Writer
Jenny Hocking
Jenny Hocking is emeritus professor at Monash University, Distinguished Whitlam Fellow at the Whitlam Institute at Western Sydney University and award-winning biographer of Gough Whitlam. Her latest book is The Palace Letters: The Queen, the governor-general, and the plot to dismiss Gough Whitlam. You can follow Jenny on Twitter @palaceletters.
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JENNY HOCKING. Harold Holt: The legacy is evident, 50 years after his disappearance.
It was a quintessential Australian death. On 17 December 1967, Australia’s 17th prime minister, Harold Edward Holt, waded into the churning surf at Victoria’s Cheviot Beach, defying a swift current and a strong under-tow that left others in his party refusing to enter. Within minutes Holt was swept up and out, “like a leaf … Continue reading »
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JENNY HOCKING. “A Royal Green Light”: The Palace, the Governor-General and the Dismissal of the Whitlam Government
Contrary to the accepted story that the Queen was not involved in the dismissal of the Whitlam Government in 1975, it is now clear that the Palace had a significant role in the process. Those involved, in Australia and in Britain, kept this involvement hidden from the Australian people in a process of collusion, deception Continue reading »
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JENNY HOCKING. ‘Secret “Palace letters” not so secret after all’ and where is Malcolm?
The Federal Court case against the National Archives of Australia, seeking the release of the ‘Palace letters’ which are embargoed by the Queen, concluded in Sydney last week. The case centres on the critical question of whether these letters, between the Queen and the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, at the time of the dismissal of Continue reading »
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JENNY HOCKING. The palace treats Australia as the colonial child not to be trusted with knowledge of its own history
It’s more than 40 years since the dismissal of the Whitlam government, but under instructions from the Queen the secret ‘palace letters’ are still embargoed. Continue reading »
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JENNY HOCKING. Why was Malcolm Fraser Hidden at Yarralumla When Sir John Kerr Dismissed Gough Whitlam?
Revelations from the secret correspondence between the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, and the Queen in the months before the dismissal of the Whitlam government have shed new light on a persistent puzzle. When Kerr dismissed Gough Whitlam at 1pm on 11 November 1975 why was the leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Fraser already there, secreted Continue reading »
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JENNY HOCKING. The Palace Letters Case: ‘A Matter of our National History’
Professor Jenny Hocking writes that the release of the palace letters will now be determined by an Australian Court and according to Australian Law – not by the Queen ‘a foreign monarch’ in the words of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Continue reading »
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JENNY HOCKING. The Palace Letters.
Release ‘the Palace letters’! Why I am taking a Federal Court action against the National Archives to release correspondence between Sir John Kerr and the Queen. When the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, took the unprecedented and divisive action of dismissing the Whitlam government, he claimed to have acted alone, to have ‘made up my mind Continue reading »
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JENNY HOCKING. The Palace letters.
My name is Professor Jenny Hocking, I am a Monash University academic and Gough Whitlam’s biographer. I have launched an historic action against the National Archives of Australia to release the ‘Palace letters’ relating to the dismissal of the Whitlam government, withheld from the Australian people at the behest of the Queen. (See https://chuffed.org/project/release-the-palace-letters for donation Continue reading »
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JENNY HOCKING. Parakeelia and Political Trust
If trust is at the centre of this election campaign, then journalists are looking for it in the strangest places. The 7.30’s Leigh Sales finds it in the ‘knifing’ by both leaders, Bill Shorten and Malcolm Turnbull, of a former Prime Minister or, put more prosaically, that both supported a change of leadership and Continue reading »
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Jenny Hocking. ‘The Governor-General, the Palace and the Dismissal of Gough Whitlam: The Mysterious Case of “the Palace Letters”’
The dismissal of the Whitlam government by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, was marked by secrecy and collusion on a scale that has only recently been uncovered. Its history has been no different. From the outset we were treated to a carefully constructed narrative that masked the Governor-General’s secret collusion with members of the Continue reading »
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Jenny Hocking. The Dismissal Forty Years Later: When Everything Old is New Again
Repost from 10/12/2015 The 40th anniversary last month of the dismissal of the Whitlam government by the Governor General Sir John Kerr met with the predictable flurry of breathlessly delivered revelations and history-making hyperbole. Among the excitable claims of dramatic new ‘never before released’ material we were offered the charred remains of a burnt Liberal Continue reading »
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Jenny Hocking. ‘Why Didn’t They Warn Whitlam?: Where Politics and Ethics Collide’
Repost from 16/11/2015 On the 40th anniversary of the dismissal of the Whitlam Labor government a remarkable thing happened – a Liberal Prime Minister finally acknowledged that the Governor-General Sir John Kerr was wrong. In a stark break with the coalition’s long insistence that Kerr had ‘saved the country’ by stepping in and appointing Malcolm Continue reading »
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Jenny Hocking. The Dismissal in History
Repost from 10/11/2015 This week marks the 40th anniversary of one of the most divisive and corrosive episodes in our history, the dismissal of Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister by the Governor General, Sir John Kerr. Kerr’s action in removing the twice-elected Whitlam government and appointing the leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Fraser, Prime Minister Continue reading »