PACIFIC BASIN ECONOMIC COUN~ hCILKEY-
NOTE ADDRESS BY THE PRIME
MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA, HON. E. G.
WHITLAM CHEVRON HOTEL, SYDNEY
14 M4AY, 1973
Since taking office just over five months ago the new
Australian Government has acted over a wide range of matters firmly
directed -towards the new realities, new prospects and new hopes for
this vast Pacific region.
My first visit overseas, as Prime Minister was to New
Zealand, in January. In February I visited Papua New Guinea and
Indonesia. Last month I led the Australian delegation to the South
Pacific Forum in Apia, Western Samoa. On my way to London after the
Forum I had a very long and, as you would expect, stimulating discussion
with the Prime Minister of Canada, Mr. Trudeau, I9 shall be in North
America again in August for the Commonwealth Heads of Government
meeting and in Japan for the Annual Ministerial' meeting in October.
We moved immediately to normalise relations with the most populous
Pacific power the People's Republic of China. We have been acting
in very close co-operation with our South Pacific partners, particularly
New Zealand, in opposition to French nuclear testing in the Pacific.
President Nixon said last year that 1973 would be the year
of Europe. For us, however, it is very much the year of the Pacific.
This is inevitably and'naturally so. It is the reflection not only
of geographical realities but of the political, diplomatic and economic
realities in the region.
Much has been said and wvritten about the Government's style
and approach. ' It is true that, in many matters, we hive moved with
a speed which was not, one might say, altogether characteristic of
Governments in Australia over the last few years. Nothing we have
done, however, in these matters was not absolutely and precisely
predictable by anybody who had taken the trouble to look at the
considered and consistent policies of the Party which now forms the
Australian Government. Interestingly enough, the very decision which
is held in some quarters to represent the sharpest departure the
recognition of the People's Republic is the very one on which failure
to move rapidly would have put us most obviously out of step with the
other nations represented in the Pacific Basin Economic Council. All
of ust with the exception of the United States, now recognise China
on very much the same terms; and the United States is moving as
rapidly towards normalisation as the extraordinary complexity of power
relations alow. I wish that Australia could have shown the leadership
and foresight of Canada and thereby been entitled to the lasting
gratitude of nations, not least the United States herself, in helping
to restore reason and reality to the Westts relations with China0 In
the event we did nothing at all radical; we merely ratified reality.
The essence of that realiity in our region is that the
conflict of ideologies must now give way to the rational development,
use and conservation-of the region's human and physical resources.
The intractable nature of the war in Indochina sprang partly from the
fact that as far as the foreign belligerents were concerned it had no
identifiable goals in terms of the possession of resources, or the
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expansion of trade, or the protection of lines of communication.
It was just precisely that consciousness of unselfishness misplaced
an4 misjudged as we now see that idealism to have been which drew
the United States deeper and deeper into a conflict from which she
could draw no material advantage. We need in this region an ideological
holiday as far as our trade and diplomatic relations are concerned. This
does not mean that we are ideologically indifferent or that there are
no differences. The nations represented on this Council are not only
all democracies but form one of the world's few significant democratic
groupings. Democracy is no longer automatically taken as the only
acceptable form of government. If, however, it is no longer appropriate
to be crusaders it is absurd to believe the democracies are under seige0
In all the time that we have been agonising over the political
future of Indochina; in all the time that we have been pre-. occupied with
the mistaken idea that Indochina was the appropriate ideological
battleground between East and West, between China and the United States;
in all the time that we have been wasting human and natural resources in
pursuit of an ideological pre-occupation, we have ignored the -real
nature of the growing challenge to civilisation. It is a challenge
which knows no ideological bias. The basic question now facing mankind
is not whether communism or democracy will prevail but whether
civilisation as now constituted can long endure the pressure and demands
of population upon resources. We have created for ourselves in less
than a century a civilisation of unparalleled complexi ty, unparalleled
splendour yet unparalleled wastefulness. We make in a . year greater
demands upon this earthi's resources than any entire generation ever
did before. We are the first civilisation in human history whose day
to dlay existence depends on the consumption of resources which can
never be replaced. In war, in any given day in Indochina we would
consume more of the world's irreplaceable material than all the battles
from Rameses to Napoleon combined. In peace, in day to day livin. S the
-handful of nations represented on this Council would use more fuel
and energy in a year than the whole of Europe required to carry through
the industrial revolution in the century after Napoleon.
It is true that countries like ours which have all experienced
and contributed to the growing wonders of modern technology tend to
be supremely optimistic; technology always finds the answer we hope.
Yet we are sporting with fate if we allow sheer optimism to overcome
reason in the face of one most palpable fact and that is, the world's
resources of fuel and energy are finite and irreplaceable. A
civilisation, and the nations composing that civillisation, which will
not face that simple fact and combine to plan modifications i~ n its
life-style to allow for this fact will not long endure.
Nations have traditionally met their need for resources by
national expansion, usually by war. In the case of the United States,
Canada, Australia and New Zealand, we expanded by dispossessing the
indigenous peoples. These methods are no longer available, even if
they were remotely acceptable.
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Our great danger now is that in the competition for access
to the worldts resources we could stumble into the supreme folly of
war for the possession of resources. I say " the supreme folly" because
the plain fact is that any war for resources would use more resources
in the prosecution of that war than could ever have conceiLvably been
obtained by the victorious power in such a war. I want to emphasise
this point because our pre-occupation with ideological conflicts
particularly in South East Asia, and our determination to avoi~ d
nuclear war have tended to obscure the equal folly and equal dangers
to the survival of civilisation posed by traditional wars over resourcest
even if they were waged by so-called conventional means. I might
illustrate this point by reference to Japan and I had the honour * to
make this observation to the Crown Prince of Japan when he was with
us in Canberra last week. The really important and enduring thing
about the " economic miracle" of modern Japan is the hope it contains
for'-the peace of the region and the world. Japan, unique in so many
ways in world history, unique in so many things in world civilisation,
is unique in nothing so great and momentous as this: That she intends
to be the worldts first great economic power to base her claim to
fair and adequate * access to the raw materials and oierseas markets her
industry requires without military threats or force. This is the
" 1new course". o I believe that Japan, her people and her leaders, will
hold to the " new course".* I have stated that belief not only here,
not only in Tokyo but indeed in Peking.
We take reassurance from the fact that Japan has renounced
nuclear weapons. The " new course" ls however, I believe rests not only
upon Japan's recognition of the supreme and final folly of a nuclear
war; it is not just based on her own terrible and unique o rdeal; nor
does the renunciation of war only rest upon a recognition that Japan
is physically and economically so utterly vulnerable to nuclear war.*
Even if it could be limited to non-nuclear weapons, a so-called conventional.
war for the control. of resources would be the ultimate act of
human folly and unreason. Great industrial societies, of which Japan
is already the third, are facing crises in the availability of traditional
fuels and many forms of raw material; yet a war over resources,
particularly fuels, involving any of the great powers would itself
entirely consume the very resources being fought over. These
considerations reinforce the need for a " new course" not just by Japan
but by all the powers.
The great relevance of these matters to the nations represented
in this Council is that we are all great users of resources and great
producers of resourcest living in a region of tremendous inequalities
in both the use and possession of resources.
We depend very much on each other as developed countries and
the developing countries in our region depend very much upon us. This
Council is necessarily and properly mainly concerned with commercial
and investment problems, and opportunities between the member countries
and other countries in the region. At any time since the formation of
this Council in 1967 the emphasis in its deliberations would properly
have been on. the expansion of trade between our-member nations. This
is still your principal concern as businessmen and investors. But may
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I suggest that for the remainder of this centure no international
forum, whether at the governmental, official, entrepeneurial or
scientific level, can ignore this basic problem of world resources.
It is particularly appropriate that I raise this matter with you.
Some of you come from tlhse two great nations of the United States and
Japan to provide us with our most important markets and we are, of
course, one of the worldts great possessors of so many of the resources
for which demand threatens to outpace supply. Increasingly, the
relations between Australia and Japan, Australia and the United States,
and the relations between Canada and the United States will turn on
the question of the use and share of resources. My own Government has
already made a number of decisions about the future use and ownership
and development of Australian mineral and energy resources. These
primarily are decisions related to national considerations to
Australian aspirations about her own future and her own rights in the
use of her own resources. We do, however, recognise our wider
responsibilities to our region and to civilisation. As the fortunate
possessor of very great resources we want to play our part in
contributing to the prosperity of the region and of the civilisation.
It can't be done if the nations indulge in a catch-as-catch-can race
for resources; it can't be done if corporations conduct their business
operations with an eye only to the balance sheet; it can't be done if
governments are not prepared to co-operate with each other and with
business to develop rational and internationally responsible policies
on the future use of resources. We have to make a start now on
developing such policies for if we do not it's quite plain that the
future of the technological civilisation we here represent, for all
its splendours, for all its miraculous achievements, is likely to be
nasty, brutish and short. 0 0
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