The release of the Palace Papers last year was meant to settle one of the enduring questions of the 1975 dismissal: was there a smoking gun implicating Buckingham Palace and the Queen in the decision of governor-general Sir John Kerr to sack the Whitlam government?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it did no such thing. The ardent republicans and Whitlam supporters saw nods and winks from the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Martin Charteris, to Kerr. The monarchists and Coalition supporters were insistent it was all Kerr’s doing.