By Jenny Hocking
And it is not just Gough Whitlam’s ASIO file that has been “culled” by the National Archives of Australia. The relevant Government House Guest Books at the time of the Dismissal have disappeared and the entire archive of Kerr’s prominent supporters, including Lord Mountbatten, was accidentally burnt in the Yarralumla incinerator.
I was made sharply aware of the conceptual and physical fragility of archives as historical representation 20 years ago through a chance encounter, or more precisely a lost encounter, with Gough Whitlam’s Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) file. I had stumbled onto Whitlam’s security file quite unexpectedly through a reference to it in another, unrelated, file. Clearly, any file maintained by the domestic security service on Gough Whitlam would be a critically important historical record in itself, and even more so given the Whitlam government’s fractious relationship with the security services and the well-known surveillance excesses of ASIO and the state Special Branches at that time.
To find evidence of the existence of an ASIO file on Whitlam that I had never expected was a rare moment of archival anticipation. That anticipation was dashed four months later when the Archives informed me that, having maintained this security file for nearly 40 years, it had been destroyed in a routine culling, just weeks before I requested it. Although Archives assured me that, according to ASIO’s records, the now destroyed file “contained material of a vetting nature only”, this is now impossible to verify. A request for access to the ASIO documents referred to in this response and on which this claim about the nature of the file was based, went unanswered.
As a former Prime Minister, Whitlam was a recognised “Commonwealth Person”, for the purposes of the Archives management systems. These are “individuals who have had a close association with the Commonwealth” and whose records are therefore expressly collected and preserved for history. Notwithstanding that acknowledged significance, the Archives had issued an authorisation for ASIO to destroy Whitlam’s security file within weeks of my request to view it. It brings to mind Blouin’s arch observation that “a historian working in state archives, particularly on topics related to the recent past, is constantly engaged in some way in a struggle with the politics of state-protected knowledge”.
The misplaced destruction of Whitlam’s security file compounds the unsettled history of the dismissal by allowing the circulation of competing speculations over its coincident erasure: was this a vetting file as ASIO stated, did the file identify agents or surveillance methods, would its release have led to files on other members of the Whitlam government? This latter is no idle speculation. ASIO was already monitoring deputy Prime Minister Dr Jim Cairns, whose ASIO “dossier” was sensationally leaked to The Bulletin in 1974, causing immense damage to the Whitlam government and to Cairns personally. The possibility of security files on other ministers and even on Whitlam himself is only stirred by the deliberate destruction of ASIO’s vetting file. In the absence of the file itself an already clouded history becomes further compromised.
It was this episode that introduced me to the force of what Elkins terms “archival scepticism” in archive-based research. Whatever the reason for its apparent destruction, the Archives had successfully removed Whitlam’s ASIO file from public view and therefore from the consideration of history. In doing so it had played an important role in the construction of the dismissal in history, in which a security file on Gough Whitlam does not and cannot now feature. This underscores precisely, if there were any doubt about this, that archives are not neutral replicators of documented history, but politicised re-creators of it.
The Lost Archive: Government House Guest Books
In 2010, I first requested access to the Government House guest books held by the Archives, which provide the details of visits and visitors to “their Excellencies” at Yarralumla. The catalogue lists a total of twenty-nine files, enumerated consecutively, constituting visitor books from May 1953 to February 1996. The guest books appear regularly from July 1961 until July 1974, before stopping altogether until December 1982.
The Archives insisted that the guest books for this period had never been transferred from Government House and they now appeared lost since neither institution claimed to hold them. What is puzzling in this regard is that Archives’ enumeration system, which numbers each file consecutively, has two consecutive numbers assigned yet not included in the catalogue corresponding to the missing dates, suggesting two missing files given identification numbers by the Archives which are no longer listed. The only other gap in these books, for a much shorter period between 1960 and 1961, has no such missing consecutive numbers in the catalogue which might accommodate a lost file.
In June 2023, the Archives submitted a “s40 access application” to Government House requesting the delivery of the Government House guest books for 1974–75. Government House replied that “it does not hold any guest books, visitor books, guest registers or visitor registers from 1975 as defined by the Archives Act 1983”. It should be noted that Government House is required under the Act to place the guest books as Commonwealth records in the Archives, which it had done for the previous decade and which it was the responsibility of the official secretary to deliver. The guest books for 1975 are now officially lost.
These missing guest books add fuel to the longstanding speculation that security and defence officials, notably the Chief Defence Scientist Dr John Farrands as the recognised authority on Pine Gap and the Joint Facilities, had briefed Kerr in the week before the dismissal about mounting security and defence concerns over Whitlam’s exposure of CIA agents working at Pine Gap, and his planned Prime Ministerial statement on this in the House of Representatives on the afternoon of 11 November 1975. This claim, driven largely by journalist Brian Toohey, that Farrands provided a briefing for Kerr was emphatically denied by Farrands and the Head of Defence, Sir Arthur Tange. Farrands threatened to sue Toohey and The National Times, although the Vice-regal Notices show that he had met Kerr on 28 October 1975, not the week before the dismissal.
The Burnt Archive: Sir John Kerr’s Prominent Supporters
In 1978, soon after Kerr left office, a cache of letters “of outstanding value” to Kerr was accidentally reduced to ashes in the Yarralumla incinerator. The usually punctilious official secretary, David Smith, wrote to Kerr expressing his dismay at having so carelessly left this box of significant letters unattended in the photocopying room, from where an errant cleaner, according to Smith, had inadvertently thrown the entire contents into the incinerator.
Kerr had sought these congratulatory letters for use in his forthcoming autobiography Matters for Judgement. Among his correspondents was the Queen’s second cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Prince Philip’s uncle and King Charles III’s great mentor; the former Governor-General and distant royal relation, Viscount De L’Isle; and other prominent individuals supporting Kerr’s dismissal of Whitlam. These names alone indicate that these burnt letters were as important to history as they were to Kerr. Were it not for this secondary file of correspondence between Smith and Kerr detailing the saga of the “burnt letters”, the existence and apparent inflammatory end of Kerr’s correspondence with his minor aristocratic supporters would never have come to light. The letters themselves now never will.
Philip Ziegler’s authorised biography of Mountbatten, however, gives just a glimpse of this story. Ziegler recounts that Mountbatten wrote to Kerr days after the dismissal, congratulating him on his “courageous and correct action” in dismissing Whitlam. It was a remarkably partisan royal intercession, and Mountbatten was not alone among Kerr’s royal supporters. We now know, thanks to letters released in 2020 following the High Court’s decision in my legal action, that King Charles also fully supported Kerr’s actions. Charles’s letter to Kerr, written in starkly similar terms to Mountbatten’s weeks after the dismissal, leaves no doubt of Charles’s support for Kerr; “What you did […] was right and the courageous thing to do.”
As Kerr later wrote to the South Australian lieutenant-governor, Sir Walter Crocker, “I never had any doubt as to what the Palace’s attitude was on this important point.”
* * * * *
These are extracts from Professor Jenny Hocking’s essay ‘Critical Archival Encounters and the Evolving Historiography of the Dismissal of the Whitlam Government’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 11 April 2024.
Open access publishing facilitated by Monash University, as part of the Wiley – Monash University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.
This article was originally published on Pearls and Irritations and has been republished with permission.
Also by Jenny Hocking: Critical Archival Encounters and the Evolving Historiography of the Dismissal of the Whitlam Government (Part 1)
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 X @palaceletters.
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A gold-embossed Koala Stamp to you Jenny for your unstinting efforts in this enterprise.
Your reference to “the circulation of competing speculations” could properly be extended to the entire history of the Dismissal, tho’ clearly applying to the ‘activities’ of the Archives.
I am in no doubt that your overall conclusion is correct: “that archives are not neutral replicators of documented history, but politicised re-creators of it.”.
I am equally in no doubt of the active involvement of Australian Security/Intel/Defence and other officials in what amounted to a coup against the Whitlam Government. In this sense it is instructive to note the huge impact played by the imbroglio over Pine Gap – especially regarding the perceived necessity to ‘protect’ American interests.
As part of the continuing coverup and obfuscation of various roles played in the Dismissal by high officials, the duplicity of Archives then Director became apparent to me when following the High Court order in May, 2020 to release the ‘Palace Letters’, instead of doing so immediately the Director said it would take about 90 days, and even then some letters or other documents might remain classified.
Once released however it became clear who did what and who did not. John Menadue, editor of Pearls & Irritations noted:
“The evidence in the Palace Letters is quite clear. The Queen, [her private secretary] and John Kerr collaborated in deceiving the Australian Prime Minister. They knowingly engineered his Dismissal. What a disgraceful performance by them all. No wonder the Queen went to great lengths to keep her role secret.”
The letters were duly ‘released’ in July, 2020 but not directly or immediately to the principal Applicant in the High Court action – Professor Hocking, the logical recipient. Instead we had the charade of the Archives Director referring to several only of the 200 plus letters and saying essentially ‘nothing to see here, the Queen played no part in the dismissal of the Whitlam Government’. That welcome news was duly echoed in the UK press. That was the ‘establishment’ view.
Unfortunately for ‘the establishment’ the evidence proved otherwise.
Does not say much for the Executive level of Government anywhere since then, does it.
The CIA and MI5 were involved in this, too. The US and what was left of Great Britain post WW2 had interests there. The CIA, especially. Whitlam was talking about not renewing the lease on Pine Gap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_CIA_involvement_in_the_Whitlam_dismissal
Sorry for for nitpicking, but shouldn’t that be Professor Emerita?
Archival shenanigans were prophesied by St George and fuel the double quadruple thought and speech which so typifies the current,terminal, stage of our species ‘evolution’.
Is it a case of a public servant losing or shredding something by mistake, or a convenient way to hide treason or some illegal activity?
These days it’s a case of digital book-burning where Google distorts algo searches. What should be a straight forward exercise of locating facts that go against their agenda is near impossible.
Then there is the recent overhall of the Wayback Machine website. Want to find some info that points out deep structural corruption in the medical system for example, forget it.
” … accidentally burnt … ”
Just how fucking gullible do they think we are?
The fear having a government which was not of the ‘born to rule’ mob was palpable.
Gough was a huge security risk. The only true bit of that statement was that he was huge.
Underlying this is the massive problem of preserving and maintaining records from any level. Funding is not generously provided for the proper storage and classification of fragile items. Paper deteriorates. Computer discs become unreadable with changing technologies – is anybody out there able to read a 4 and a half inch floppy? Material stored on magnetic tape is getting harder to read as they also deteriorate.
As time passes, items get culled simply for space reasons, and/or lost within filing systems. I am beginning to think that the archaeological dig system of keeping papers in a cardboard box, with the most recent uppermost may yet become the most reliable one.
I am sorry to hear that the Wayback Machine has also been interfered with. I had hoped that the websites it preserved were safe.
Informative article and ongoing great work by Jenny Hocking.
I’m thoroughly unsurprised by the revelations that officialdom’s response was ‘Nothing to see here.’ It’s as juvenile and believable as ‘The dog ate my homework.’
Having done much in-depth forensic investigation of govt projects gone awry, I can attest that, depending on the value and gravity of the circumstance, the almost endless variety of executive govt deceptions and obfuscations and extreme / expensive lengths they will go to (using treasury funds) to cover their arses – their incompetence, breach of regulation, misrepresentations, concealment, fraud, wanton attack on claimants and their investigators, and protection of initiating pork-barrelers and corruptors. They use their collective hierarchical might, endlessly reconstructed committees and battalions of ‘independent’ experts and gleeful lawyers along with entanglements of linguistic contortions to build their walls and parapets.
It’s what all ‘players’ in politics and the ‘system’ of govt understand about the exercise of power at the extremities. Ethics, honesty, minds, documents and truth go missing.
Americans call it the ‘deep state’. But I’ve got news for them, it’s now also (probably more so) mega-corporations (particularly jurisdiction jumping multi-nationals). And dangerously so, ‘Big Tech’, who by now most govts are beholden to.
Throughout history this type of behavior has always been part of the m.o. And is always at the root of wars and regime collapse. That ordinary folk have come through a period of being successfully conned that everything is good and paradise nears, under pressures such as economic failures, climate change and pandemics, faith becomes febrile and considering and resolving complexities can give way to dwelling in absolute binaries. Some retreat to puritanical moral conformism, and some pump up like attack dogs. Constructive effort can go down the gurgler along with tolerance and respect.
With levers being pulled left, right and centre, What path will Oz chose this year?