British High Commission, Canberra, 9 July 1971
Confidential
Australia and the EEC
After discussion with Curtis Keeble1 (who as might be expected has given me some very valuable advice in the two months since I took up my new post here) I decided to ask Doug Anthony round for a quiet tête-à-tête over a drink at my house. He readily agreed to come and we spent over an hour together yesterday evening in this way. I enclose a brief record.2
2. Curtis and I had had it in mind that by giving Anthony a chance to blow off steam privately we might possibly somewhat lessen the likelihood of his doing so again in public, to the further detriment of Anglo/Australian relations. In the light of Anthony’s and my talk I doubt whether I shall be able to dissuade him from attacking us (though I hope he will refrain from further accusations of deliberate bad faith). Anthony made it clear that for his own political reasons he must have somebody (other than the Australian Government) to blame for any hardship and dislocation suffered by Australian rural industry. The British have now been firmly elected to the role of scapegoat.
3. However, notwithstanding this, it is obviously right for me to go on keeping in close touch with Anthony so as to try and build up whatever influence I can with him. From time to time I may, by this means, be able to suggest to him ways of achieving his aims which are less prejudicial to our interests than those he would otherwise adopt. I shall try to get him to see that public attacks on Britain are not a particularly good way of getting us to do what he wants.
4. The trouble is that Anthony’s own experience of international affairs is evidently pretty limited; his own officials seem to have given him consistently the wrong advice. And I doubt whether his Cabinet colleagues, from the Prime Minister downwards, are likely to do much to change his thinking.
5. So far, I must say, the impression I am left with, after two months, is (to quote Bob Menzies) that ‘the world is full of men with little ideas’. Some of them are governing Australia.
6. I ought to add that, according to Keith Waller, who, as you know, is Secretary of the Department for Foreign Affairs, with whom I also had a private talk yesterday, Anthony’s bitterness against us derives essentially from the following. On 22 April, Commonwealth representatives were told that we had put to the Community some problems arising out of their proposal of 9 March for transitional arrangements, including ‘the orderly phasing out of third countries’ supplies of butter, cheese, bacon and sugar to the UK’, and that we hoped to be able to make progress towards settlement of the main aspects of agricultural transition at the Ministerial meeting on 11 May. Yet on 13 May, Commonwealth representatives were told that at the Ministerial meeting we had agreed to the principle of acceptance by the candidate countries of Community preferences from the time of accession. Apparently, the Australians feel that we made no serious effort to secure the orderly phasing out of Australian supplies of butter and sugar, and consider that we led them up the garden path by not in fact seeking the arrangements which we had told them we would seek, but instead agreeing without more ado on 11 May to accept Community preferences from the time of accession and to rely on a general and contingent formula to cope with any disruption.
7. If you have any comments on this interpretation of events, I shall be glad to have them since if we do not refute this Australian complaint we are likely to hear a good deal more of it.
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1 Deputy British High Commissioner, Canberra.
2 Document 296.
[UKNA: FCO 24/1055]