AUSTRALIAN HIGH COMMISSION
EMBARGOED UNTIL 9.00 PM 7 FEBRUARY 7 February 1974
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA, THE HON. E. G. WHITLAM,
QC., AT A STATE DINNER GIVEN BY THE PRIME MINISTER OF
SINGAPORE, MR LEE KUAN YEW, SINGAPORE, THURSDAY, 7 FEBRUARY 1974.
Each time one comes to Singapore, one is reminded of its
economic progress and vitality.
I can think of few countries in which one of the major problems
of the developing world namely sustaining the momentum of economic
growth has been so firmly and successfully met.
This is a nation which has carried out an industrial
revolution and an urban revolution of tremendous import and importance
to this region. I wish to assure you tonight, Mr Prime Minister, of Australia's
strong and continuing interest in maintaining a substantial and enduring
relationship with Singapore, and indeed with all the countries of South-
East Asia. I would like to stress that what has changed since myw Government
came to office is not the degree of Australian interest in South-East
Asia but the nature and direction of that interest. As I have often
said during my present tour, the emphasis of our growing interest will
be less influenced by ideological considerations but more by a
constructive approach, more permanent, more enduring, co-operation
through trade, investment, aid, cultural and other contacts. Defence
co-operation continues, but other forms of co-operation grow.
Behind the change the Australian Government has made lies
partly the political changes occurring within several countries of
the region changes of Government in Australia and New Zealand,
profound constitutional changes in Thailand, Burma and the Philippines,
and the virtual creation of a new independent nation in Papua New Guinea.
It's worth recalling these matters, not least for the benefit
of Australians, because there is a tendency in Australia to think that
Australia has been the only country in the region where there has been
change. Yet important as these internal political changes are, and
significant as the changes in external policies resulting from domestic
change are, they are only part of rapid and dramatic changes taking
place in the wider region in the relations between the great powers.
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Super-imposed on all these changes, re-inforcing them, complicating
them and where the changes are beneficial threatening them, is the
energy crisis. The political changes in countries like Australia may
look small beer indeed in the face of such tremendous events.
The great thing however is that these events re-inforce the
idea of the mutual interdependence, of all nations not least of
Singapore and Australia. We are the two great traders of the neighbourhood
our very life depends upon it. Wie are among the two most highly
urbanised countries on earth; we are both essentially nations of cityadwellers.
We are both technological nations, our people and our
economies relying not only on our skills, but on our getting access
to the physical means for applying those skills. Perhaps more than
any nations in the region, we both depend upon our ability to develop
effectively tho. skills of our peoples. And our prosperity depends on
the Drosperity of others. The same developments in Japan, in Britain
and lurope, in the United States: which might damage Singapore would
certainly and simultaneously damage Australia. When we consider the
inter-relationship of national economies, the inter-dependence of the
world economy, it is hardly possible to conceive a prosperous Australia
without a prosperous Singapore.
So there was never a time when our mutual interests and
concerns have been closer,
Sure, Australia's perception of Singapore has changed; it
has widened and broadened.
True, there was a time when Singapore was Asia in Australian
minds, to the extent that we thought much about Asia at all, except
in terms of vague menace. And the perception of Singapore was of
British Singapore, not of Asian Singapore. In 1974 I can say
emphatically that Australia's deep and continuing interest in Singapore,
its welfare, its progress, its role in the region, is a genuine
Australian perception of Singapore as a dynamic, pace-setting Asia
nation. Mir Prime Minister there is no head of Government with whom
I have had a longer, closer association, You extended friendship to
me in days when the party and its lead(-rship were discounted; and you
know from your own experience that friendship and attention extended
in days of adversity aand apparent hopelessness is the most worth
having, because the most sincere.. I have always deeply valued our
association. I value it all the more now that that association can
so significantly affect the basic well-being of the peoples of our
two countries. Our countries have so much in common. Naturally, where the
circumstances of our two nations are different, there will be
different perceptions, At Ottawa last year, some of these differences
were-ventilated that was indeed an illustration of the valua we place
on the Commonwealth forum where frankness in exchange Of Views and
ideas provides one of its main advantages and strengths. I hope,
I believe that one day the states of Asia and the Pacific will be able
to set up a similar sort of forum where leaders can meet not in an
atmosphere of fear or crisis or of expection of aid, but to exchange
views and remove misunderstandings before they develop further.
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I am visiting your country and other South-East Asian states
to demonstrate Australia's continuing more than continuing, our
growing and deepening interest in developing close and friendly ties
with our neighbours.
I hope to place Australia firmly, confidently, co-operatively
in the context of our Asian future.
If we have bilateral problems let us sort thase out in a spirit
of goodwill; if we have different perceptions of world developments,
let us seek to pool our ideas. Our two countries have a long history
of past and friendly co-operation; it is still very much Australian
policy to foster and develop this further.
And they are being developed to our mutual advantage.
We Australians do wish t'Umoo ve away from the idea that our relations
are limited to a defence relationship important as that aspect of
our co-operation is, and will continue to be. It is not just a matter
of bilateral relations at the Government level. There is strengthening
and widening of relations between our peoples Australian tourists,
Singapore students, Australian business, Singapore markets, in civil
aviation, in communicationst in professional interchange over a
whole range of matters which axe important to the people, not just the
politicians. This exchange and interchange on-going and expandingis
the real basis of the developing friendships between our peoples.