The proclamation you have just heard read by the Governor-General's Official Secretary was countersigned "Malcolm Fraser", who will undoubtedly go down in Australian history from Remembrance Day 1975 as Kerr's Cur.Whitlam chose those words to highlight the fact that his government (since winning the double dissolution election of 1974) had abolished use of the words "God Save The Queen" at the end of all official proclamations.
Its reinstatement by Smith was an autocratic act taken entirely on his own part;[4] indeed, the newly minted "caretaker" Fraser government was not empowered to make such changes.
[citation needed] Smith subsequently resolved to secure more formal independent power for himself, his office and staff.
Prime Minister Alfred Deakin suspected that Tennyson was reporting on him to London and trying to interfere on matters of policy, such as the naval agreement between Britain and Australia.
While Tennyson shared this understanding of his role, he nevertheless agreed to Deakin's proposal, and Parliament approved the arrangement in August 1902.
However, the relations between the two men, which had been frosty, were not improved by this episode, and Deakin did not encourage Tennyson to seek an extension of his one-year term.
[6] In 1916, George Steward, official secretary to Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson, founded and headed the Counter-Espionage Bureau, Australia's first secret service, whose agents pursued Industrial Workers of the World and Sinn Féin activists.
Munro Ferguson was as unenthusiastic about these duties of his official secretary (whom he dubbed 'Pickle the Spy') and the unsavoury characters who consequently lurked about Government House as he was with the secret political work which Steward sometimes performed for Prime Minister Billy Hughes.