Canberra, 11 January 1972
Confidential
China
The Minister had read and liked the draft Cabinet Submission.1 On a point of detail he said that GRC should be ROC throughout the document. He said that he had some difficulty in relating our present policy to reality and he had concluded that it was in Australia’s best interest to recognize Peking as soon as possible. The difficulty as he saw it was how to present such a policy. He had tried his hand at it along the lines that Australia should accept the democratic decision of the United Nations. We had given honourable support to Taiwan in this matter but the UN having taken its decision the facts had changed. Australia had real national interests in communications with Peking and with trade. The Minister sees clearly the dangers of delay and in particular the possibility that we might be caught in a situation where Taiwan claimed no more than to be the government of that island. He will discuss the matter this evening with the Prime Minister, but is obviously doubtful as to whether sufficient members of his own party, quite apart from the DLP, support the move. While we had some discussion of this matter this is clearly one for political judgment and not one for officials. We discussed the possibility of raising again a visit to China by Mr Peacock and on balance decided against it. We discussed the possible location of a resumed dialogue and concluded that Paris would be the best place. The Minister finally said that he thought that no matter what might be the recommendations decided between the Prime Minister and himself a submission in some form should go to Cabinet on this question by the end of January.
2. The Minister discussed the paper with the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister thinks the paper is very good. The Minister is having a further look at it and is endeavouring to draft recommendations for submission to Cabinet before the end of January.
3. The Prime Minister was doubtful about the possibility of a move at present. He feels that Australia should be keeping in touch with the South East Asian nations on the China question and that we should also have discussions with the Americans. The Minister is finding the formulation of a recommendation a difficult task but he is determined not simply to put a series of options to Cabinet.
[NAA: A 1838, 3107/38/18, xxii]
1 Attachment to Document 294.