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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

King Charles III is now Australia’s Head of State.

As with all members of the Royal Family, Charles’ opinions on controversial subjects like politics are carefully protected…. But we do have some clues, through hard won freedom of information cases.

How much do we know about what Charles intends to do with the throne? What does he believe in? And how will that affect Australia?

Today, historian and author of The Palace Letters, Jenny Hocking, on Charles and maintaining the Monarchy’s image.

It's Monday, September 19.

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RUBY:

So, Jenny, we now have a new king, King Charles III. He's obviously taken the throne after the death of his mother, Elizabeth. Let's talk a little bit about who Charles is, he's in his seventies now, he's lived in the public eye for his entire life. So tell me a bit about what we know of, of who he is.

JENNY:

Well, obviously, King Charles is a far more publicly known monarch than the Queen was. I think there's a lot of discussion about him in terms of the contrast with his mother, and that's understandable given her longevity, both personally and, of course, on the throne for 70 years. So, an extraordinary period. But, you know, the Queen was remarkably closed, very structured in what was presented for her to do on a daily basis. And even though so many people have said how bereft they are at her death, they also say, and yet, we didn't really know her, we felt we knew her.

And I think that's a very interesting reflection on her public image, which was very much a curated image.

Charles, on the other hand, has been a far less successfully curated image as a monarch in waiting.

Archival tape – Charles:

“I'm amazed that she's been brave enough to take me on.”

Archival tape – Interviewer:

“And I suppose in love?”

Archival tape – Diana:

“Of course.”

Archival tape – Charles:

“Whatever ‘in love’ means.”

Archival tape – Interviewer:

“Well it obviously means—”

Archival tape – Charles:

“You can put your own interpretation of…”

Archival tape – Interviewer:

“Obviously means two very happy people.”

Archival tape – Charles:

“Yes.”

Archival tape – Diana:

“Well as you can see…”

Archival tape – Interviewer:

“Well from us, congratulations.”

JENNY:

Not least of which is the very messy breakdown of his marriage, the subsequent death of Diana, and what appeared to be a troubled, if not dysfunctional relationship within the family.

And, you know, that in turn reflects the complexity of royalty as both a family and a monarchical institution. So you have these very different sort of intersections that I think are likely to lead to some difficulties for Charles as King.

Archival tape – Charles:

“The difficulty is how do you bring hope and some sort of inspiration to people who so often living in the sort of conditions and circumstances where there appears to be no, no hope at all.”

JENNY:

So there’s vast differences between them and probably the major one that I think will have a real impact potentially here. And certainly on the way in which Charles is received here, is his very well-known tendency to engage in the political space that really monarchs and monarchs-to-be should not be engaging in.

Archival tape – Charles:

“It's after all one of my rare opportunities to stir things up, to throw a proverbial royal brick through the inviting plate glass of pompous, professional pride, and to jump feet first into the kind of spaghetti bolognese of red tape which clogs this country from one end to the other.”

RUBY:

Okay, well, let's talk a bit about that then. What has Charles said or done in the past that maybe overstepped that line, that could be considered to be political, too political?

JENNY:

Well, in terms of his engagements in the UK, they've been very much around matters of the environment, and architecture. He's got very definite views on architecture and he hasn’t been backward in bringing those views forward.

I think the worst example of that was his description of the award-winning entry into a redesign of a section of the National Gallery in London.

Archival tape – Charles:

“What is proposed seems to me like a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved, elegant friend.”

JENNY:

And his description of it was that it was a ‘monstrous carbuncle’ and promptly that award and that commission was dropped.

Archival tape – Reporter:

“The Prince's onslaught on the carbuncles of modern architecture has brought him into bitter conflict with the new establishment, which denounces him as nostalgic and ignorant…”

JENNY:

And a rather dull design of Charles' favour was then instated.

Archival tape – Charles:

“I know that, the great sort of charge that gets levelled against me, you know, is that I’ve spoiled so many people's, you know, careers and jobs. It’s not true, I never mentioned any of them…”

JENNY:

And it led to a great conservatism in architecture that I think is really very sad on the one hand, but also very troubling in terms of the power of the Prince's intervention and what's been called the ‘meddling role’ that he's played.

And the second one, which is more directly engaged with government, was what's been called the ‘spider letters.’

Archival tape – Reporter:

“Well let’s move to the UK now and after a decade-long secrecy battle, letters that Prince Charles wrote to government ministers in 2004 and 2005 have now been released.”

Archival tape – Reporter:

“That’s right these are the so-called ‘black spider memos’ they were released yesterday, as you said, after this ten-year legal battle, a legal battle that cost taxpayers £400,000.”

JENNY:

And it's absolutely staggering to see, to what extent Charles had been lobbying, and they are recognised as advocacy letters, as lobbying letters, for particular policies—very precise political policy arena. So a very party-political intervention.

RUBY:

Right and so what did these letters reveal, Jenny? What types of issues was Charles lobbying politicians on?

JENNY:

They were around his favourite elements. One of them was regarding an EU potential control over the use of alternative medicines and pesticides. But one in particular, that a lot of notice was taken of, was his dismay at the prospect of the Blair government banning fox hunting. And Charles, and really all members of the aristocracy, are great fans of the fox hunt, which is largely seen as an extremely cruel and outmoded sport, if you'd like to call it that. And he described it as a ‘romantic pursuit,’ and there was a lot of criticism when it became clear just how engaged he had become, not just with government, he regularly engages with government as monarchs do, but in secret lobbying for very particular policy positions.

So that caused a great deal of concern, and it's interesting that it took ten years of challenges for the FOI decisions of the lower courts to be recognised finally in the UK. At which point, after those letters were released, the FOI Act was promptly changed to remove any possibility of royal correspondence coming to light.

RUBY:

And all of this happened on Charles’ own turf, I suppose—in the UK. But what about Australia? Because you took the National Archives to court to obtain correspondence between the Governor-General and the Palace during the 1975 dismissal of the then-Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, so can you tell me a bit about that? Did Charles’ name come up at all during that time?

JENNY:

So, we similarly faced an argument from the archives that royal correspondence was secret, that it had to be kept secret under a convention of royal secrecy, as it was called, and that these were private communications, which is a very common description of anything that is wanted to be kept under wraps by the Royals.

But what we found once we succeeded in those letters were released of course, was that the Queen had discussed the prospective dismissal of the Whitlam government with Sir John Kerr in the months leading up to the dismissal, that it was in fact Prince Charles who had first been aware that Kerr was considering dismissing the government after a conversation Charles had with Kerr directly, and that he passed that on to the Palace and to the Queen. And a series of discussions then ensued about whether he had the reserve powers to do so, about whether it would damage the Monarchy in the UK should he do so.

All of it secret from the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, all of it particularly leading up to the advice that he had the power to dismiss the government, quite against the advice of the Prime Minister and absolutely against the advice of the Australian Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General, which Kerr received that week.

So it is a really quite shocking set of revelations in the letters about just how involved the Palace was in Kerr’s considerations and his deliberation.

So there are several instances when we strip back the secrecy, and it's very difficult to strip back that secrecy, but once we do, we see a far more clouded and complex and in many ways worrying set of engagements in the political space than we're led to believe publicly.

RUBY:

We'll be back after this.

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RUBY:

Jenny, we’ve been talking about the Whitlam dismissal, and what the Palace knew or didn’t know about the Governor-General John Kerr’s decision to sack Whitlam. How do you think that we should be thinking about that era now, as Charles ascends to the throne?

JENNY:

Well, what we were always told about the dismissal was that the Palace was not involved in any way in Kerr’s decision. Now, of course, that's now simply untenable. Of course, it was very much involved in Kerr’s decision because both Prince Charles and the Queen, through her private secretary, Sir Martin Chartreuse, discussed through these letters, the Palace Letters, the prospect of the dismissal of the government from as early as September 1975, when it was first raised with Prince Charles from Sir John Kerr. And that's two months before the dismissal itself actually took place. So far from non-involvement, there's a series of very intense political communications that flow between them.

And, you know, we need to acknowledge that, this is now part of our history. It should have been part of our history many decades ago, but we were unaware of it. So, that's going to be critical, I think, to how we understand and work with King Charles with that legacy. But more than that, in the months following the dismissal, Charles wrote a very strongly worded letter to Kerr, urging him not to resign, as Kerr was threatening to do at the time, which the Palace was horrified at the prospect that the Governor-General might resign immediately after the dismissal because it would only further the upheaval that had already been caused by the dismissal and they urged him to stay in office. And Charles said to him that he, effectively a letter of support for Kerr's actions in dismissing the Whitlam government, and described it as the right and courageous thing to do, which is an extraordinary comment from the person who became the Prince of Wales and who is now, of course, has become our king.

RUBY:

And it's interesting, isn't it, to consider all of this in the context of the constitutional requirement of the Monarchy to be impartial. So could you just talk me through that principle, the idea that the Monarchy is politically neutral?

JENNY:

Well, the notion of political neutrality and not getting engaged in the political space is absolutely fundamental. It is the essential and in many respects, the defining feature of a constitutional monarchy. And in fact, if you look at the royal website, the first thing that comes up under the section of politics and government is the statement that as a constitutional monarch, in a constitutional monarchy, the Queen, or the King as it will now say, is always and remains politically neutral. They do not get involved in the political space. They do not make political comment. Now, that's the public statement, but it's critical because we have really two elements that are totally conflicting within a constitutional monarchical setup.

And that is, we have on the one hand, really at the apex of this, we have a head of state and a monarch that is determined by a dynastic inherited title. We have no say in that. There is no mandate, no electoral element. You know, nothing showed that up more clearly than the fact that we all went to bed one night with the Queen as our monarch woke up the next morning with King Charles III, because that is an automatic following through by birthright. Now for that to sit comfortably and not at odds with a democratic structure through the parliament, where we elect our representatives of course, they're accountable to us the people through the parliament, and that is our system of government as we understand it within the governance structure. To make those two things work and not sit in contradiction with each other, that's the essential political neutrality of the crown. They leave that space for politics to our elected representatives. That's what we have members of government for. That's what we have members of parliament for. And they retain not necessarily a solely ceremonial role, they have every right to consult, to warn, to advise the government of the day through the Governor-General in Australia. However, becoming involved in political decision making is a different matter altogether and that political neutrality is the linchpin of a constitutional monarchy. Once we start to break that down, it undermines the capacity of the King to work with whatever government is in office, to be equal across all political persuasions, and to have the universal respect that is absolutely essential for the Monarchy to survive.

RUBY:

Okay so given the reality of how this has played out in the past, everything that we've just been speaking about, as well as Charles' known political tendencies and also taking into consideration that we do live in an increasingly politicised world, do you think that it is possible for the Monarchy to continue to be able to make claims of neutrality?

JENNY:

I think it will always make that claim because that's central to our understanding of a constitutional monarchy. And they have worked very hard at least to maintain a public veneer of political neutrality, and that's going to remain absolutely central. It's interesting to see that there's a discussion of Charles potentially modernising the Monarchy. Now, if that is in the style of what's called a slimmed down monarchy, a smaller monarchy with some of the the more marginal, lesser known or entirely unknown remnants of the royal family that are still given grace and favour, apartments on the public expense. If that's actually reduced to a more core set of family members, that would be perfectly admirable and I think understandable and certainly would be modernising the Monarchy as it currently stands. However, if it moves into a view that this means Charles can engage in a political space, I think that would be nothing short of disastrous for the Monarchy.

I think there is always a fine line. I think climate change is a very interesting question: Have we moved to a point where that is now science? Of course, most of us, I hope, would agree, of course it is. And so it's no longer seen as a political question if Charles engages with it at that broader level. The point at which it becomes a problem is if he is engaging with what ought to be done at a policy level to address that issue. And that's where I think it's a very fine line, whether it's fox hunting or architecture or conservation matters, where the line needs to be drawn.

RUBY:

Jenny, thank you so much for your time.

JENNY:

Thanks so much. Bye bye.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today…

A super-typhoon has hit Japan, with the government urging two million residents to take shelter.
Before making landfall, typhoon Nanmadol registered wind speeds of up to 270 kilometres per hour, leading Japanese officials to warn that it could be the most destructive in decades.

Scientists say the climate crisis is increasing the severity of storms.

And the Queen’s funeral will begin tonight at 8PM, Australian Eastern Standard time.

Over the weekend the queue to see the Queen’s coffin reached up to 25 hours in wait time.

I’m Ruby Jones this is 7am, see you tomorrow.

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