Historian Jenny Hocking asked the nation's Federal Court on Monday to force the National Archives of Australia to release the letters between the British monarch and her former Australian representative, Governor-General Sir John Kerr. The Archives has classified the letters as "personal," meaning they might never be made public.
The letters would reveal what, if anything, the queen knew about Kerr's plan to dismiss Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's government in 1975 to resolve a deadlock in Parliament.