Canberra, 10 June 1965
Confidential
Cabinet considered without submission the proposals by the Australian Wheat Board to invite Chinese Communist representatives to Australia next October.1 In due course you will receive the recorded decision.2 No invitation is to be issued but it is considered desirable that the matter should be handled without bluntly informing the Chinese to that effect. A suggestion is that the representatives of the Wheat Board might say that, owing to the drought conditions in Australia, it is not possible to forecast how much wheat will be available and therefore no indication3 is possible at present. It will be in the mind of Mr. Adermann, however, that the position might be reviewed in January next when the crop yield is known more definitely.
[NAA: A1838, 3107/38, iv]
1 In a submission to Has1uck dated 27 May 1965, Booker reported that the Australian Wheat Board had informed the Department of Primary Industry that it was agreed in March at the conclusion of wheat negotiations with the Chinese in Hong Kong that the next talks would be held in October 1965. The Australian Wheat Board proposed to nominate Melbourne as the meeting place and to invite four Communist Chinese to take part in the negotiations. Booker advised that a Melbourne meeting would focus additional attention on Australian sales of wheat to China and would stimulate the critics of such sales. He therefore recommended that Hasluck authorise the Department of External Affairs to inform the Department of Primary Industry that it did not concur in the Board’s proposal to hold the next round of wheat negotiations in Melbourne in October 1965. In a minute dated 28 June, Booker informed Hasluck that the Department of Primary Industry intended challenging in Cabinet the objections of External Affairs to the Wheat Board’s intentions.
2 Cabinet decided on 9 June that there were ’substantial international and domestic reasons’ for disapproving the visit, although it ‘recognized the important commercial advantages deriving from wheat sales to China and wished, as far as possible, to avoid action which would unnecessarily jeopardize these advantages’. With a view to this end, the Minister for Primary Industry, Charles Adermann, was invited to discuss the matter with the Wheat Board.
3 The word ‘indication’ should presumably read ‘invitation’.