PM Transcripts

FOR P. RESS: P. M. No. 112/ 1966
PRIME MINISTER'S REPLY TO MR. BARTON
The Prime Minister this afternoon sent the following reply to
Mr. Gordon Barton in Sydney:
" I have your telegran; despatched on Sunday, which
reached me at my Melbourne office this morning. Frankly, I find
a~ n ' Alice in W/ onderland' quality about its timing and its terms which
makes it difficult for me to regard it as intended other than for
propaganda purposes. " It invites me personally to make fundamental changes
in my Government's firmly -established defence and external policies.
These go to the heart of Australia's security. You say, without
evidence or justification, that I entertaied doulrs about the Government's
intervention in Viet Nam from the outset and I tolerate what is being
done there against my private convictions and out of what I believe to
be sheer political necessity.
" All this so seriously mis-states my own fully-publici sed
attitude and the position I have consistently adopted on these matters
that it brings critically into question the bona f ides of your approach.
I have repeatedly stated my belief that the decisions the Government
has taken on Viet Nam and on the participation there of National
Servicemen are right.
" You can question, if that is your view and however
wrong-headed I may believe your view to be the wisdom of these
decisions, and if you disagree with them, stand in opposition to my
Government, but you have no cause to question my sincerity. Even
my opponents of the Labor Party have not done that. It is because
my colleagues and I believe these policies to be right that we accept
the challenge of the Labor Party to make them critical issues of this
campaign. If you feel so strongly hostile to these policies that
you and those associated with you are determined to contest individual
electorates, then it would be more honest and less mystifying to
the public if you were to offer yourselves either simply as Independents
or as Independent Labor candidates. To the best of my knowledge, very few if
any of you have been active members of the Liberal Party. By your
decision to support a socialist p arty which would run out on our allies
arid which, in so many other directions, is fundamentally opposed to the
policies of the party I lead, you have revealed yourselves as without
entitlement to include the word ' Liberal' in the description of your
group. " I have noted your denial that you are in any way a Labor
front organisation. There can be little difference in substance if you
masquerade as Liberals and recommend support for Labor in preference
to support of a Government which has led Australia to its present
strength, prosperity and international standing.
" I need hardly add that your offer of withdrawal is
rejected as are the terms on which you state it to have been based.
CANBERRA, 7th November, 1966. o t