Buckingham Palace, 23 January 1974
Confidential
As you know, The Queen has been advised by both Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom and her Australian Ministers not to refer the petitions from the States of Queensland and Tasmania about the sea-bed adjacent to their respective State, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.1
Her Majesty was able to accept the advice in each case without difficulty because it was similar. Had the advice been dissimilar, The Queen would have been placed in an extremely difficult constitutional position.
I am writing to you now because I wonder whether we ought not to try to identify other issues in which the same sort of situation might arise, perhaps with dissimilar advice being given, and see if anything can be done to avoid them.
As a start, is there anything that I can usefully say to Mr Whitlam when I meet him in Australia in February?
I am sending a copy of this letter to Tom Bridges.
1 See Documents 469–71.
[UKNA: FCO 24/1929]