Dominic:
Welcome, everyone. My name is Dominic Meagher. I am the deputy director of the John Curtin Research Centre, and this is ‘In Conversation’ with Michael Easson. It’s Thursday, the 25th of May, and I believe this is the 14th ‘In Conversation’ that we’ve hosted.
We’ll spend a little bit of time just essentially in conversation discussing Michael Easson’s new book on Gough Whitlam’s foreign policy. And this should be an opportunity for the audience to put in some questions that I’ll be able to raise in our conversation, but we’ll get to that.
Acknowledgment of country: I’m contacting everyone from Gadigal Land in the Eora Nation, and we pay respects to the elders present and emerging in this very important year, given the upcoming referendum on the Voice to parliament which John Curtin Research Centre strongly endorses and urges everyone to support.
We’ve got with us Michael Easson who is a renowned Australian Labor historian. Michael these days is in private business. He’s the chair of EG Funds Management. I hope that I’ve got that correct.
Michael:
You have.
Dominic:
Thank God. And he is a Labor historian and formerly was the Vice President of the ACTU and the secretary of the Labor Council of New South Wales and Senior Vice President of the New South Wales ALP. He has an educational background from UNSW in Political Science and a PhD. in History from the ADFA which makes him the perfect pedigree for discussing this topic. Michael has written a book on Gough Whitlam’s foreign policy which is surprisingly relevant to today’s foreign policy discussion, which is surprisingly at the forefront of the political discussion. Usually, foreign policy doesn’t make that big of a hit and certainly the 1970’s foreign policy doesn’t make that big of a hit, but here we are in 2023 Gough Whitlam’s foreign policy and Labor Party’s current foreign policy are incredibly relevant and they are echoes of each other.
Michael, I’ll let you, maybe, open with a few of your initial thoughts and then we can discuss bits of the book and how you went about writing it and what you thought is most interesting.
Michael:
Fantastic. Well, thank you very much, Dom, and thank you to everyone online. I tell a joke now that this book has been launched effectively a few times. This is the third time. I would say that there’s one thing that every author fears and that’s someone asking them “I noticed you never mentioned…” and then breaking into a smirk and a gotcha grin. So, I might as well admit that there was one matter that I forgot to mention in the book which had immense global significance and indeed great significance for the cultural life of Australia. I’m referring to that afternoon in September 1974 when a young Australian, Barry McKenzie, returned to Australia with his aunt. At Sydney airport she courtesied to Margaret and Gough Whitlam. Prime Minister Whitlam said: “Arise, Dame Edna”. From that moment began the 49-year career of Dame Edna Everage, previously known as only Edna Everage. That’s indicative, at that moment, that Whitlam had a great sense of humour. That whimsy carried him through many events of his prime ministership. Everyone who worked with him, who was close to him, talked about this person sending himself up, the self-deprecating individual who had this enormous impact on Australia. He became prime minister after 23 years of Labor being in opposition. The government, arguably, or many of its ministers, certainly, were ill-prepared for government, having been out of office for so long. The Whitlam government had more than a few ministers who didn’t do brilliantly in their role. So, I think Gough needed to have a sense of humour and that’s one thing that drew me to him. From understanding Gough Whitlam’s impact on Australia as school kid, then as he got elected prime minister, and then being at university. That personality is in many ways a great complement to the man who was interested in public policy and Australia’s place in the world.
Why did I write this book? Well, partly because I thought it was worth a small effort on my part. And so, I spent whatever spare time I had in the last year to write it. I think many of the issues of today do have echoes 50 years ago when Whitlam became prime minister. I might focus on three. One is what is Australia’s relations with the United States. That relates to the second point, what could be Australia’s foreign policy, our place in the world. And thirdly, what should be our relationship with China. On the latter, Whitlam was one of the first, if not the first MP in the federal parliament, in 1954, who argued that Australia should recognise the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC). And in the book – the cover of the book has, you might not be able to see it very clearly here, but you can see Gough Whitlam on his visit to China in 1973. The photo shows a banner, ‘warm send-off to prime minister Whitlam’, at Tiananmen Square, as he left in October 1973. Earlier in 1971, he visited China much against the advice of some of his advisors. Indeed, Graham Freudenberg initially said ‘you better not do it’ but one afternoon, when he convinced himself he should, Whitlam booked the tickets or made the arrangements, he sent off a telegram to Chou En Lai, the Chinese Premier, and from there he was on his way.
That initiative to forge a relationship with China was an important and good initiative. I remember being at school at the time and thinking about what was happening. Whitlam left Beijing and was then in Tokyo and the news broke that Henry Kissinger, the foreign policy adviser to Nixon, the National Security Advisor was his title in those days, Kissinger was in Beijing. And I thought ‘wow! We’ve won. We must now win the next election’ because the Liberals were saying that Whitlam was being played like a trout by the Chinese leadership, how foolish he was to go to China, and here were the Americans doing something similar. Our relationship with China was a big feature of Whitlam’s period as Leader. And I’ve published in The Toscin an edited extract from my book about why that mattered and why Whitlam was forward thinking about how the relationship with China might develop. For example, in James Curran’s latest book, the one on Australia’s relations with China [Australia’s China Odyssey. From Euphoria to Fear, 2022], he found a memo that Whitlam wrote to our first ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, Stephen Fitzgerald. Whitlam addressed the issue of what we should do with Taiwan. Should we shut down all contact between Australia and Taiwan? We recognised that there should be one China, but Whitlam said ‘Let’s take the Chinese at their word…’; they’re talking about peaceful reunification. So, people-to-people contact, trade contact, with Taiwan should continue. That was an interesting perspective by Whitlam 50 years ago.
At the risk of ranting, I might deal with the other two issues – Australia’s place in the world. I think Labor governments tend to think harder about this question than the other side of politics. We wrestle with not wanting to be anyone’s uncritical ally; we want to forge our own independent identity. That’s been done over the period since Whitlam … I would say across the board, and I think a lot of the Whitlam changes and reforms in foreign policy were continued to a large extent by subsequent governments. But before Whitlam got in, we were not a very effective country in positioning ourselves in the world. We had great relations with South Africa. We were allowing apartheid sporting trips to Australia. We could have been in danger of being targeted as an apartheid friendly nation. And it looked like that, or we were regarded in that category by some, because of our links with South Africa. We were a country that needed to break free and create our own identity in the world. And I think Whitlam largely contributed to that and it is what all governments subsequently and especially Labor governments really focused on.
In terms of our relationship with the United States, one of the three issues I raised at the beginning, Whitlam redefined the bases or the joint defence facilities on Australian soil. And during his government, he ensured that we were truly jointly in control of Northwest Cape and Pine Gap and so on. During the period in opposition, he supported the Northwest Cape in the late ’50s and with Pine Gap in 1963 in the debate within the Labor party where that famous photograph where a streetlamp in Canberra shone a light on the leader of the opposition Arthur Calwell and then deputy leader Gough Whitlam waiting for the federal conference of the Labor party to determine what our policy was on Pine Gap and whether we would support the facilities there. Whitlam was on the right side of history in that instant, and we truly had to make sure that the Labor Party was fit for government. That was part of the Whitlam struggle within the Labor Party. Ensuring that we are in control of anything on our soil or jointly in control and explaining why those facilities are important for the world was part of the case. Meaning that if America gets early warning of anything happening somewhere that might indicate a first strike move or some sort of conflagration happening, it is important not only that Australia and America know those things, so that they can take precautionary action. It’s also important for potential adversaries to know that the system of defence security is so robust that if you’re going to try and do something sneaky, we’ll find out about it because of the facilities in Australia. That helps deterrence. Whitlam argued that this was important for the peace of the world and Australia should play its part. He did so in a robust way.
And so, these are three areas where there’s an echo of modern times – relations with China, relations with the United States, how does Australia proudly present and see itself in the world and what actions we should take.
Dominic:
And you mentioned some fantastic anecdotes. I love this one that the opposition is … then government used, the Liberal Party used … saying China played him like a trout. It reminds me of this period, The Manchurian Candidate moment in the recent Parliament when that was said about Richard Marles who is now full charge ahead on developing AUKUS. It looks as ridiculous as this idea that Gough was played like a trout a week before Kissinger and then Nixon arrived in China.
Michael:
Kissinger, yes, exactly. And for those who don’t know, a movie was released in 1963 called The Manchurian Candidate; it was about a candidate for VP who might become president who was really brainwashed by the Chinese during the Korean War. The movie was taken off air in the cinemas in 1963 after Kennedy’s assassination and only later became a more famous movie. It was remade later on with Meryl Streep, I think. Angela Lansbury played the role in the first version of the movie… Before the last federal election in Australia, there was an article in The Australian where someone was saying that Richard Marles was ‘the Manchurian Candidate’ as if he was some pro-Chinese puppet about to become the defence minister. Glad we all have a sense of humour in contemplating the absurdity of some of the articles that sometimes get written.
Dominic:
Well, I’ll be honest, the movie The Manchurian Candidate came across my radar through the recent-ish … I’m not sure how much age I’m now showing … Captain America Civil War, maybe it’s 10 years ago, when our Iron Man called Captain America as Manchurian Candidate. And I had to look up what that meant. I was five or six years ahead of the rest of the Australian public, I think. You’ve raised a few of the parts of the book that focus on things that have echoes in today. The book itself is structured around five major themes of Gough’s foreign policy being China relations, the ANZAC Alliance that you’ve already mentioned, the US defence bases that you touched on but then also PNG independence and Indonesia relations, both of which are again echoing in today’s foreign policy landscape. PNG, hugely in the moment last week with the US president supposed to have been arriving in PNG for the first time as a sitting US president and then cancelling because of ridiculous negotiations over the US debt ceiling …
Michael:
Maybe I could comment on that…
Dominic:
Yeah, and especially with the view to Gough’s position on PNG, I guess, and what he thought …
Michael:
Yeah. Interestingly, in the early ’70s, the South Pacific Forum was created by the leaders of the different South Pacific nations. And we used to send the minister for external territories, the National Party or the Country Party, minister Charles Edward “Ceb” Barnes. When Whitlam became the Prime Minister, he said “I should go as prime minister and foreign minister.” So, that began the tradition of Australian heads of state turning up to, and foreign ministers attending the South Pacific Forums to pay respect to those emerging and emergent countries. With respect to PNG, some critics of Whitlam argued that he hurried along the independence process. And even today, I’ve spoken to foreign policy practitioners who were around in the Whitlam period who still argue this point. I side with Whitlam in arguing that independence for Papua New Guinea was good to have achieved in September 1975. To give him credit, the then shadow minister Andrew Peacock also supported independence [at that time] and we were lucky to have some of the early leaders of PNG, including Michael Somare, who were able to handle independence. When the Australian flag went down and the PNG flag went up in September 1975 at Port Moresby, Sir John Guise said Australia didn’t leave with shame or having been forced out. Australia left with pride. That moment of history and the encouragement of independence is to Australia’s and Whitlam’s credit. It helped create better relations with PNG as a result. Whitlam also argued, and he published some articles immediately before the 1972 election where he talked about or rather alluded to the potential for breakaway provinces of PNG including Bougainville and so forth; he argued effectively that independence was good [so as] to consolidate the one nation of PNG rather than delaying and potentially having some sort of freedom or liberation movement forming either in PNG as a whole or in parts of the nation. And so, I think Whitlam handled that very well and I give him full marks for that.
Dominic:
I think that sounds very right. I noticed that that particular line that you mentioned that Australia didn’t leave with shame but with pride resonates with what Anthony Albanese said when he went to Papua New Guinea and referred to their independence and saying Australia didn’t grant Papua New Guinea independence because it was never ours to give. Papua New Guinea rightfully asserted independence and we supported it. It’s not a direct quote but that was the essence of what he had to say.
Michael:
Yes. And to allude to Whitlam again, in his memoir, The Whitlam Government, he makes the comment that … he said basically [words to the effect] ‘If I’m remembered for nothing else, if I’m just remembered for the achievement of PNG’s independence, my public career has been worth it.’ I think that underscored how strongly he thought about the issue. And he’d visited PNG and indeed Indonesia many times when he was in opposition. He took a curious interest. His curiosity led him to try to understand the countries immediately to our north, especially Indonesia and what became PNG. He showed a lot more curiosity than those prime ministers prior to his coming to office.
Dominic:
Well, we might move around the region a little bit. And just before we move to Indonesia, what do you think Gough would have thought about of the Papua New Guinea since independence. Would he have thought that his legacy or his part of that story had had lived up to what he hoped?
Michael:
Well, a lot of people play the game of what would Whitlam think today. And the true answer is “Who knows?” but look, PNG has had a mixed history. More recently, some issues to do with corruption and a failed state loom. I think we have a great responsibility in Australia to take an interest in helping PNG. We do. The major part of our aid budget goes to PNG. And I think that will long continue. It’s interesting that, as you mentioned earlier, the United States was planning to have the US president in PNG but that got abandoned. Part of the problem with the region and some of the competition with China is that America exited the region after the Cold War ended. A new embassy for the United States is [currently] being built in the Solomon Islands. Why? I think they shut down their embassy about 30 years ago. They neglected the region, and we haven’t, and we can’t afford to and … [to put your question in these terms:] would it have been better for us to have been managing PNG as a colonial power or is it better for PNG to discover its own way? That question, I think, answers itself.
Dominic:
I completely agree. And you can hear that in the echoes of everything that we stand for today as well. It would be completely hypocritical if we had tried to do something else than what we did.
Michael:
Yes. I might mention what some people have said to me about the book, if I might do that, and that is that I’m critical of Whitlam’s recognition of the Baltic states, which was completely inexplicable, and that was the recognition of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia being incorporated into the Soviet Union. No idea why that occurred other than the then head of the Department of Foreign Affairs felt it was a good idea. I don’t know why the prime minister agreed to do that. Secondly, I’m critical of Whitlam with respect to the Vietnamese refugees and being callous about their coming to Australia. Thirdly, I think he was on the wrong side of history about East Timor though I understand Whitlam’s thinking about a failed state in the making in East Timor. The Portuguese were terrible colonial masters, second worst to the Belgians in how they managed their territories. So, I understood Whitlam, but I think he was on the wrong side of history on that.
I was critical of the Iraqi Ba’ath Party loans affair where Whitlam, after he was dismissed [in November 1975], was tempted by the wrong people in the Labor Party to seek a half-a-million-dollar donation from the Iraqis. But despite all the criticisms, I basically say “what a guy!”, what an amazing figure on the national stage. Whitlam had a huge impact. I tried to draw a distinction between Whitlamism, the ideas that he proposed, and the man. And sometimes, he let himself down in not measuring up to the high standards he otherwise articulated.
Dominic:
I was planning to go through the region but since we’ve moved to Europe a little bit, in the book you mentioned some disputes over Gough’s approach to Israel. And I thought this again is a significant issue or has always been a significant issue but it’s an acutely significant issue now, but really more interested in at the time. Tell us why that was difficult or contested or how you …
Michael:
Again, I don’t understand Whitlam when he was prime minister and his feelings and actions concerning Israel. Israel was under attack in the Yom Kippur War in 1973. At one point, it looked as if the invading armies would tear chunks out of Israeli territory. There was a question as to whether the country would survive. Dr Moss Cass MP urged Whitlam to call for a ceasefire early. Instead, when the tide turned, Whitlam called for a ceasefire. The timing of some of his remarks was questionable. Nonetheless, Whitlam established a principle that all governments have followed subsequently and that is to support a two-state solution, to ensure that there [should be] two states with secure and recognised borders – for Israel and also for Palestine – which after all was what the United Nations resolved in 1947, to create a Jewish state and an Arab state in Palestine. And so, Whitlam, in updating the position of Australia in 1973, especially, created a [policy] precedent that has been followed by every government subsequently. Even when Scott Morrison announced the recognition or the move eventually of the Australian Embassy from Tel Aviv to West Jerusalem, he argued in his statement that that would be in the context of the two-state solution. Whitlam espoused the position which has been followed consistently ever since, but he lacked finesse, and he lacked sympathy for a state that was under siege – indeed, so soon after the creation of Israel after the Holocaust. Whitlam had a lot of criticism from many people in the Labor party including Bob Hawke. Syd Einfeld, who had been a great friend of his, who won the seat of Phillip in Sydney’s eastern suburbs in the early 1960s [and was Deputy Leader of the ALP in the NSW Parliament in the early 1970s], couldn’t believe what Whitlam was doing. In his striving to be ‘fair’, Whitlam presented in an unfair light what Labor’ s position and the government’s position should be towards the conflict at that time. But on the fundamental question, the two-state solution, he clearly espoused that in his policy stance. That basic position is uncontroversial over the subsequent 50 years, notwithstanding Whitlam’s lack of finesse and sympathy for the people [of Israel in 1973].
Dominic:
I’ll encourage people to keep putting questions in the Q&A. We have had a couple. And I encourage people to do that. We’ll come to them in a second. I did want to ask about … you write about Whitlamism in foreign policy, and you characterised it in a few ways saying Whitlamism was a more independent stance, an Australian stance in foreign affairs, less militarily oriented and not open to suggestions of racism that would be focused on four commitments with national security, united friendly PNG, better relations with Indonesia, and peace and prosperity in our neighborhood. Those still seem to be essentially the tenets of the current Labor government’s foreign policy more or less-ish.
Michael:
Totally agree with you, Dom. I think that’s exactly right. And forging sympathetic relations with Indonesia is probably the most critical aspect of that. Given the changed nature of China, especially under Xi Jinping, some things happened to us that are not of our accord. We never sought to create a combative position with China, but China has. And China is unpopular with all the neighbours except for Burma, for the wrong reasons, and to some degree North Korea. Its great friends in the region are Cambodia and Pakistan – to some degree, for historic reasons, to do with the Indians – but China is not popular with the Philippines, with Vietnam, with South Korea, with Japan and indeed with Indonesia, because the PRC claim that their boundaries in the South China Sea extend virtually off the coast of Borneo or Kalimantan. China has adopted a much more aggressive policy than it ever previously espoused, even with nuclear weapons. China proudly used to say: ‘We will only have a limited number of weapons so that we can defend ourselves.’ Now, they’re churning out mass production of nuclear weapons. It’s completely unnecessary and Australian policy has been influenced by that, by the reaction of our neighbors.
Dominic:
I should just clarify while, yes, they’re increasing production very rapidly, it is from, historically, a pretty low base. They don’t have 5,000 missiles. They have several [thousand?] but they’re increasing at a rapid rate, as you said.
Michael:
They’re moving ahead at a rapid rate, and we don’t know how many now.
Dominic:
We have a couple of questions on those two countries in particular, Indonesia and China. So, I might go to them. David Cragg asks, I’ll just read the question directly: ‘Did Gough share Arthur Calwell’s 1961 hostility to the Indonesian occupation of West Papua? And why wasn’t the coalition more proactive on West Papua and why didn’t they best the coalition on this issue?’
Michael:
Whitlam had the view – contrary to Calwell’s – that the Indonesians should take all the former territory administered by the Dutch. West Papua, Irian Jaya, Whitlam said, should go to the Indonesians and that we shouldn’t be supportive of any continued Dutch claim for sovereignty or running the territory of West Papua. The government at the time, under Menzies, talked to the Dutch about the possibility of some joint management with Papua New Guinea and West Papua, creating a single entity, but the Dutch weren’t interested. And the government of Australia really wasn’t that interested either. The Americans weren’t wanting to pick a fight with Indonesia over their claim for all the former territory of the Dutch. And so, for those reasons, Whitlam had had a viewpoint of saying Indonesia should run it all. Calwell was hostile to the occupation of West Papua by Indonesia and opposed that occupation. That was an area of tension between the two, between Whitlam and Calwell.
Dominic:
How did that work out as an area of tension with Indonesia?
Michael:
Could you say that again?
Dominic:
You said it’s an area of tension between those two but what about Indonesia? I mean, that would be tense with them as well, right?
Michael:
Well, yes. Of course, Australia had a history of supporting Indonesian independence and the Dutch were cranky with Australia because under Evatt in 1947 to 1949, Australia was very strongly of the view that we should support decolonisation of Indonesia. And so, that’s another reason why the Dutch weren’t friendly towards us when prime minister Menzies floated privately the idea of maybe a confederation between Dutch Papua New Guinea, and eastern Papua New Guinea, under Australian control. They weren’t that interested. And in the end, I think, it was better that, in the end — I’m not sure what the right approach should have been — but the Indonesians were determined to take all the old territory of the Dutch West Indies under their flag. That was Indonesia except for West Papua, which they then seized in May 1963.
Dominic:
That begins to touch on some of the contemporary issues with Russia and Ukraine where Putin seems to view … I don’t want to draw an even very close parallel between them, I guess, but the way you face it makes me think of …where Putin is describing Ukraine as former colonial territory and therefore part of the Russian Empire. I don’t want to necessarily imply equivalent legitimacy in those two scenarios, but we had a question from one of the audience, David Murray, asking if Whitlam were around today, what would he have thought of the invasion of Ukraine? And would he have taken a stance like some of the contemporaries in … well, I guess, a range of stances within the Labor Party today, on that. So, what do you think you would have made of that? Would that have reframed through Whitlam’s foreign policy for Australia, or would it have been something else?
Michael:
Just for the benefit of anyone who might wonder what all of this means, détente was the idea that the United States and Russia should get to know each other and lower the temperature. Already we had a hotline between the Kremlin and the White House, which came in after Kennedy’s assassination. In fact, Prof. Julius Stone [Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Sydney] came up with the idea, an Australian academic, that there should be a hotline between the two. But there were tensions building up and Nixon, by going to China and separately engaging with Brezhnev, the leader of the Soviet Union, was all about reducing the temperature, and getting the leaders to get to know each other. To some extent that had happened previously, but the Americans also during the period of détente wanted to say to the Chinese “We will protect you if the Soviet Union decides to wipe you out.” Because Brezhnev did canvas with the United States President “These people are out of control. We need to take them out.” And of course, from the 1960s onward the Soviet Union and China were in conflict through their respective communist parties, an ideological clash, but détente was all about ‘can we lower the temperature through more people-to-people contact’ and that sort of discussion was what détente means. I think Australia wants foreign policy players to have contact with each other and to ensure that misunderstandings are minimised. And therefore, the ban on visits between Australian government ministers and the Chinese equivalents has been terrible. We’ve been arguing under the government of Anthony Albanese and the previous government to resume people-to-people and diplomatic and ministerial contacts. To some degree, Australia believes that we should try to find a middle ground solution but without throwing away our moral compass. I think you need to have a moral compass for conducting foreign policy as well as being thoughtful and realistic about what’s achievable. Foreign policy brings all those things together, though sometimes the strands might be hard to reconcile. One thing I highlight in this book is that there was the realist Whitlam and the idealist Whitlam and sometimes they clashed. I think the best example of that is with East Timor. The realist Whitlam thought East Timor was a basket case. The Portuguese left nothing behind other than the weapons which Fretelin seized. He thought that it would be an unviable state. So, Indonesia, you can take it, might have been his thinking. Indonesia invaded East Timor during the caretaker period, after Whitlam was dismissed, with Fraser the acting prime minister. So, it wasn’t under Whitlam’s period as prime minister that that invasion occurred. But I’m sure Whitlam thought it was fair enough. He was on the wrong side of history partly because the Indonesians were so brutal in the way that they treated the East Timorese. Immense sympathy came for the East Timorese within Australia. And one can draw this parallel between Putin and Suharto in this period and that is I tribute Putin for having created The Ukraine. To some degree, The Ukraine was a very divided society prior to his invasion. Since then, very much in the main, the local Russian Orthodox, the Ukrainian Orthodox, and the Catholic Uniate Church of The Ukraine, they’ve all come together to condemn the invasion, and the people have all come together and fiercely resisted the Russian invasion. There’s been the forging of the national character like never before in The Ukraine. Thank you, Mr. Putin. And in a similar way, the way the Indonesians brutally handled the East Timorese created an East Timorese identity even stronger than anything that was there before. So, there’s an analogy for you between those events and what we’ve seen more recently.
Dominic:
No doubt. Colonialism and imperialism have always been far more brutal than a lot of people wish to imagine, I think, certainly, when it’s coming from our side of history. You like to wash a little bit of it, and it turns out that that’s not really true. And that’s true in our own country, Australia’s domestic imperialism, as much as in the region. You mentioned détente and the way you describe détente reminded me of the way foreign minister Penny Wong talks about stabilisation of relations. It just sounded so similar that détente was about stabilising relations. The echo was so there. And then you moved back into the realist-idealist split. And that split between realism and idealism as two competing values of Whitlam’s foreign policy brings me a little bit to one of the first questions that came in from Adrian Dolahenty saying “Okay, Michael, what would you say was former PM Gough Whitlam’s best foreign policy achievement relating to China?” And before I let you go to it, one of the things in the book that you describe about China is obviously the recognition of the PRC government. But you talk about that in terms of really this realist versus idealist dichotomy where Whitlam transitioned from recognising states based on actual control versus what we might wish was the control. Do you want to touch on that concept of how Whitlam changed the way we think about who we recognise? And then if you’ve got any other aspects in relation to Adrian’s question about the best achievements, that are not this one.
Michael:
Yes. Well, I guess, the United Kingdom has the view that you recognise the government that has control over a territory. The United States has traditionally regarded recognition of a country as a sign of acceptance of the government. So, typically, the British are a lot faster in recognising a country than the United States. For example, Britain recognised the Soviet Union in the 1920s, and automatically Australia did too, while it took another decade, I think, for the United States to recognise the Soviet Union. Now, after the Chinese communist party took over China in 1949, the British recognised that control and Australia did not. It was one of the issues involved in the ALP split where the party policy changed policy in 1955. When the Hobart conference occurred, where some people walked out, the new Victorian delegation was credentialed and they were from the left in those days, the party not only voted in favor of recognising the PRC China –I cannot recall whether there was a vote or whether the policy was consensus – but certainly our policy changed in 1955. Whitlam already in 1954 championed that we should recognise China and was effectively seeking to apply the British policy of recognising the government in control of the territory. Clement Attlee, the former British Labour prime minister, visited Australia in 1954 and he expressed the view to the Australian Labor Party caucus, which he addressed, that we should be recognising the government in control of mainland China. [The ALP prior to 1955 was divided on recognition. The ALP Right mostly opposing.] Whitlam made the right call to recognise the PRC. Clearly, by 1971, the potential or the capability of the Nationalist Chinese government of Taiwan to retake China had gone. And therefore, we recognised the government in control. Whitlam, as I mentioned earlier, also said we should be able to continue to trade with Taiwan. We should also have people-to-people visits between Australia and Taiwan. Mao Tse Tung said “we want peaceful reunification.” Whitlam said: let’s take him at his word. It is interesting, as I mentioned in the book, that some of the early leaders of China visited Australia as the first Western country that they visited. Hu Yaobang, the former leader, was one of those. That, I think, is a tribute to Whitlam and the influence he had on subsequent governments, including conservative governments in forging a very close relationship, which is why it is so distressing today to see so much of that relationship squandered. And I blame the current leadership in China.
Dominic:
I agree with all of that. The first country I went to was Korea and the second was to China and I’ve spent a third of my adult life in China. And it is incredibly distressing to see the state of things at the moment. And I was in Hong Kong when the crackdown on Hong Kong happened and was tear-gassed on my birthday. The situation is …
Michael:
I know someone called Lee Cheuk-Yan who is the leader of the independent trade union movement in Hong Kong and he has been in jail for over a year. He is now accused of foreign subversion because he accepted some EU money and from International Trade Union Confederation, support for some of the organising-work type campaigns that he was conducting in Hong Kong and China. Lots of people are now in prison. If you speak your mind, you get sent to jail. That’s one of the big differences.
Dominic:
Yeah, you write in the book that the Atlantic Charter was one of the maybe intellectual frameworks that helped steer or guide Whitlamism and you, I think, quoted a section from Doc Evatt’s foreign policy outlook saying “Small nations are great. They’re unequal in power. Must be equal in rights.” Th r the subsequent 50 years, notwithstanding Whitlam’s l e lust for colonial areas is a constant threat to securing the world and will no longer be tolerated by the public opinion of enlightened peoples. How do you think that plays today?
Michael:
Well, it is a great quote and one of the dilemmas of explaining Whitlam to anyone – because the Atlantic Charter was effectively an agreement between Churchill and President Roosevelt about what the world should be like post …
Dominic:
So, not colonial at all.
Michael:
Prior to the end of World War II, various countries, that might have been 30 plus, signed up to that Charter, including Australia, including its focus on self-determination. Yet Whitlam didn’t have much time for small countries. That’s the irony of the quote you’ve taken. And therefore, East Timor, therefore the Baltic states, etc. And that’s contrary to the kind of social democratic impulse or tradition of supporting self-determination. So, there’s a contradiction between Whitlamism, the ideals of Whitlam, which you’ve highlighted, and what I’ve referenced in the book, and some of his actions. That is a curious contradiction or abandonment of what ideals he championed in his younger days and subsequently, for a much more realist perspective which Whitlam supported. This is one of the aspects of understanding Whitlam’s foreign policy. There is tension there. But I want to say again that despite all the mistakes and the quirkiness of some of what he did, he did inspire the country to think and to do better. And that’s what I remember from my time as a kid and as a university student when he was in office.
Dominic:
Yeah, I think that is absolutely true and that’s accurate through … for me, I was born slightly after Whitlam’s time in 1980 but always Gough was the hero. And my parents weren’t necessarily Labor Party people but even then, Gough was still the hero. Just before I come maybe to … we might be coming up to the end of it, but I want to change tack a little bit and come back to something you raised earlier about some of the controversies. And you mentioned Vietnam and you mentioned refugees. Where was Gough at on those two things, the Vietnam War obviously, but then refugees from Vietnam, the early refugees. And I think the Malcolm Fraser’s government, correct me if I’m wrong, were the first to accept refugees from Asia.
Michael:
That’s right.
Dominic:
What happened there?
Michael:
Look, originally, the Labor Party was very ambivalent and divided about the Vietnam War and Labor effectively said ‘we’re not sure that this is the right approach.’ And when conscription was introduced in 1966, Calwell gave one of the great speeches of Australian politics, drafted by Graham Freudenberg; it was a great speech opposing conscription. And conscription was the poison that eroded support both in the United States and Australia for any effort to prevent the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong from taking over South Vietnam. Whitlam’s position shifted to one of greater hostility to the United States’ war effort. And clearly the United States didn’t fight the Vietnam War very effectively. I would argue, maybe more controversially in the Labor Party today than for many, that I think the idea of defending a country from invasion or defending the south was worthy of support. Conscription was not necessary, and it completely eroded support in Australia. And it’s indicative of how hopeless the conservatives were that they introduced conscription when it was completely unnecessary. We already had enough volunteers going to Vietnam and the Australian Liberal-Country coalition government undermined themselves by what they did. But ultimately, Whitlam handled the exit from Vietnam relatively well, I argue in the book, but then when hundreds of thousands and eventually millions of people fled Vietnam, hopping onto boats and so on and so forth, he was completely unsympathetic. I think he didn’t think that the north Vietnamese would be as cruel as some people thought they might be. Certainly, a consequence of their not having an early victory in the south was that Stalinism evaporated or was diminished across the world, in the communist world, excepting to some degree in China. You still see at May Day in Beijing banners tributing Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc., but the North were not as cruel as they might have been [say, if they won much earlier], but certainly the Khmer Rouge were terrible, as we all know. And maybe the north Vietnamese wouldn’t have been far behind if they had won in 1964. So, that’s part of the dilemma, but Whitlam certainly moved along with the public to a more critical position about the American policy; he thought we had to counsel the Americans that “this is a terrible war, and you need to get out.” Whitlam tried to navigate and steer Australian policy and advise our friend, the United States administration, about what they should do. That was not appreciated early in the Whitlam government’s life by President Nixon, but I think it reflects part of Whitlam’s thinking, effectively, ‘You’re an ally. As a friend, let me give you my advice fearlessly.’ [Of course, how this message was conveyed in the first few months of Whitlam’s administration is another question entirely.]
Dominic:
I wonder if I can sneak in a cheeky last question on that topic because that really brings us right up to AUKUS. That framing of the division over Vietnam seems to be the same people almost having the same views and the same suspicion of the US intentions translating into can we really trust the US with our defence the next 70, 80 years perhaps if 30 years to START and then the lifetime for the subs after that. Do you think that that’s what’s driving the division over AUKUS now?
Michael:
Look, I think it’s complicated. There’s some overlap and there’s some significant differences. Given that President Trump could be the president after the next election, everyone should be very cautious about how stable America will be as an ally. And there is still an element of instability in the AUKUS alliance within our party, and with India having a very different geopolitical perspective, etc. But I think the major reason for AUKUS is due to China’s more aggressive stance in the world. And I would hope that we could lower the temperature such that the arms buildup that AUKUS partly represents, and what the Chinese have been doing, might be a wakeup call for everyone. So, I would combine the firmness of Australian policy on this issue with an equal firmness and determination to try and lower the temperature. The arms build-up that we’re seeing is in no one’s interest and surely Australia can play a role through AUKUS, and through our other diplomatic means, to try and change the nature of the debate and the discussion.
Dominic:
Michael, that sounds like an absolutely Whitlamist answer. And I think I endorse what you’re saying wholeheartedly. We’ve gone a minute or two over. We started a minute or two late. So, I think that’s probably all, right, we better wrap up there. I do want to mention to people if they want to get Michael’s book … Are you able to flash it back up again? You might have to cover yourself up.
Michael:
Yes, I’ll put it up here and it’s available through Connor Court. And if you look up the Connor Court website and then look up Whitlam, you’ll find the book. So, I recommend it to anyone interested. And hopefully, it’ll be in the bookstores sometime soon.
Dominic:
And I think you’ve got an excerpt of it in the latest edition of Tocsin magazine, which is the John Curtin Research Centre’s magazine, which is just out this week. People can find that. It might be available for supporters now but will become more broadly available later. Michael, thanks very much for this discussion. It’s been fascinating to hear foreign policy through the eyes of Whitlam and echoed right back into all the current issues that we’re talking about today.
Michael:
Thank you very much for having me. And all strength to the Curtin Centre ahead.
Dominic:
Thanks very much. And thanks to the audience of course as well, and thanks for those great questions.
