TEXT OF PRESS CONFERENCE GIVEN BY THE PRIME
MINISTER RT. HON. R. G AiENZIES, AT THE
AUSTRALIAN EM3ASSY, UASHII'GTON, DoC.. U. SoA,
ON 20H JUNE, 1932,
QUESTION: PRIME MINISTER:
Qe P. iM. What can you tell. us, Prime Minister, of
your visit to the President?
Well, there's a communique out, isn't there?
That says what we both find ourselves able to say,
Personally, I thought the discussions were very,
very helpful. They were conducted in a very
helpful spirit. There has been a belief, I think,
perhaps in some parts of my own country, that there
is some very powerful opposition between the position
of the United States in relation to the Common
Market and the position of Australia, I think you
could sum it all up, after the discussions I've had,
by saying that the central feature was that if
Great Britain goes into the Common Market, and that
would be for Groat Britain to determine, both
Australia and the United States, or in order of
magnitude, the United States and Australia, will
be outside the Common Market and will therefore
have some interests in common, very considerable
ones; because each of us would Isire to maintain
our competitive status as a non-member of the
Common Market of the European Economic Community,
and that became common ground between us in the
course of these talks. In order to give effect to
some practical considerations you may have noticed
in the communique that we said that the problems
arising out of Britain's proposed entry should be
approached not on any basis of theory or the use of
particular word-s, but on a practical basis, examining
commodities one by one, and in order to enable that
examination to proceed in a practical fashion I
have arranged for the Head of the Australian Trade
Department, Dr. Westerman, now in London, to come
across and have further discussions with'the experts
ac this endø I think that fact will demonstrate to
you that we are not just up against a closed door,
but there is a feeling that if we can get to a
discussion of commodities one by one then it ought
to be possible to evolve proposals in regard to
commodities which would be acceptable to the United
States and acceptable to us, and much more importantly,
of course, acceptable to the Six, So that the
position is to be regarded as a flexible one, Dr.
Westermann, might explain, is our expert who put
a full presentation of our case to the delegates at
Brussels quite recently and he is, on the official
side, our principal expert in thee negotiations.
I haven't been negotiating, of course; I don't
regard myself as qualified to be negotiating about
a whole series of commodities, He's our expert when
it gets down to the retail business; I have merely
directed my mind to a few wholesale considerations.
Can you tell us, Sir, what the main commodities
involved are?
Oh, well, there are a great number of commodities
that fall into this fr-om our point of viewr There
are certain base metals, particularly lead, sugar,
wheat, meat of various -inds, fruit in various o./ 2
PoM. forms and so on, There are probably scores and scores
( Contd.) of items, but these are among the major ones that are
under consideration. So far as some of them are
concerned of course, we w-ould like to see world arrangements,
and there is a glancing reference to that in the
communique. We would like very much to see a resumption
of discussions for a world whea-agreement because the
wheat problem wcn! t be easily solved in the absence of a
world arrangemento Similarly with metals. We think
that international commodity arrangements on a world basis
are very important.
Qo Sir, would you put a wheat arrangement ahead of
British membership or can it wait?
P. M. I think the negotiations ought to go on right
away, but if those negotiations succeeded, and you've
got a world wheat agreement, it would take that topic
out of the Common Market discussions, brt knowing something
about the long distance durability of negotiations about
wheat, I would think that the negotiations with the Six
will have finished before the negotiations about wheat,
go They don't seem to be very happy to talk about
wheat while they're negotiating.
P. M. That's a matter for their own judgment,
Qo In that connection, Sir, there's a paragraph in
the communique which says the Prime Minister offered
the view that it would be a grave misunderstanding if,
after the negotiations it turned out that the conditions
laid down for Britain's entry were unacceptable to
Commonwealth count-' ies.
P, M, " Grave misfortune". That's an error, There's
a misprint here. You've directed my attention to it
" The Prime Minister offered the view that it would be
a grave misfortune". " Misfortune" was the word
" misunderstanding" doesn't make any sense
" grave misfortune, if after the negotiations it turned
out that the conditions laid down for Britain's entry
were unacceptable to Commonwealth countries." Do you
want me to explain that?
Q, Did the President agree with that?
P M. This is a statement of the view that I was
putting. The President is not to be treated as offering
a view on that matter. Very naturally, because though
he has an interest in the Commonwealth, he wouldn't want
to buy into a discussion of that kind, I am sureo But
the point that I've been putting here is this: Let's
illustrate it. Suppose as a result of the negotiations
between Great Britain and the Six the best that could be
obtained was that by 1970 all our present trade advantages
should disappear, Suppose that happened. Great Britain
would then have to choose whether to go in on those terms,
terms which would involve bringing to an end the special
Commonwealth pattern of trade or to stay out, Now, that's
a pretty grave dilema because to stay out would be to
forego, what I believe is regarded in Great Britain and
here, as the matorial advantage of Great Britain being in
the European Economic Community and yet to go in, to
get those advantages on terms , which involves the termination
of what I ve called the Com. monwealth pattorn by 1970 would,
I am perfectly certaLin, be unaccoptable to the Commronwealth
countries, And therefore this classical choice that's
0 6 * 0@ S o/ 3
PCM.
( Contd0 been talked about a good deal Europe or the Commonwealth
would present itself in a singularly naked formr That,
I think, must be avoided, and one of my objects has been
to emphasise here, in Washington, the nature of that
choice and I must say that I've been quite pleased with
the understanding of that point that I've encountered
and a willingness to sit down ar. d discuss, commodity
by commodity, ways and means which might be put forward
for preserving the competitive status of Australia, for
example, and, at the same time, the competitive status
of the United States much larger interests in some
things but as I said earlier, both of us outside the
Common Market and both of us anxious that the Common
Market should not be established in such a fashion as
to inflict damage on us or to prevent us either the
United States Or Australia from proper economic growth.
These are wide, general words, of course0 They have
to be, but the thing I attach great importance to is
the co-operative spirit behind them,
Is ome year other than 1970 acceptable to you?
What do you mean later? Well, that can't be answered
simply yes or no. There are some commodities on which
we would hope to have a world agreement made and under
those circumstances, special a: rangements made at this
stage would need to be permanent. They would be merged
into a world agreement when it was arrived at. There
are other cases in which, where we now have tariff
preferences in our favour, these preferences would
become negotiable as they say, in GATT, because that
is the machinery that is provided for negotiating about
these matters. You give up a right in order to obtain
one, You do a bit of horse trading. But the machinery
of C! ATT has always beon available for that purpose and
if negotiations of that kind occur, then the existing
state of affairs would terminate. But you can't put
a date to either of those things, they merely exhibit
two possible avenues by which one procedure will be
taken up and merged in another.
In paragraph 2, on page 2, you said it was
agreed that the problems should be approached not on
any basis of theory or the use of particular words
does this refer to 2Astralia's insistence on comparable
outlets. There have been, I think, two words or phrases
that have had a good deal of currency. One is the
great word " preference" on which almost theological
arguments have been going on, to my knowledge, for
thirty years, and w. e agree to disagree, but on this
occasion, I said, " Well, let's forget about the words,"
because words don't matter very much; and, similarly,
we have boon putting forward alternative proposals to
the Six and through Great Britain, for what's been
called ' comparcble outlets", Well if that is a
phrase that excites opposition, lots forget about the
phrase, In other words, it may be that we can evolve
some comparable outlets, without calling them such, and
maintain some of the benefits that we have had in the
past without putting a particular label on them. This
is a purely pragmatic approach, and I t. hink we both
agree that we ought to move away from the world of dogma
and become pragmatic on those matters, And that's the
drill. O tcaone/
P. M.
P. M.
Q. P
S P. 140
0o P .21 Mr. Prime Minister, Soviet Premier Khrushchev
offered a proposal for a world-wide trade organization,
would you have any comment on that? And there was
another related question What is Australiats position
on trade with the Communist countries? Do you favour
more restrictions or less restrictions on that trade?
A world-wide trade organization, did you
say? I wouldn't have thought that was practical
politics, so stated. You can deal with a commodity,
or commodities, on a world basis, There are one or
two now which are the subject of world arrangement, but
when you say, " Let's have a world wide trade organization''
well, frankly, I don't know what it means. It will
become so general in its description as to be ineffective.
As far as we are concerned, we trade with Communist
countries, yes. We export substantial quantities of
wool and wheat. Recently, the Australian wheat farmers
have sold quite large parcels of wheat to Communist
China and the volume of trade is not big, but in the
case of wheat it has recently been fairly substantial
because of the shortages of foodstuffs in Communist
China. We have certain rules that we apply about
strategic materials. If the External Affairs Department
regards any particular material as of strategic
significance, then we won't export it to Communist
Chinr, but that's a limited list. Again, I think you
could take it that our attitude is not a doctrinaire
one. If Jones won't buy our wheat, then somebody
will have to stop growing wheat unless Brown buys it
instead. This is purely a practical approach to the
matter, It is generally assumed that Australia is very
interested in a peaceful settlement of the West New
Guinea dispute. Did you soo some kind of role, either
direct or indirect, on the part of Australia in trying
to get this peaceful settlement through the Bunker
proposals? I would have thought the first condition for
a peaceful settlement of the West New Guinea problem
was for Indonesia to stop making war. I mean, that's
very simple. Then there would be an atmosphere of
peace and I think, myself, there'd be great hope of
getting a peaceful settlement, The two parties don't
appear to be all that distance apart over the Bunker
proposals, There are differences of emphasis and
differences of timetable but, really, in principle, I
would have thought it was negotiable. But the atmosphere
is clouded because of this quite extraordinary maintenance
of armod hostilities by one of the parties while the
talks are about to be resumed. I don't profess to
understand it, I, myself, have twice received
categorical assurances that arms would not be resorted
to in support of the clains once by President Sookarno
himself; on the other occasion by Dr. Subandrio, the
Foreign Ministero It is a very unhappy affair, but
I am sure that if a peaceful settlenont is desired it
would be mnuch quicker if the hostilities so initiated
were dropped, Mr. Prime Minister, do you favour the French
idea of a high price for wheat and a limited market?
Don't ask no to go into the details of the
matter because, first of all, they are very complex
and, secondly, it's not my business on this visit to
discuss thoem CPojo
Qo Mr, Prime Minister, from what Mr. Heath has
said in London, it looks as if " he draft agreerent for
Britain's entry into the Common Market will be ready
by July. Have you any comment on that?
PM. Well, Mr. Heath is in the best position to know,
I grant you. We are having a conference of Prime
Ministers in September. In August, as you know,
official London is not a hive of activity, and therefore,
if the comprehensive series of proposals are to be put
to the Commonwealth Prime Ministers, they will need to
have been formulated by the end of July. As a mtter
of pure reason, that's right. But when I left London,
some of the senior people were somewhat doubtful as to
whether there would be such a comprehensive list by
that time, brt what they did hope was that some of the
major matters might have been negotiated so that the
Prime Ministers could see, in the broau, the shape of
things to come. Indeed they must get to that point
because they meet on September 10th and it's no use
going over there just to speculate about what might
happen. It's much better to argue abcut what will
Shappen, or what will probably happen or what can happen.
Qo Sir, would the enactment of the Trade Bill in
Congress here be a workable alternative to the accommodation
you are seeking with the
PoM. In itself, I wouldn't think so. No, It will
facilitate negotiations, yes,
Q. Mr. Prime Minister, would you comment on the
situation in South East Asia, and more particularly
on the role of SEATO? Do you think it's finished, or
is it a going concern?
P. M. I don't think that SEATO is by any means finished.
So far as Laos is concerned, well, we are all looking
forward now hoping, and I think not unreasonably, that
the now government arrangements that have been made will
work and that Laos will be able to take her position as
a free and independent and neutral country. If that
happens, the position of Thailand becomes more stable, less
threatened. Of course the actively troubling spot at
the moment is South Vietnam, but I think there is reason
to believe that the position there is improving and I,
myself, am pretty optimistic about it; in the absence,
of course, of interventions by people not at present
engaged. By and large, I think SEiTO, although its
means are not v'ry extensive, has been a very useful
instrument and it has maintained.. and attracted, the
support of its members United States, Great Britain,
ourselves, for example, have all come to the party, both
economically and otherwise. I think that as a result
of all these things, there is a strungthening of morale
in South East Asia, and a growing disposition to resist
being overrun by other people. And anything that can
be done to strengthen that patriotic, sensible view,
ought to be done, I know that it's rather popular
from time to time to say that SEATO doesn't matter,
I think it does.