PM Transcripts

FOR PRESS: P. M. No. 89/ 1969
SHOP STEWARDS' INCITEMENT TO MUTINY
Statement by the Prime Minister, Mr. John Gorton
However much some Australians may be opposed to the
conflict in Vietnam, I believe that every responsible and thoughtful citizen
will condemn with repugnance, as does the Government, the attitude of
the meeting of Union Shop Stewards in Melbourne yesterday.
To the average reader, this attitude is a stark incitement
to mutiny in the Armed Forces and defiance of the law in Australia.
It is not perhaps so surprising that Shop Stewards drawn
from some of the Unions involved should have adopted this irresponsible
and lawless attitude. But it is disturbing in the extreme that Mr. Crawford, the
President of the A. L. P. in Victoria, should have been associated with this
course. Dissent from and criticism of the Government's policy in Vietnam
is one matter incitement to mutiny is quite another.
Those urging this seek to defy the law, and endanger the lives
of Australian servicemen in order to achieve illegally what they have not
been able to achieve democratically.
Such action is typical of the extreme left and it is noteworthy
that the move comes from Victoria where the most extreme elements of
the A. L. P. are found. It is tantamount to a call to Australian troops to
surrender to Communist forces on the proposal of unions a number of
whom are Communist led.
The Shop Stewards' meeting in Melbourne, and the Victorian
Leader of the A. L. P. have urged a dangerous, undemocratic and disloyal
course. If the A. L. P. does, in fact, want a Communist victory in South
Vietnam, it should say so and the dividing line between the Government and
the Opposition would again be starkly drawn. If it does not, then the Leader
of the Opposition in Australia should at once condemn and disassociate
himself from the resolution passed in Melbourne.
For its part the Government does condemn it, and is ready
to take any steps necessary to see that the course advocated does not
succeed.
CANBERRA 16 December 1969