4 ' PARTNERSHIP IN THE PACIFIC AFTER VIETNAM'
TEXT OF THE SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, HON. E. G. WHITLAM, Q. C., M. P.
TO THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, WASHINGTON
THURSDAY, 8th MAY, 1975
It is not quite two years since I last had the honour of addressing
this National Press Club. In that time, as practitioners of our
respective professions, we have all had to cope with tremendous
events and tremendous changes occurring with unexampled speed.
It was therefore with some little trepidation that I retrieved the
remarks I last made to you to see how they stood the test of time.
I find, however, that the very first point I made has been amply
confirmed in a way few of us could have guessed in July, 1973.
i said then that I was honoured to address representatives of the
world's greatest and most free press in the world's greatest and
most free democracy, and that the strength of each was the strength
of both. If this democracy had been less free the constitutional
upheaval of 1974 would not have occurred. If this democracy had
been less strong it could scarcely have survived so traumatic an
encounter. So in'cetn your invitation for a second time, I
again pay. tribute to the manifest and enduring strength of the
democracy of the United States, of which the press is so fundamental
a part.
In the wake of the remarkable events in Indo-China, all of usleaders
in my calling, commientators-in yours are in the process
of reassessing basic policies and relations. For the United States
in particular, this is bound to be a difficult and perhaps'a painful
process. In that reappraisal the last thing the Government or people
of the United States need are sermons and homilies from foreigners.
Certainly, you don't need them from an Australian. It is true that
I happen to lead a political party which strongly opposed the intervention
in Indo-China; It is also true that I am the Prime Minister
of a nation which for many years supported the intervention and
encouraged the escalation of the war. Whatever recriminations we
might have at home, it is no role for an Australian Prime Minister
to lecture the'United States.
It is, however, very necessary that we should prevent the creation
of new myths about what went wrong. And to do that it'is necessary
to look at past mistakes mistakes in which both countries shared.
The great danger is that in an atmosphere of deep emotion andrecrimination
engendered by the suddenness of events in Indo-China,
we should fasten upon explanations and self-justification and
over-simplifications , which would ensure a return to, a repetition of,
the great mistakes of the past. We have, in particular, to resist
the same sort of myths which developed after the revolution in China.
Those myths, those distortions of reality, perverted our relations
with China for more than a generation. They led directly to the
debacle in Indo-China.
2.
We should have no truck with any new variation of the ' stab in
the back' theory that the war in Vietnam was lost not in Saigon
but here in Washington. The truth is that the United States did
not ' lose' Vietnam, anymore than she ' lost' China. Vietnam was
not America's to lose. What was defeated was not the United States
and her -allies but a policy of foreign intervention which was bound
to fail. There was no time in the past thirty years when such a
policy could have succeeded. The tragedy for us all, but above
all for the people of Indo-China, is that a policy so manifestly
doomed from the beginning should have been carried through for so
long. It was never true that the honour and prestige of the United States
and her allies were bound up with the survival of the Saigon regime,
any more than it was ever true that the honour, or prestige, or
security of the United States were bound up with the fate of
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek.
When I spoke to you last I spoke of the ' second opportunity' we
had gained because of the moves towards reconciliation with China
and with the signing of the Paris Agreement in January, 1973. I
said :' 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 pre-occupations, particularly in South East Asia. We
are not going to be readily forgiven for throwing away the chance
we had for a sebtlement. in Indo-China in 1954 after Korea, after
Geneva. We have now been given a second chance. It must not be
thrown away.' Unfortunately my hopes, the hopes of the world, were
not fulfilled after January 1973. The gross breaches of the Paris
Agreements by both sides pol'itical breaches, military breache*
made it inevitable that the final settlement in Indo-China would
be reached by the arbitrament of war.
Yet in the wider sense that second opportunity, that second chance
of which I spoke, still remains, the question now is : What are to
be our relations and our conduct towards Vietnam whether there
be one Government of Vietnam or two? Are we to treat Vietnam
after 1975 as we treated China after 1949? Through fear or
frustration, because of our failure to impose the will'of the
West on Indo-China, are we to treat Vietnam as the new pariah,
the new untouchable among nations? No-one supposes that it is
going to be a simple or easy task to establish meaningful relations
with Vietnam,-a Viet nam emerging from thirty years of civil war
prolonged and deepened by foreign intervention. It is going to
be one of the most difficult tasks for statesmanship, for the countries
in Australia's region and for the United States.
Two hundred years ago on 22 March 1775 -Edmund Burke said
' Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wi-dsom'. It
was his great speech on conciliation with the American colonies.
He was advising another mighty nation which was about to suffer
humiliation at the hands of another small band bf revolutionaries
3.
-not because that nation was wicked or weak but because it was
committed to policies doomed to fail. Magnanimity in the face of
failure is much more difficult than magnanimity in victory. The
present prosperity of Western Germany and Japan attests America's
unparalleled magnanimity in victory. The other, more difficult,
response lies ahead in Indo-China.
This is very much a time for a realistic assessment of our
strengths and opportunities and for a good deal of confidence
in those strengths and opportunities. There are those who feel
that because American policy suffered a defeat in Vietnam, we
should be pessimistic about American policy elsewhere, and ignore
American achievements elsewhere. Dangerous and difficult as the
Middle East problem undoubtedly is, taxing as it is for Western
statesmanship, it should not blind us to the wider stability and
security achieved in the world during the past two decades. Who
would deny that the world is a safer place -today that it was in
the aftermath of World War II? Who would deny remem bering Berlin,
remembering Greece,, remembering Korea, remembering Cuba that the
threats to peace today are less menacing than those posed by the
critical flashpoints and monolithic confrontations of a decade or'
a generation ago? I hope we shall keep a sense, of perspective and
reality in these matters, keeping in mind the real progress we
have made towards a safer world, and not allow ourselves to be
panicked or dismayed by lesser problems than those we have surmounted.
before. In the specific matter of Vietnam, I am not going to be panicked
by an outcome achieved militarily in 1975 which might have come
about politically in 1954. I am intent upon reaching a modus vivendia
meaningful, constructive relationship with Vietnam in 1975, as
we would assuredly have had to do some time between 1954 and 1975,
and as with such needless and damaging delay we have done with China.
It is not, however, by focussing exclusively upon Vietnam or even
upon Indo-China that we can get the true perspective of our real
strengths and opportunities in the region Australia's opportunities,
or America's strengths. There can be no suggestion of wanting to
shrug off the events in Indo-China. On the contrary there are
great lessons to be learnt. Nonetheless, let's coolly assess both
the present and the future..
If we look at the Pacific Basin area what do we find? The most
developed and some of the strongest of the dozen or so most
significant nations upon or around the four Pacific continents
of Asia, Australia, North America and South America, are flourishing
democracies. The United States' most important friends in this
vast area, countries like Canada, Mexico, New ' Zealand, Australia
and above all, Japan, have never been stronger stronger in themselves,
stronger in their basic friendship twoards the United States.
The Asean Nations Indonesia, The Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia,
Singapore are working closely and successfully together to
promote their common interests in a natural and viable regional
grouping. These countries happen to be those cast by the theorists
in the role of the dominoes. Not one of them will give any thanks
fok being cast in such a role. Each of them will work in its own
way to accommodate itself to the new political realities in South
East Asia. Each recognises that it is primarily its own internal
strength and resilience which will safeguard it against external
threats. Each recognises that the prime guarantee of national
integrity and security lies in developing the forms of Government
best suited to itself and ensuring that Government is in tune with
national needs and popular aspirations.
There is a further cause for confidence. On the Pacific side of
the Asian region, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia,
Fiji, Western Samoa and Tonga, and on'the Indian Ocean side,
India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, are all members of the Commonwealth
of Nations. I have been meeting their leaders in Jamaica this
week. In this rema rkable association of nations not one Head of
Government ' is Communist,. yet not one Head of Government was plunged
into despair because of the events in Indo-China. In our communique
issued on Tuesday the nations of the Commonwealth 34 of them, said
this :' Heads of Government welcomed the end of the prolonged conflict
in Indo-China, urged countries in a position to do so to contribute
to international assistance for the urgent tasks of rehabilitation
and reconstruction and looked forward to the new. Governments of the
region playing their full part in the Community of Nations.' No
panic here, no desperation. Yet, as I point out, many nations of
the Commonwealth are the very nations who are supposed to be the
likely victims of the falling dominoes. The truth is that all of
us have great problems of one kifid or another yet each of us is
basically confident of surmounting those problems in our * own way.
Nor was there throughout our meeting in Jamaica any disposition to
knock the United States, to recriminate against her or to suggest
that the United States will not be a good ally or a trustworthy
friend. Indeed, with the war in Vietnam over, many nations and
Australia is one will have even greater confidence in America as
an ally, for we know that American resolve, American capacity,
American resources will no longer be weakened or dissipated in a
fruitless cause.
President Ford was entirely justified in remarking* two weeks ago',
that because the United States' policy had not succeeded everywhere
it should not be. assumed it had succeeded nowhere. The policy
failed in Indo-China betcause it was foredoomed to failure. The
policy succeeded in Japan and in Europe because it had the necessary
ingredients of success a realistic appreciation of America's own
interests of the people of Japan and Western Europe. It failed
in Indo-China because the policy there was based neither on
America's true interests nor on anything that was possible or
relevant as far as the interests or aspirations of the peoples of
Indo-China were concerned. But the great aims of American policy
can now continue undiminished and undeterred, free of the impediments
and distractions and distortions of Indo-China.
4 The great thrust of that policy rests upon the detente with
the Soviet Union and with associating China in a wider detente.
Nothing that has happened in Indo-China would warrant the United
States being deflected from that great goal. For the essential
mteaning of detente is simply the prevention of world war, or
world nuglear war. It is precisely because this is the highest
risk that mankind has ever faced the destruction of civilisation
itself--that this is the highest goal a nation could ever set
for itself.
I view with concern and contempt efforts made by some in countries
like Australia and the United States to downgrade or denigrate
the efforts being made towards detente. No one asserts that the
present partial detente really solves the great question of
preserving world peace. But to go back now, to retreat from the
Agreements And undertakings already reached, however slight,
however tentative, is to retreat towards ultimate disaster. I
do not assert that detente as it now exists is complete. But I
do assert that-it must be made complete if any of us are to surviye.
We can begin by efhsuring that regions of the world still largely
untouched.-by great power rivalry continue to remain free of it.
In that connection, Australia has lent her voice to the maintenance
of a zone of peace in the Indian Ocean. All of us who support such
proposals, all of us who support detente, know that the difficulties
in the way of achieving detente are daunting indeed. But certainly,
upon our success or failure turns the future of mankind. And it
is because of this that the United States remains the true leader
of the world and, as much as she used to be, ' the last, best hope
of the world'. For it is to the United States that the West chiefly
looks for meaningful leadership in that direction, If detente is
to succeed, it will continue to require American initiatives,
American courage, American leadership.
For many years to come, people like us, America ns, Australians,
politicians, journalists, will be examining in arguments, in
articles, in speeches, in books what happened in Indo-China. This
is as it should be. For so great a disaster, so great a mistake,
such great suffering, cannot be easily dismissed or even forgotten.
Ile shall all have to live with it for the rest of our lives. Yet
even so, we have to go on to the future. In the two years since
I last spoke to you America has undergone a vast domestic, as
well as a vast international, catharsis. With those profound traumas
behind you, with their bitterness and misery being purged away,
what better time to profit by experience and build on the true
strengths of American democracy and American idealism? Here is
an opportunity not-just for America but for all of us to end
our long preoccupation with military alignments in Asia, our
ideological confrontations, our cold war hangups, and open a new
chapter in Western co-operation. Let-* the deeper issues of poverty,
overpopulation and mal-distribution of the world's wealth assume
their proper importance in our hearts and minds. These are the
real problems of Asia. These are ' the real problems of the world.
These, I trust, will be the real concerns of the United States.
With your great tradition of moral leadership, your unexampled
generosity, your vision, your energy, your sheer'zest for
accomplishment, you will find new inspiration in this taska
task in which Australia will be a ready and a willing partner.
S C 0 r;
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS PRIME MINISTER'S ADDRESS TO
THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB on 8TH MAY, 1975
. Mr. William Broom, President, National Press Club: Our first
question, Mr. Prime Minister. We want to know about your talks
with our President Ford. Did you discuss with President Ford
a program for Vietnamese reconstruction? From your talks with
Congressional leaders in our Congress, did you detect strong
unwillingness to fund Vietnamese reconstruction?
Prime Minister: I think it would have been gracious to add that
also at the top table among the expatriates and the visitors. and
the authors is the Deputy Secretary of State and Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State for the part of the region from which I come.
There was some exchange of views between the President and me
on these subjects but not lengthy ones. I can appreciate the
difficulties there are at this stage in asking the American
people to accept greater financial burdens in reconstructing and
re-habilitating Vietnam. I stated the Australian Government's
attitude that was my business and I said that in the Australian
Government's budget for the-financial year which ends this June
there had been provision made for reconstruction and re-habilitation
in both South and North Vietnam and that I had no doubt there would
be provision in the budget which we will be bringing in in August
to continue, and in fact to increase, that provision, and preferably
we would want reconstruction and re-habilitation to take place
through international organisations. Where they have been available,
the Australian Government has . made contributions to them, not only
in the budget but again in the last two months.
Mr. Broom In what way can Australia and the United States
best help in reconstruction and re-habilitation in Vietnam?
Prime Minister Well, I believe in all these matters one has
to consider what are the views of the people of the country itself
and preferably, as I said earlier, these should be ascertained
through international organisations. There may well be some
reluctance, some hesitation, some inhibitions, in the new
Government in South Vietnam, or the Government in North Vietnam
or the Government in Cambodia having relations with the Australian
Government for that matter, or with many other Governments. But
through international bodies, one would hope that there could be
some such consultation. The areas where we have found in Australia
that it was easiest to make arrangements for re-habilitation was
in things like water supplies, hospital facilities and public
facilities of that character, that is material things which were
lacking to a very great extent and in fact had been very largely
destroyed. These are things which are of a non-ideological
character, they are obviously needed and there are obviously
matters in these fields where developed countries, like Australia
and the United States, can and I believe should assist.
Mr. Broom: Many in our audience wonder what Australia's
policy will be towards Vietnamese refugees. Will Australia
honour its signature to the 1951 United Nations Refugee
Treaty and admit them?
Prime Minister And also to the 1967 protocol. We have
already, some days ago, approached the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees to suggest that he should coordinate
an international program to re-settle those Vietnamese who
have fled from their country. It -i somewhat unfortunate
that in the region itself there are very few countries which
have signed the ' 51 convention and the ' 67 protocol. They
include Australia and New Zealand and Fiji, Canada, some
countries which still have colonial responsibilities in the
area, like Britain and France, and I don't believe such
significant countries as the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand
or Japan.
Mr. Broom: Another question: We wonder how you assess future
policies in South Asia and South East Asia of the Communist
powers, the Soviet Union, China and the new Communist States
of Indo China. Do you foresee any attempt to exploit the
current power vacuum in that region and do you see any dangers
ahead? Prime Minister I am not quite sure . hat is intended by a
power vacuum. What has changed, I suppose, is that over the
last two years or more there-has been a withdrawal or expulsion
of American power on the mainland. American power, of course,
in the air. and on the sea is immense, the greatest in the world
and mobile. But I believe that in using the word ' Communist'
we have to realise that there is no monolithic ideology or
action by Governments which are totally Communist or predominantly-
Communist. We have realised for the last fifteen. years that the
Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China, while both competing
for the crown of being orthodox Communist Governments, would be
in very great disagreement on the Communist ideology or the action
which it entails or requires. Now, by the same token, I have no
less doubt that the principal occupation of any Communist Government
around the world, like any other Government around the world, is
and must be what it conceives to be the interests of its nation,
its own nation. That is, a Communist Government does not cease
to be a nationally oriented Government. That is clearly the
intention, the practice of the Soviet Government, of the Government
of the Peoples Republic of China, and I would guess that it will
be the attitude of the new Cambodian. Government and of the Government
or Governments in Vietnam. It would be, I should imagine, completely
unlikely that they would all concert some program in the region.
They will be looking after what each of them concedes to be the
interests of its own nation. And the Vietnamese Government, or
Governments, will have their time very fully occupied in reconstruction,
rehabilitation and quite probably reconciliation.
Mr. Broom President Ford, earlier this week, proclaimed that
the United States would reaffirm closer ties with the anti-
Communist Governments of South Korea and Taiwan. Is building
an anti-Communist alliance a viable policy in the light of
recent changes in Asia?
Prime Minister As I understand the President as having said,
and if I understand his attitude after our conversation yesterday,
he has resolved to fulfil the obligations of his nation which it
has undertaken to other nations, and of course the United States
has undertaken obligations, bilateral obligations, to each of
the political entities that the questioner mentions. It is not
forming any new association or alliance, it is honouring
continuing obligations.
Mr. Broom Your country was the first to recognize the Khmer
Rouge Government after the fall of Phnom Penh. Will you protest
the atrocities of the new Government which are being revealed
today? Prime Minister We were not the first to recognize the new
Government in Phnom Penh. We were prompt in acknowledging it,
but quite obviously, to take one example that should be in the
minds of everyone, the French Government acted quite some time
before the Australian Government. We do not have any representatives
at the moment in Phnom Penh there are some difficulties of
communication with Phnom Penh or with the Head of State, who
is still resident in Peking. I have no knowledge, therefore,
officially or in any way directly there are no Australian
correspondents either in Phnom Penh as to what is going on
there. If there is any evidence which comes to us directly, of
course we will protest. That is, in the event of any atrocities,
of course we will protest about them. We have done that in all
the countries it has occurred to our knowledge since we came into
office. Mr. Broom Just one more question on events in your part of
the world. How do you believe the question of a nuclear free
zone for the Pacific will be resolved, keeping in mind that only
one of the ANZUS partners, New Zealand, supports it?
Prime Minister I understand that the proposal for a nuclear
free zone in the Pacific, that is an extension westward of the
Treaty of Tlatelolco, might be proposed by New Zealand for the
agenda of this year's United Nations. It might come up in the
form of discussing the proposal. Now all I would say, my own
Government's attitude, is that we place priority on achieving
Treaties in the nuclear field to which the nuclear power will
subscribe. That is, we believe the first obligation for the
nations is to secure the support of the United States, the Soviet
Union, Britain, China, France, to these various Treaties. And
we have done what we can to persuade other nations to ' sign and
to ratify such Treaties, in particular, I suppose, the Nuclear
Non Proliferation Treaty. When my Government came in, it very
promptly ratified that Treaty and it was encouraging to us
that about a week ago West Germany and Italy and the three
Benelux countries also signed it as well. We would hope that
Japan will do so. We are disappointed that Indonesia has not
done so and that India has not done so, but this is the priority
that my Government fixes in matters of disarmament. We want
Treaties of restraint to which the nuclear powers will subscribe.
Mr. Broom Now that the United States Congress has approved
indemnity, will you approve the use of Australia's ports by
United States nuclear warships?
Prime Minister The use of Australian ports by nuclear powered
naval vessels was suspended by the previous Australian Government.
It applied to United States and British naval vessels. It has
been considered quite . recently again, and in particular, in the
light of the fact that the Congress has now approved in effect
a total indemnity against any adverse effects of the operation
of nuclear powered vessels in Australian waters, in any host
country. There is another matter which I imagine will next be.
considered in Australia and that is the environmental aspects
which are very largely a responsibility of the State Governments
in Australia. We adopted a Federal system from the United States,
we imposed it on a British parliamentary system, but it is in a
more rudimentary form. So therefore, while in the United States
you are used to the co-mingling of powers, so that if any area,
such as a port, there are State responsibilities and Federal
responsibilities, the Federal ones prevail. In Australia, this
is not yet so clear. It is a point of view which I would very
much support myself. The Australian naval ports all happen to
be very considerable maritime centres. The biggest naval base
in Australia, for instance is in the harbour of Sydney, and
obviously the State Government would have to be concerned there
because the safeguard arrangements are in the hands of the State
authorities. Mr. Broom We have a lot of questions about your country. How
things are going there, you know it is a long way away from us
and not too many of us get there. One person wants to know how
is the Opera House doing? Do you have any more architecture of
that sort going up?
Prime Minister Fabulously. I hope so.
Mr. Broom And what are Australia's plans for developing a
uranium enrichment industry?
Prime Minister Australia does not have the knowhow nor, I
guess, the capital to develop a uranium enrichment industry.
We have undertaken jointly with Japan a feasibility study to
see whether we can get the capital and knowhow to estbalish
such an industry. We have some preliminary negotiations in this
respect twith the competing European systems, the one developed
by West Germany, the Netherlands and Britain, and the other
one being developed by France and Italy, and I think Iran is
involved in that also. You might not all realise that Australia
seems to have about one fifth of the known reserves of uranium
in the, shall I say, the West.
Mr. Broom Do you think that might give an OPEC type power
to Australia in the nuclear age?
Prime Minister If consumers are reasonable, no. Let's face
it. The consumers so exploited the employee class and the
colonial economies that they provoked organised retaliation.
What my country prefers is arrangements between producers and
consumers. In respect of renewable resources, crops, we have
followed that policy for decades. We would still like to follow
it. We regret that other countries no longer seem to wish to do
so. In respect of non-renewable resources, minerals, then
Australia has been driven into the situation of considering her
interests in association with other countries which have similar
interests and those associations in which the Australian Government
participated, or in which it is contemplating participating, have
in general been accepted as reasonable by countries, administrations,
like the United States.
Mr. Broom Several questions about food, of which your country
is a great producer. What are your views on world grain stockpiling
to prevent a shortage? Do you fear retaliation from world beef
importers or exporters because of Australia's beef sales during
this time of surplus? What are you doing and what will you do
to aid your ailing livestock industry?
Prime Minister Well, we wish that we could make more beef sales,
and I hope you won't think it begrudging of me if I say that the
United States has somewhat disappointed us in this respect. I
won't say surprised, I will say disappointed. Australia is one
of the few countries which exports beef. There are very few.
After all, most of the world's population doesn't eat meat.
Very few countries indeed can afford to import meat and those
that can are those with which Australia has many associations,
Western Europe, Japan and the United States, and Australia has
supplied all of those markets. Last year, Japan, without any
warning, stopped buying meat. The European Economic Community
without any warning stopped buying meat and America reduced
purchases of meat, and that of course very greatly harmed our
meat industry, our cattle industry. We have certain advantages
of area and climate which make for economies in meat productions.
In those circumstances, we resent the fact that the few customers
that there are in the world, the ones upon which we felt we were
entitled to depend, completely ( most of them) cut off purchases
of meat from Australia. In those circumstances, it is not
surprising there has been a very great depression in some areas
in Australia and I believe that consumers ought to bear this
in mind. If they want cheap meat, regular supplies of it,
they must be regular purchasers because it obviously takes
some time to produce beasts to the stage where they are to
be killed and so on. Now, as regards wheat and other grains,
Australia is one of the few countries which produces a surplus.
Canada and the United States would be the other significant
ones. By contrast to meat, wheat and grains in general] are
things that everybody in the world consumes and always have
and it is easily transported and easily stored and wherever
there is a drought or a natural disaster in the world the thing
which is easiest to provide to alleviate it is wheat or other
grains. We now find in Australia, and no doubt Canada and
the United States find it as well, that the developing countries,
those that have a population increasing more rapidly than resources,
that they are very happy for us to provide wheat on favourable
terms, credit terms, and so on, which in effect mean gifts.
Now other developed countries, ones which do not have the
productivity of the United States and Canada and Australia, are
very happy to provide. favourable credit terms to developing
countries for the purchase of manufactured goods. Developing
countries do not need them and do not even want them. But we
can never seem to come to some arrangements where developed
countries, such as West Germany or Japan, who can well afford
to help alleviate the conditions in developing countries or to
overcome natural disasters, they don't seem very keen to provide
credit to the United States or to Canada, or Australia, to provide
their surplus stocks. I should . point out that, while Australia
is a developed country in the normal context of its economic
pattern, its production, its investment, its employment is
overwhelmingly i. n the manufacturing field, secondary industry,
yet our overseas trade is still in the pattern of our neighbours
or of other developing countries. We depend on the income we
get for non-renewab. le assets like minerals or renewable assets
like crops, or to a certain extent meat, and in those circumstances
we just cannot afford to be unilaterally benevolent to the rest
of the world. Developed countries ought to get together more
in this respect. Australia has had a very bad deal from Western
Europe and Japan. It has not had too good a deal from the United
States as regards meat and, similarly, here we can ally ourselves
with the United States. The rest of the developed world does
not make it easy for us to use our agricultural productivity
for the benefit of people who suffer natural disasters or whose
human rate of increase is outpacing the rate of increase of their
resources.
Mr. Broom To carry that discussion just one step further,
is there any prospect of an Australia/ New Zealand/ Canada/ United
States common market?
Prime Minister Very little I would think. I don't believe
that this is really what is needed in the Pacific. Inevitably
any such common market would be regarded as being for the benefit
of the manufacturing countries and would be regarded as being
to the disadvantage, certainly being no advantage to the developing
ones. What we have to realise is two things. That is developing
countries want to see that the price they get for their exports
keeps pace with the price they have to pay for their imports
and secondly, that there is a steady increase in the processing
of their commodities wi. thin their own shores. After all, we
all know that the developed countries, the manufacturing countries,
are prosperous, not just because of the commodities they produce
but because of the processing they apply to those commodities.
Now the prosperity of developing countries is adversely affected
by the fact that they can't depend on the price they get for
their commodities and they find it extraordinarily difficult
to get the capital, the knowhow, to process a fair proportion
of those commodities themselves. And the Pacific, with the
exception of the countries you mentioned, is very much a developing
area. And the proper way to keep them happy is to make it plain
to them so that it is visible and palpable to their populations,
that conditions are getting better and during their lifetimes
they will be getting better still. And that is not achieved,
I suggest, by just having another rich man's club in the Pacific.
That is having a common market. That is how it would be regarded.
For Australia and New Zealand, Canada and the United States, add
in Japan if you like, were to form a common market, then there
is no doubt that the rest of the Pacific would think that we
were out to take advantage of them. And also I would have to
be quite plain with you. There are a very great number of people
in Australia, and still more in New Zealand, who would think that
such a common market was to the advantage of those companies
which are domiciled in the United States.
Mr. Broom What has been Australia's experience with the TFX
or Fill fighter airplane? Did you approve the purchase of that
plane? Prime Minister We are taking good care of them and Australia
has the most formidable air force for thousands of miles around.
There is nobody who could approach Australia with hostile intent
by sea or air. My party when in Opposition was extremely dubious
about the acquisition of the Fill, the TFX, and there was good
reason for it because we found out that a contract had been made
without lawyers'advice on our part. Whatever you say about lawyers,
it is at least prudent to have their advice when you are signing
a contract for some hundreds of millions of dollars and our
predecessors did not take that elementary precaution. The
Prime Ministers at the time were all lawyers but they left it
to people in the Department of Defence, including a Minister
-who had been a pharmacist, to sign the contract. Well, there
happened to be some flaws in the contract and it took about
ten years to get the aircraft. I suppose one would have doubts
whether it was necessary to have such sophisticated aircraft in
our part of the world. It would seem that it is disproportionately
technical but nevertheless I have no doubt whatever that it is
a very effective aircraft and while it seems to be more than we
need to cope with anybody who is ever likely to approach Australia,
yet by the same token, there is no doubt that nobody could afford
to approach Australia with hostile intent. ' Cr I"
8.
Mr. Broom What sort of retaliation does your Government
plan towards thlie United States if Harry Hopman becomes the
non-playing captain of the American Davis Cup teamn.
Prime Minister This is a sore point that you should bring
along the most distinguished of Australian expatriates to
your hospitable board with me here. We know that Hopman is
the best in the world and we don ' t mind sharing our best with
the United States. ~ 1_ 1_