Buckingham Palace, 31 December 1974
Secret
When Mr Whitlam had luncheon with The Queen on 20th December, as was expected, he raised with Her Majesty the question of an Australian system of Honours.
It had been arranged that I should meet Mr Whitlam on Boxing Day to tie up any loose ends, but unfortunately this meeting never took place because Mr Whitlam returned that morning to Australia to deal with the destruction of Darwin by the cyclone.1
Instead I had a meeting with Mr G Yeend and agreed to send him a letter summarising The Queen’s views on the Honours proposal.2 I enclose a copy of this letter. I discussed its terms with John Curle before obtaining The Queen’s approval to it.
I understand that apart from the discussion on the new system of Honours, Mr Whitlam reverted, with The Queen, to the question of the appointment of State Governors. Nothing new came out of this conversation.
The essence of the problem is, of course, this: if the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary no longer ‘advises’ The Queen on their appointment, what Minister does? Only Ministers can advise Her Majesty and Mr Harders was quite correct in saying at No 10 Downing Street on 20th December, that the Governor-General had no power to make recommendations without Ministerial advice.3
As things stand at the moment, State Premiers have no rights to advise The Queen on anything and this is a satisfactory state of affairs which I think it would be dangerous to alter.
1 Cyclone Tracy struck Darwin on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 1974, killing seventy-one people, destroying seventy per cent of the city’s buildings and eighty per cent of homes, and leaving 20,000 out of a population of 49,000 homeless.
2 See Document 498.
3 See Document 497.
[UKNA: FCO 24/1934]