Port Moresby, 5 June 1969
Personal
One point which I should mention to you is the likelihood of a debate in the House on the West Irian situation at the June meeting. There has been some conflict of views sent to us from the Department. I drew attention to this last year in my teleprinter 9366 of 26th November.1
It seems clear that the Minister’s view is that debate cannot be stopped and neither can we stop the House expressing an opinion in the form of a resolution. This practice has already been adopted without any opposition from us in the case of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. The Minister gave a clear indication that, in his view, this was quite proper. The reference is your 6201 of 28th August, 1968.2
I imagine that the same sort of outcome is likely in the event of discussion at the forthcoming meeting. There could be a resolution critical of Indonesian handling of the Act of Free Choice. We will, of course, discourage any intrusion of the Australian Government’s position in any resolution, and I think this could be managed.
The purpose of this letter is just to let you know that I regard the Minister’s views as the operative ones and, indeed, the only possible ones to follow in the likely circumstances.
[NAA: A452, 1969/2604]
1 In fact, 25 November. It makes no reference to a conflict of views. It simply records that Somare was due to put a motion on sympathy for Irianese refugees (see footnote 19, Document 246) and states that ‘the Administration will raise no objection to the motion being debated. It will, however, seek to ensure that any resolution is communicated to the proper channels as was the case with the earlier one [on Czechoslovakia]’ (NAA: 1968/5508).
1 Not found. A draft of this telex—likely to match the final version—reads: ‘[The Minister] appreciates the difficulty. Whilst he does not think the Administration should encourage such incursions into foreign affairs at the same time he does not see how the Administration could seek to prevent an expression of opinion of this kind. With regard to West Irian, for instance, if the House felt strongly in favour of expressing a particular view it would not seem practicable to stop it and indeed there might be value from the Government’s point of view in such an expression. The position there could give rise to a considerable amount of anxiety on the part of the people of the Territory and the Minister would not wish to prevent a democratic expression of views. At the same time, he notes that the Middleton approach of supporting {a} view already expressed by the Australian parliament is a good one in that there is no question of conflict’ (27 August 1968, NAA: NA 1983/239, 48/2).