was finally prised open last week to reveal more correspondence between Australian governors-general and Buckingham Palace.
These assessments, of course, all came from the Australian side. The responses from Buckingham Palace were largely anodyne and followed the established practice of providing support and heaping praise upon the wisdom of the governor-general, as was also evident inThe palace welcomed these epistles of “complete freedom and frankness” about political affairs in Australia and told Hasluck to encourage Kerr to write with the same freedom and detail.
One notable aspect of the letters is that the governors-general seemed to feel that they had an obligation to protect the ongoing role and representation of the Queen in Australia. Casey intervened by pressuring the Victorian government to appeal. It declined to do so, concluding that an appeal to the Supreme Court would fail. Casey told the palace that he had contacted the federal attorney-general to see whether a case could be initiated by the Commonwealth under the Crimes Act.
Casey & Hasluck sat up at Yarralumla & bitched that they should be running the country... Never saw that coming.