A NQ9 DATE
M/ 115 31 July 1973
PRIME MINISTER'S ADDRESS TO NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, WASHINGTON
The following is the text of an address by the Prime
Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Whitlam, to the
National Press Club, Washington, at 1300 hours ( Washington time)
30 July, 1973: " It is an honor for me to be asked to address representatives
of the world's greatest and most free press in the capital of the
world's greatest and most free democracy.
The strength of each is the strength of both.
In accepting your invitation I pay tribute to the
manifest and enduring strength of both.
It's been suggested that your chief interest today is to
hear something about the changes in Australia's policies as a result
of the change in the Australian Government, changes affecting our
international relations and particularly the relations between
Australia and the United States.
True, there have been changes, important and, I naturally
enough believe, beneficial changes. o. ./ 2
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To put them in perspective, however, I should say three
things at the outset.
First, the changes the Australian Government has made are
only part of a profound change taking place in the whole pattern of
international relations, especially in the Western Pacific.
The initiative for these changes came not, of course, from
Australia, but from the United States.
These initiatives President Nixon's initiatives have
created a new reality for our region.
Part of Australia's task has been to ratify the new
reality. If in some specific matters such as recognition of the
People's Republic of China and the ending of the last vestiges of
Australia's military commitment in Indo-China Australia has been
able to move immediately, it is largely because of a difference in
obligations, not ultimate intentions.
Clearly, the United States has obligations, commitments
and burdens far more complex than those of Australia.
Secondly, the ability of an Australian government, if so
minded, to effect policy changes more rapidly than the United States,
partly reflects a difference in our systems of government. / 3
For instance, while it's not true, as suggested at least
in sections of the Australian press, that the American Embassy in
Canberra or the State Department was caught by surprise by the election
results in my country, there may have been some surprise in some
quarters at the speed with which our machinery allowed us to move.
I did not have to wait three months for my inauguration.
Three days after election day, I was able to form a Government
with one other colleague. It was in fact the smallest administration
to have responsibility for Australia since the first Duke of Wellington
was last Prime Minister of England.
In two weeks we were able to clear off a whole range of
undertakings on which we have been campaigning.
As long as it doesn't go beyond these walls, I'll confide
in you that I found those two weeks quite exhilarating.
SBut I do emphasise that nothing we did then, or which the
rather larger Government has done since, was other than eminently
predictable to anybody anywhere with any grasp of our specific
policies or broader program.
Knd thirdly, there is an essential continuity underlying
the process of change a continuity in Australia's real national
interests, in Australia's international obligations, in Australia's
alliances and Australia's friendships.
We seek new relationships. / 4
We do not seek them at the expense of old, firm ones,
I might bring these three points together the world
pattern of change within which the Australian Government is acting,
the predictability of the changes we are making. and the continuity
within change with a single illustration.
It is just two years since I went to Peking as Leader of
the Opposition. In the Australian political context of the time, this was
considered quite a risky business.
What nobody knew even the world's best-informed and most
alert and vigilant press was that Dr Kissinger was in Peking at
precisely the same time,
And when President Nixon made his historic announcement
a week or so later, a quite remarkable transformation took place,
I have to acknowledge I do so gladly that if it had not
been for President Nixon's initiative, my own Peking visit would,
given the Australian climate of the time, have been ' no political
advantage to me, even as late as last December.
Plainly, however, there could be no surprise that, within
three weeks of our election, we were able to establish diplomatic
relations with China on the exact terms we had for so long undertaken
by removing Australia's China Embassy from Taipei to Peking, the
capital of' China of which Taiwan is a province.
We are now quickly and successfully developing our contacts
with China over the whole range of our mutual interests,
But in our efforts to redress the imbalance of a generation
of unthinking lostility towards China, we do not propose to introduce
a new imbalance by discarding or downgrading older relationships.
We do not intend to substitute a new distortion for old
distortions. Undoubtedly the most important of those relationships is
the American connection,
This is symbolised by the Anzus Treaty. But Anzus is not
the be-all and end-all of that relationship and never has been. P
Important as Anzus is, the relationship is many-sided,
and I am convinced deep and enduring, at all levels,
There are many misconceptions about Anzus.
It was originally designed as a reassurance to Australia
and New Zealand against the possibility of uapanese military
resurgence, Nobody would now view it in that light,
Only a person totally insensitive to Japanese post-war
asoirations would seek to encourage or anticipate such a resurgence.
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Further, we have tended to overlook in Australia that
Anzus invokes " the constitutional processes" of its Doartners,
We have tended to ignore the role of Congress in those
processes, Anzus happens to be one treaty which has not been seriously
questioned by any section of C ingress,
My government wants to move away from the narrow view that
the Anzus Treaty is the only significant factor in our relations with
the United States and the equally narrow view that our relations
with the United States are the only significant factor in Australia's
foreign relations. Anzus is important but it is only one anpect of the very
wide range of interests and obligations linking with the United
States, Our relations with the United States are very imnortant
but again only one aspect of our interests and obligations in our
region and around the world.
But I repeat that as we seek to widen and strengthen
those other relations, we do not do so at the expense of existing
ones. Naturally there will be differences in approach to
several. international questions between Australia and the United
States. T believe, however, we should explore constructively
the wide areas of agreement which unite us rather than
seek to emphasise those few matters on which we are divided or take
a different approach towards the same basic end.
I believe that this alliance is old enough and strong
enough to stand a little frankness on both sides.
I believe that the friendship which we offer America now,
namely that of a robust middle power, making its own assessments and
its own decisions in consultation with other interested countries9
provides a better basis for a durable relationship of friendship
between Australia and the United States than existed in the past,.
We do not wish to grandstand or thumb our noses at the
United States. When our interests do not coincide and wh~ en we disagree with
the United States we snail, as a good friend shouid, say so firmly
and frankly, usually, and -Dreferaoly, in private.
But again. le' get this in perspective.,
The most important matters are not those on whia-n the
United States and Australia are likely to disagree, uinder this or any
American or Australian administration,,
What we wish to do, what we are doing, is to see that the
official United States view is not the only view ever considered by
an Australian Government, a. 78
For example, in determining our position on any matter
before the United Nations, I wish to know the view of our neighbours
and our other friends just as 1 want to know the view of the United
States, Nothing could be further from the truth than the suggestion
that under the new Government Australia is going isolationist,,
That is just as absurd as the idea that we are mioving into
a different ideological orbit,
Precisely what we are trying to do is to break out of a
kind of ideological isolationism which has limited the conduct of
our affairs in the past,
I~ n our own region, in our dealings with all the countries
of that region we think it' -time for an ideological holiday.
That is why we have established diplomatic relations
with a range of Governments as diverse as North Viet-N~ am and the
Vatican,, It is, if you like, a policy of diplomatic even--handed. iess,
It does not mean that Australia is not aligned,,
We are by definition aligned, through Arizus.
it does mean, however, that we propose that our dealings
with all nations should be less ideologically orientated than
hitherto,/
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For twenty years I have been appalled at the damage we
of the west have done to ourselves and to other peoples by our
Western ideological preoccupations, particularly in South-East Asia,,
We are not going to be readily forgiven for throwing away
the chance we had for a settlement in Indo-China in 1954, after
Korea, after Geneva,
And if I had to sum up my own determination and that of
my Government in a single sentence, I would state that I am
determined that nothing Australia does by action or inaction will
contribute to a second, final loss of opportunity,
We have all been given a second chance,
It must not be thrown away,
This would be the unforgivable crime agtainst humanity,
It may not be out of order for me to refer to something
a distinguished correspondent of the " New York Timres" said to a
senior Australian diplomat a coupl~ e of years ago about Australia.
He said that even to the best informed American, Australia
was merely a satellite of the United States; to the 20 million
non-white Americans, or those of them who knew anything of Australia,
it was a racist country; to the vast majority of Americans it was
~ just a large and empty space on the map,.
~
This judgment of two years ago is a harsh one indeed,
As a description of Australia it is 90 per cent wrong, and
it was wrong even at the time it was made.
But it is just that 10 per cent of truth which can make
an Australian uneasy, and which it is the concern of my Government
to remove. We are not a satellite of any country.
We are a friend and a partner of the United States
particularly in the Pacific; but with independent interests of
our own. As a Government, we are determined that Australia shall
not be open to charges of racism.
We are not just a large and empty space on the map.
We are a middle power with substantial resources, with
a people of considerable skill and vigor.
Australia's past shortcomings, the mistakes in our international
dealings have sprung in large measure from a vague and
generalised fear of our own environment, the feeling of being
alien in our own continent and our own region.
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As a result, we have tended to swing between isolationism
and interventionism, between " fortress Australia" and over-dependence
on one great powerful protector; and, culturally, between slavish
imitation and brash self-assertion.
What is sometimes called a new nationalism, for which the
election of this Government is seen as a catalyst, is, I hope,
really the beginning of self-confidence, the realisation that we
are there to stay as a people whose possession of a vast rich
continent has endowed us with unique opportunities, yet very great
obligations. My great hope for my Government, however long it may endure
or as my opponents would say be endured, is that it will see the
end of the old inhibitions, the self-defeating fears about Australia's
place in the world, and the beginning of a creative maturity."