Canberra, 7 March 1966
Secret
Papua/New Guinea: future developments
Re your minute of 7th March.1
2. I commend to you Mr Shaw’s2 recent despatch on the state of the United Nations.3 It does not encourage any hope that the influence of the United Nations on the future of Papua/New Guinea is likely to be beneficial.
3. I think, however, there may be a lot in his view that the debasement of the organization will mean that it will have a diminishing influence on Western opinion—even the U.S.
4. By all means let us seek the concurrence of the majority of the U.N.: but it must be recognized that our territories are dealt with pretty cynically and as no more than a piece in the political game. It also needs to be borne in mind that U.N. pressure may ultimately be applied as heavily on us to open the doors to free immigration as to grant independence. In fact, of course, both are likely to be demanded.
[NAA: A 1838, 936/5]
1 Document 23, which was copied to Booker.
2 Patrick Shaw, Australian Ambassador to the United Nations, New York.
3 17 February. Shaw reported at length on the growing size and influence of the Afro-Asian bloc in the United Nations. Noting that the recent session of the General Assembly represented a watershed in the voting power of this group, he wrote of its ‘capacity to mobilize its voting majority on any issue which it considered to be in its regional interests or which had an anti-colonialist or even an anti-Western overtone’. There had been a resultant ‘debasement of the currency’ whereby ‘Resolutions can be pushed through whether or not they are sensible or constitutional or even grammatical so long as the Afro-Asian majority crack their party whips’. Reflecting on the ‘anti–colonial which-hunt’, Shaw remarked that ‘we may think, hopefully, that we will have more of a meeting of the minds … when the albatross of colonialism has been loosed from around our Western necks. This should not take so very long if we are considering only the minor colonial possessions in the Indian and Pacific Oceans and if the anti-colonial majority can be persuaded to accept our thesis that Papua-New Guinea is not a colonial problem. But they do not accept this thesis and deep-rooted prejudices last … In short, in the United Nations game we find that the other side is now fielding more men, and the rules are Rafferty’s, and the play is rough. The World Series will go on and Australia simply cannot take its ball home. At some unforeseeable time in the future, the balance of the teams may move a little in our favour. But in the meantime all we can do is to accept a down-grading of the stakes and develop defensive tactics. While tolerating some playing to the gallery by the other side, we should demand, so far as we can, a strict adherence to the written rules of the game. We must field a strong team and work with our friends to obstruct the other side … To sum up, we should recognize that General Assembly resolutions need not always be taken at their face value and we should be prepared to accept some debasement of the currency of resolutions of an exhortatory or declaratory nature in circumstances which are not vital to our immediate interests or which will not add up to a dangerous long-term precedent. At the same time, we should do all we can to maintain respect for the legal limitations on the basic constitutional obligations which members have assumed under the Charter and to advocate a strict interpretation of the constitutional relationships between United Nations organs that it lays down. This would involve a reversal of the expansion of the General Assembly’s role that the West encouraged during the period in which it controlled the Assembly and was faced with a recurring Soviet veto in the Security Council. Such a change in direction would not be irrevocable. But to accept a change for the time being, in the possibility that the Assembly may emerge to a stage of greater maturity and responsibility in which we may wish to see its role strengthened again, would seem to be in the long term as well as the present interests of Australia’ (despatch 1166, NAA: A 1838, 906/20/4). Booker responded to Shaw: ‘I found [your despatch) most interesting and illuminating, and we are using it widely for the education of such people as the officers of the Department ofTerritories!’ (9 March 1966, ibid.).