...governments. They include the inter-governmental relations between the Commonwealth and the states and our constitutional relations with the United Kingdom and the Queen. These documents are usually kept secret for at least thirty years and sometimes even longer. By the time thirty years have passed, histories have already been written without the benefit of primary evidence, and are often wrong. Rarely does anyone check, after thirty years, whether that which now forms part of the accepted fabric of our history is in fact correct.

Take, for example, the removal of the New South Wales Governor, Sir Gerald Strickland, in 1917. Constitutional historians, such as H.V. Evatt and A.B. Keith, writing in the 1920s and 1930s, attributed his recall to his alleged refusal to assent to a bill prolonging the parliament, or his call for Premier Holman to resign after losing the support of the Labor Party, or his alleged failure to support conscription. Modern constitutional texts refer to these reasons and attribute Sir Gerald's recall "home" to the broader principle that the Governor failed in his duty to act on the advice of his state ministers. The recall of Sir Gerald is now generally regarded as marking the end of United...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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