The Australian newspaper reports that “Government House” and the National Archives of Australia made an agreement in 1991, approved by our Head of State Queen Elizabeth II, that provided for the letters of Governors-General Casey, Hasluck, Kerr, Cowen and Stephen to be released after 50 years unless vetoed by either side’s officials. The newspaper’s request for the vice-regal letters of G-G Richard Casey from 1965-69, eligible for release on 1 May 2019, was refused. The agreement has seemingly been revised and the Palace is henceforth to have sole veto on release over a longer timeframe, ie five years after the Queen dies. This merely adds to lack of transparency over our governance where our Head of State – at its apex – is concerned. See also WfaAR New Updates (16 August 2019 and previous) about Professor Jenny Hocking’s lengthy and frustrated attempts to obtain the letters between G-G John Kerr and the Palace over the 1975 sacking of the elected Australian Government. The High Court will hear Hocking’s appeal in February 2020. [“Buckingham Palace backtracks on G-G letters deal with National Archives” by Troy Bramston, The Australian online, 18 January 2020]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Australian newspaper reports that “Government House” and the National Archives of Australia made an agreement in 1991, approved by our Head of State Queen Elizabeth II, that provided for the letters of Governors-General Casey, Hasluck, Kerr, Cowen and Stephen to be released after…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5","wpcat-5-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":614,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions\/614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}