Federal government agencies spent more than $1 million on a losing bid to stop the release of letters between the governor-general who dismissed Gough Whitlam and the Queen.
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The long-running legal battle ended in the High Court in May when historian Jenny Hocking won her case for the letters to be made public.
National Archives director David Fricker told a Senate estimates hearing on Thursday the total bill for legal fees and costs was about $1.03 million.
Most of the cost was borne by the National Archives with some also paid for by the Attorney-General's Department.
The letters between Sir John Kerr and the Queen were released in July, revealing the governor-general thought it best not to explicitly inform her of his move before dismissing then-prime minister Gough Whitlam in 1977.
But the correspondence showed he did inform the Queen and her private secretary, Sir Martin Charteris, of his thinking in the months before the dismissal.
Australian Associated Press
