COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA
SPEECH BY
The Rt Hon. J. G. GORTON, M. P.
ON
PRIME MINISTER'S VISIT ABROAD
Ministerial Statement
[ From the ' Parliamentary Debates', 4 June 1968]
Mr GORTON ( Higgins-Prime Minister)
-by leave-Mr Speaker, the House will be
aware of the circumstances which preceded
my recent vis? t to the United States of
America. Briefly restated, they were that the
visit had been envisaged before President
Johnson made his speech of 31st March.
In that speech he announced that he would
cease bombing over a significant area of
North Vietnam-the most populous areain
the -hope that this restraint might lead to
similar restraints by North Vietnam, and to
the opening of talks with North Vietnam
which might lead to the achievement of an
honourable peace. At that time the President
also announced that as an earnest of his
sincere desire to achieve a just and honourable
peace bhe had decided to devote his
energies to that end and would relinquish
his chances of re-election by withdrawing
his name from nomination as the Democratic
Presidential candidate at the next
elections. I was -in doubt, in these circumstances, as
to whether that projected visit by me should
take place. But President Johnson urged me
to come and because the visit would give me
a chance to get to ' know the -man who will be
President until 20th January 1969, and to
get to know same of the men who may
17655/ 68 succeed him in that office after that date, I
thought that it would be of value to myself
and to the Government and to Australia to
make the visit. I believe that the visit justified
that judgment. I have had the opportunity
to speak to, and to get to ' know, the
President and members of the present
administration-the Secretary of Defence,
the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the
Treasury and many others. Indeed I had, in
all, six separate meeting periods with the
President, either alone or with members of
his Cabinet. These, I think, covered an
amount of time which had not previously
been set aside by any President for a visit
of an Australian Prime Minister.
I did not believe that the visit would
result in any new, dramatic, developments
but I1 did think that it would give me an
opportunity ' to assess the fears, sometimes
experienced and expressed in this and other
countries, that the United States might lose
interest in -the. area of South ' East Asia,
might return to a form of isolationism. I
have had the opportunity to assess the
validity of those fears, Mr Speaker, I believe
they are groundless. In developing my
reasons for that judgment, I should like to
quote first from the remarks which I made
on arrival at the White; House, and secondly
2
from the speech in reply which the President,
later that day, gave. On behalf of
the Australian Government I1sa id:
As Australians see it, the problems of the future,
although worldwide, are likely to be most acute
in Asia. We see there an area which needs an
economic and technical base such as Europe
already has. We see there an area where development
and progress are essential if the peoples of
these divergent nations are to support and defend
something dynamic and developing-not something
stagnant. ' We see there an area crying for technical
skills, a more experienced administration, a more
equitable sharing of an increasing -income-and
we see there an area subject, above all, to the
threat of subversion, terrorism and aggression.
Perhaps, Mr President, though I don't think so,
we Australians see this out of perspective-because
it is here that we, contiguous to Asia-part of
the South ' East Asia region-live and breathe and
have our present and our future. It is here that
we feel that we can best contribute to stability and
progress and to preserving political freedom which
has economic freedom as its goal. it is here that
we can play our part-but we cannot effectively
play it alone.
I hope the House would agree that this is
Australia's approach to the region of Asia
in which we live; it is certainly the Government's
approach, and I believe it to be the
proper approach-that we should want to
see stability in the region to our north,
that we should want to see economic progress
in the north, that we should do what
we can to achieve those objectives, but what
we cannot alone see them effectively
achieved in the time in which they ought
to be achieved. That was an expression of
the Australian Government's interest in the
area and of what we believe should be done
there, and indeed an indication that we feel
the United States has a duty to help in that
approach and that attitude in that area.
That night the President replied to these
remarks and I quote two passages from his
speech: I know there are some in Asia and elsewhere
who are wondering tonight whether the United
States will maintain its commitments in Asia;
who are wondering tonight whether the strain of
the struggle in Vietnam will lead the United
States to withdraw and leave two thirds of
humanity to its fate without American assistance
or American support. I cannot speak for
my successor but I can speak for myself and the
answer is no.
America will not withdraw. The second
passage I quote from the President's speech
is this:
In the years ahead we in the United States
hope that the new Asia that is being born will
be increasingly organised to shape its own destiny. It should be able to do more for itself and rely
less on the U. S. But I have no doubts that there
will be no return here to isolationism.
The President went on to point out how in
Administration after Administration since
1941, whether the Administration had been
Democratic or Republican, the same thread
had run through the approach of all the
United States Presidents, that there was a
duty and an obligation, to maintain an
interest in this part of the world, to give,
where it was required, military assistance
against attack, but above all to seek to
raise the economic living standards of the
peoples in the area so that they would be
the more able themselves to resist any
threatened attack, so that they would be
the more able themselves to help themselves
to provide a better standard of living for
their people.
Mr Speaker, -these public statements, and
the private conversations with the President
and his Cabinet which occurred, have left
me in no doubt-and this is a judgment
which is only to be taken as a judgmentthat
the present Administration will continue
the struggle in Vietnam until a peace
which assures the South Vietnamese a
chance to choose to elect -their own Government,
free from threat, is secured. And
they have left me in no doubt that the
present Administration will continue its
interest in, and its help for, the South East
Asian region. But this is an Administration
which is in office only until January next
yeiar-although this is some 7 months -a-way
-and it is a reasonable and proper question
to ask: What will the attitude of the United
States be after that date? I can only say
that I have had the opportunity to hold face
to face discussions with Vice President
Humphrey, who is a candidate for the
Democratic nomination for President, with
Governor Rockefeller, who is a Republican
candidate for nomination for President, and
to hold a conversation-unfortunately by
telephone, not face -to face-with Mr
Nixon who is the other Republican candidate
for President.
After these contacts, my own assessment
-and that is all it can be-is that I do
not believe, should any of these candidates
be successful, that there would be any basic
change in the interest of the United States
in this region. I do not believe that there
would be any retreat to isolationism, and
if this assessment is true it is an important
factor on which Australia's future decisions
should be based.
The visit helped us in getting background
to assist in the formulation of our own
decisions as to what we can and should
do in this area in the future, for our security
in the future is bound up with, and cannot
be disentangled from, the security and
stability of the whole of the region in which
we live. It is necessary for us in those circumstances
to make our own decisions as
to what we can do to bring about security
and stability in the region; but in making
those decisions we cannot but be affected
by judgment as to what others will do for
the same purposes in the same area.
The assessments which I have made have
helped us, I think, towards formulating
those future decisions so important for the
area and so important for ourselves. There
are other matters still to be judged and still
to be assessed; other discussions still to be
held-such as the five power talks in which
we will participate-but at least I feel that
some of the imponderables, some of the
unknown factors of which the Minister for
Defence ( Mr Fairhiall) recently spoke, have,
as a result of this visit, been able to be
better assessed by the Government.
The talks held in Washington ranged over
a wide compass. They covered the present
situation in Vietnam, they covered the progress
or lack of progress at the preliminary
talks at present proceeding in Paris, they
covered the broader aspects of regional
security-not only military but economic
security-and they covered the problems
caused by the announced British withdrawal
from South East Asia. They were essentially
private talks in many aspects. But I
would say to the House that I formed a
judgment firstly, that the United States, as
I have said, would continue to have a presence
and an interest in the area of South
East Asia; secondly, that the Paris talks
were making little or no progress but at
least were continuing and that the United
States was not prepared to accede to what
President Johnson has called a fake peace
in Vietnam; thirdly, that the United States was as interested as we are not only in
providing military assistance to threatened
countries but also in helping them to help
themselves economically; fourthly, that the
British withdrawal from the Malaysia-
Singapore area caused them some considerable
disquiet in that they felt that the
stability in that area might by that withdrawal
be impaired; and fifthly, that the
ANZUS pact has a real and genuine meaning
and is the greatest guarantee that Australia
itself has against aggression. Its
application to areas outside the Pacific area
is not so definite as is its application to
ourselves; but neither should its application
to areas outside the Pacific area be discounted.
Mr Speaker, these may be modest conclusions
from a visit of not long duration
but the purposes of the visit were themselves
modest. Those purposes were to seek
assessments of the matters of which I have
spoken which were amongst, but were not
all of, the imponderables and unknown
factors of which the Minister for Defence
spoke in his speech on defence. But the conclusions
reached, together with those which
we shall draw in the future from the progress
of the five power talks shortly to be
held, will be those conclusions on which
our future defence and economic assistance
plans will be predicated. Those plans cannot
be projected into the future yet for the
future is as yet too unknown.
But I think-and on this note I conclude
the report of the visit, Mr Speaker-that
some progress has been made in helping
us to assess and to judge data on which we
shall in the future make our decisions.
Those decisions, based on this and the other
conclusions which we draw from other discussions,
will lead us at the appropriate
time, when we have what we regard as
sufficient on which to make judgments, to
come to the Parliament and to present to
the Parliament what the future plans of the
Australian Government will be for the protection
and the advancement of the region
in which we live. And this is of the essence
of the protection and the progress of the
country which we represent.
BY AU. THORITY: A. 3. ARTHUR, COMMONWEALTH GOVERNMENT PRINTER, CANBERRA, A. C. T.