Canberra, 8 June 1951
With reference to your note of fourth June1 inquiring as to the circulation of the United Kingdom Command Paper 80802 on the Colombo Plan and of our booklet ‘New Hope for Asia’,3 it is advised:
- Command Paper
Some three hundred or more copies of the Command Paper were distributed and about one hundred copies remain on hand, against future demand. Copies were distributed to Members and Senators when Mr. Spender tabled his report on the conference in the House. In addition, the Minister’s office distributed quite a number of copies to individual inquirers and most of the remainder were sent out from the Department, to interested individuals and organisations. The demand for this document has, naturally, fallen off since our own booklet was published. I understand that the United Kingdom High Commissioner’s Office also distributed quite a number of copies of the Command Paper and of the United Kingdom ‘popular’ version.
- ‘New Hope for Asia’
A total of 20,000 copies of ‘New Hope for Asia’ was received by the Department for distribution, which 1s still in progress. About 8,500 copies remain to be sent out. Copies were mailed to all Members and Senators and will be sent to all new Members and Senators. Copies to meet requests were also sent to Parliament House. The distribution lists being used are very extensive, some having been supplied by the Commonwealth Office of Education and others by the ANIB. They cover newspapers and publications of many kinds, educational institutions, leaders in public and civic life, teachers, writers, clergy, legal men, business organisations, public servants, employers’ and employees’ associations, and many others. In addition to those being sent out to individual addressees, requests for from one copy to parcels of 100 or more are still coming in. They have been sent to overseas posts, and libraries, abroad and here, have been supplied, as have the State Parliaments and the Federal Sub-Treasuries in the capital cities.
[NAA: A9879, 2202/D]
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Not published. ↩
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The final document was published as The Colombo Plan for co-operative economic development in South and South-East Asia: report by the Commonwealth Consultative Committee, London, September—October 1950. ↩
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New Hope for Asia, published in 1951, was the Australian edition of an educational booklet based on the 1950 London report of the Commonwealth Consultative Committee. The same publication appeared in the United Kingdom as New Horizons in the East. ↩