Queen Elizabeth’s royal tours to Australia, with Paul Keating, Robert Menzies

The Queen had many interactions with Australian leaders on her royal tours and at Buckingham Palace. See the pictures.

The Queen’s relationship with Australia’s governments and prime ministers over the past six decades was, broadly, uncomplicated and uncontroversial – with the single exception of the time surrounding the governor-general’s dismissal of Gough Whitlam in 1975.

Robert Menzies was in power when the Queen took the throne in 1952, and he led Australia for the first 14 years of her reign. He was the first of 14 Australian prime ministers to be appointed during her reign (Kevin Rudd served twice), and by all accounts Menzies remained one of her favourites.

Her former press secretary Dickie Arbiter said the Queen did not have the same close ties with the Australian prime ministers as she did with the English ones, who she saw every week and spoke to routinely. However, he said Menzies was one of those whom she was closest to. “Robert Menzies, like Winston Churchill, was her first prime minister so, yes, she had a good relationship with Menzies,’’ he said.

Queen Elizabeth II shaking hands with former prime minister Sir Robert Menzies in wheelchair at the MCG in Melbourne in 1977, during her Australian visit. Picture: News Corp.

“But remember, where a UK prime minister will meet weekly with Her Majesty to brief her on government and political events, there has never been that closeness with Australian prime ministers, as briefings tended to be written rather than in person.

“The obvious exception has been when she was in Australia.’’

Queen Elizabeth II signs the visitor's book during her visit in 1992 in Canberra as Paul Keating looks on. Picture: AFP

Queen Elizabeth II meets Julia Gillard (left), after flying into Canberra Airport. Picture: Getty

On the Queen’s second visit, in 1963, Menzies was so impressed that her told her: “All I ask you to remember in this country of yours is that every man, woman and child who even sees you with a passing glimpse will remember it with joy … in the words of the old 17th century poet, who wrote those famous words, ‘I did but see her passing by and yet I love her till I die’.”

Prime Minister Whitlam and his wife Margaret greet Queen Elizabeth II at Fairbairn airport in Canberra.

In 1975, Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam was dismissed by the Queen’s representative in Australia, the then governor-general Sir John Kerr, after Malcolm Fraser’s opposition refused to guarantee supply.

Sir John Kerr, the Governor-General of Australia, escorts Queen Elizabeth II to her aircraft at Perth Airport, following her Jubilee Tour of the country in 1977. Picture: Central Press

The powers used to dismiss Whitlam have never been invoked since, and there remains enormous controversy and anger over the decision. However, the Queen remained distant from the controversy, with her private secretary Sir Martin Charteris later writing that the Australian Constitution placed the powers into the hands of the governor-general, and the Queen had “no part’’ in the decision.

Sir Martin Charteris, the Queen's private secretary during Australia's constitutional crisis.

It emerged years later that Kerr had been secretly corresponding with the royal family over the growing constitutional crisis but the British government of the day went to great lengths to keep itself and the Queen out of the process.

Queen Elizabeth II accompanied by John Howard in the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne, 2006. Picture: AFP

Queen Elizabeth II shakes hands with Kevin Rudd during a private audience at Buckingham Palace on April 1, 2009. Picture: AFP

Queen Elizabeth II greets Malcolm Turnbull during a drinks reception before The Queen's Dinner during The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), at Buckingham Palace in London on April 19, 2018. Picture: AFP

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II receives Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison during an audience in the Oak Room at Windsor Castle, Berkshire on June 15, 2021. Picture: AFP

In more recent times, a decision to bestow an Australian knighthood on the Queen’s husband, Prince Philip, triggered an outcry that proved fatal to the leadership of prime minister Tony Abbott, and he was chopped down by Malcolm Turnbull nine months later.

The knighthood, announced on Australia Day in 2015, was considered a joke in Australia.

She also later met Scott Morrison while he was Australia’s leader.

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