Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank my friend the member for Bruce for this particular motion but I have to say I disagree with it. It underscores Labor's enduring obsession with Sir John Kerr, an obsession that never really died. That is really what is at the heart of the motion today. It is understandable that there is significant public interest in these documents. These documents will be released at some point in the future, but when they are released is quite properly a matter for Her Majesty the Queen and the Governor-General. I find it ironic that we get this motion from a political party that established special legislation in the case of the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the conduct of a judge. That was the Murphy papers. It was an inquiry relating to whether former High Court Justice Lionel Murphy had indeed met the test under section 72 of the Constitution that proved misbehaviour. That particular set of documents was sealed for 30 years and has only just been released. The full set of those documents is still not in the hands of the public. Instead, we have a motion like this one, which is looking at documents which in the ordinary course of events will eventually be released. But now is not necessarily the time. As the member for Bruce said, this matter is the subject of Federal Court proceedings at the moment. I think it is premature of the House to have this motion at a time when those proceedings are still pending.

One of the things with the Labor Party's Kerr obsession is that they hounded him from office, they refused to attend functions with him while he was there, they encouraged protesters to 'maintain their rage' against him, they hounded him—and now there is this, beyond the grave. When does the obsession stop? The truth is that one of the biggest electoral defeats for the Labor Party occurred after the 1975 dismissal. The Australian people had their say. Sir John Kerr's duty in that election was to resolve a political and constitutional crisis by letting Australian have their say.

I think there is an assumption on the other side of the House that statements in these papers may well vindicate a view that Sir John Kerr acted improperly. I am not sure that it will. Opposition members should not assume that. It is clear from Sir John Kerr's unpublished book The Triumph of the Constitution that he himself wanted his correspondence to eventually be released. My successor as Executive Director of the Menzies Research Centre, Professor Don Markwell, who is an expert in this area, wrote in his recent book TheConstitutional Conventions and the Headship of State: Australian Experience 2016, on page 146 in reference to The Triumph of the Constitution:

It is clear that Sir John Kerr wished the correspondence with Buckingham Palace made public at an appropriate time ... The clear implication of what he writes is that this will show that version of events which he record in—

his book—

Matters for Judgement was what he recorded at the time of events in reports to the Queen.

So the eventual publication of this correspondence might not actually give members opposite what they are looking for.

But there is a broader principle here, which is the principle that correspondence between the sovereign and the Governor-General is of such a high level that it would deal with the most important, most secret matters, of state, and you want to have a free and frank exchange between the sovereign and her representative here in order that both her representative can get counsel and the sovereign can be fully informed about Australian matters. I do not have any doubt that what the Queen, or the Queen's Private Secretary, wrote at the time, on 17 November 1975, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives remains true, and that is:

As we understand the situation here, the Australian Constitution firmly places the prerogative powers of the Crown in the hands of the Governor General as the representative of the Queen of Australia. The only person competent to commission an Australian Prime Minister is the Governor-General, and the Queen has no part in the decisions which the Governor-General must take in accordance with the Constitution. Her Majesty, as Queen of Australia, is watching events in Canberra with close interest and attention, but it would not be proper for her to intervene in person in matters which are so clearly placed within the jurisdiction of the Governor-General by the Constitution Act.

We have a fairly clear statement that the Queen remained out of these matters, that these were always matters for her Australian representative to deal with, and that is exactly what occurred here.

One of the other great myths about 1975 is that the blocking of supply by the Fraser opposition was somehow completely out of whack with what had occurred previously in the Australian parliament. There were 170 occasions during the life of the Gorton government where the Labor opposition in the Senate sought to block supply. Mr Whitlam and Senator Murphy, as he then was, both were architects of those occasions. I oppose the motion and hope it is defeated.

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