 211 letters between Sir Kerr and the Firm showed that the Queen was not involved in the decision to dismiss the Labor Prime Minister.
Buckingham Palace claimed it warned the governor-general about the move, stating dismissing the PM must only be seen as a last resort.
It said in a statement: “The release of the letters confirms neither Her Majesty nor the Royal Household had any part to play in Kerr’s decision to dismiss Whitlam.”