Myths of the palace plot to sack Whitlam debunked

The release of the Kerr Palace letters this week, which promised to reveal evidence of interference from Buckingham Palace in the dismissal of Gough Whitlam, proved the very opposite, writes Anne Twomey.

Gough Whitlam on the steps of Parliament House in Canberra after his dismissal in 1975. Fairfax

Anne TwomeyConstitutional expert

Jul 16, 2020 – 12.53pm

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When you don’t know the precedents, everything appears to be unprecedented. More surprising for me than anything in the letters between Sir John Kerr and Buckingham Palace was how a lack of familiarity with such material caused people to turn standard utterances into something extraordinary and conspiratorial.

It shows how we all see things differently through the prism of our own experience.