PRESS OFFICE TRANSCRIPT WEDNESDAY, 3 DECEMBER, 1980
PRIME MINISTER INTERVIEWED BY JIM BONNER ON ABC'S " AM"
Steve Cosser
In Federal Parliament yesterday, the Leader of the Oppositi on
called on the Prime minister to review the classification of
secret documents in light of Monday's ruling in the High Court
against the Federal Government's injunction which sought to
prevent the publication of the book " Documents on Australian
Defence and Foreign Policy, 1968-75". The Prime Minister was
urged to prevent current guidelines being used as a device
to stop discussion and criticism of Government policy. However,
in this exclusive interview with Jim Bonner, Mr. Fraser
defended the Government's action.
Prime Minister
We weren't trying to protect any secrets that might have been
made, or any arrangements that have been developed over the
last five years, because they were mostly documents of the
Labor years. And so we were acting out of a basis of principle.
Quite obviously any Government needs to be examining what it
is doing, needs to be making sure that various security
classifications are used with discretion. I would hope that
that is a continuing process. But there is a great deal of
material.-advice on sensitive matters from Departments to
Ministers, especially of Foreign Affairs and Defence, or the
Prime Minister which must be handled with discretion;
involving security material, conduct of relationships between
different countries. It is just not good enough to think that
these things can be published without doing harm to relations
between countries.
Bonner-But some of those documents in that particular book go back
to 1968 when there would have been a Liberal/ National Country
Party Government in power.
Prime Minister
A few of them do. They were not documents of this particular
Government. The main documents, the ones that had most interest,
would have been the more recent ones which were prepared and
developed in the 1972 to 1975 years. There is almost a view
that some people seem to have that there is not only a right but
almost a moral obligation to publish everything that people
can lay their hands on about the activities and about the affairs
of Government. I will be amongst the first to concede that full
public disclosure of what Governments are doing, to the maximum
extent, is a good thing. But when you come into this area of
foreign affairs and defence, where relationships between other
people as individuals, as Ministers, as Heads' of Government
where just the relationship between countries is involved you
cannot have the sort of communication you need if you are going to do
it through the front pages of the newspapers. ./ 2
2
Bonner But it does seem that apart from the instances that you have
given that the bureacracy, the public service, is holding
information that doesn't come into those categories. It has
been classified ' secret' unnecessarily. Do you agree witIh that?
Prime Minister
You have got to look at the circumstances at the time. when
the documents were devised. I do not particularly want to
criticise the classifications that were put on the documents in
those Labor years. The classifications were there. They were
dealing with sensitive matters involving relationships between
Governments. I was a little bit concerned to hear on " AM" a
suggestion that certain things would not be published and this
came from a former senior public servant he indicated that
the previous Government had made a decision that certain things
would not be published merely because they would be some
advantage to the then Opposition. Well, that is not a principle
that I have ever stated. That is not the basis on which matters
ought to be published or ought not to be published.
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