NQ DATE
M/ 118 3 August 1973
COMMONWEAITH HEADS OF GOVERNMENT MEETING
The following is the text of a statement issued in
* Ottawa on 2 August ( Ottawa time) by the Prime Minister and
Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Whitlam, at the opening of the
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting:
" The Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs,
Mr Whitlamr, said in Ottawa this morning that he looked forward to
wide-ranging and substantial discussions about present political
trends in the world, economic issues including trade, monetary
* and development questions and also on intra-Commonwealth relations,
at the Commonwealth Meeting which starts in Ottawa today.
Mr Whitlam reiterated that the Australian Government
intended to adopt a more constructive and helpful approach towards
the Commonwealth in the future.
Although it was fashionable in some quarters to disparage
the Commonwealth, Mr Whitlam said, he hoped the Ottawa meeting
would give a new stimulus to constructive cooperation and
consultation between the diverse members of the Commonwealth. * 12
-2-
More than half of these members were, he added, littoral
states of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
Mr Whitlam said he saw in the Commonwealth a very valuable
forum for cooperation, contacts and exchanges of views at all levels.
He was, he added, looking forward to establishing personal
contact with a number of Heads of Government, especially from
African and Caribbean countries and to renewing personal contacts
with others, including the host Prime Minister, Mr Trudeau.
Senator Willesee's visit in June to a number of
Commonwealth countries in Africa, the first such visit by an
Australian Minister for many years, and his own visits to India,
New Zealand, Britain and Mauritius earlier in the year, as well as
his contacts with the Prime Minister of Fiji and his recent
correspondence with the Prime Minister of Malaysia and Singapore,
Tun Razak and Mr Lee Kuan Yew, had, Mr Whitlam said, been
valuable in paving the way for effective Australian participation
in the conference."