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Jenny Hocking

Jenny Hocking

Jenny Hocking is emeritus professor at Monash University, Distinguished Whitlam Fellow at the Whitlam Institute at Western Sydney University and award-winning biographer of Gough Whitlam. Her latest book is The Dismissal Dossier: Everything You Were Never Meant to Know about November 1975 – The Palace Connection. Her appeal against the decision of the full Federal Court in the ‘Palace letters’ case was heard by the High Court of Australia on 4 February 2020. You can support the campaign to Release the Palace letters by donating here.

'At Her Majesty’s pleasure: Sir John Kerr and the royal dismissal secrets' by Jenny Hocking

April 2020, no. 420 19 March 2020
'At Her Majesty’s pleasure: Sir John Kerr and the royal dismissal secrets' by Jenny Hocking
Listen to this essay read by the author. The dismissal of the Whitlam government by the governor-general, Sir John Kerr, on 11 November 1975 was one of the most tumultuous and controversial episodes in Australian political history. The government had been elected on 2 December 1972 and returned at the May 1974 double dissolution, with Whitlam becoming the first Labor leader to achieve successiv ... (read more)