New York, 26 May 1972
Confidential
Aurora Australiensis
1. I think you know plenty about the awkwardness between the Prime Minister’s Office and the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra and the awkwardness at Australia House between political chiefs and career staff. But the following scurrility which has come my way is just perhaps worth adding to the file:
(a) Downer reserves to himself all political reporting on the UK and wherever practicable, all contact with British Ministers and top officials.
(b) Pritchett, though of Ambassadorial rank and Head of Foreign Affairs section of Australia House is forbidden to report on UK affairs. So are his subordinates.
(c) Matters are so bad that the work cannot be done properly. Australia House were recently asked by Canberra for specific information on about six points of importance to Australia which were likely to be affected by current discussions between ourselves and the EEC. Of their nature, authoritative information in answer to the questions could really only be obtained from the top in London. Pritchett went to the length of sending a very carefully worded telegram to his own Department in Canberra saying that in his opinion the answers to the questions were probably of such and such kind; but that his Department would know that circumstances in London were such that he was in no position to ascertain whether his belief on these points was true.
(d) At about the same time, Downer was seeing UK Ministers and could have been expected to pursue the questions asked. In what I am told is his usual style, he wrote direct to the Prime Minister in Canberra as ‘a dear colleague’. There were four pages or so about an outing at Dorney Wood or elsewhere with the Secretary of State, with emphasis on the fact that Sir Alec was of course Downer’s intimate friend. There was no reference to the EEC matters which bother Canberra. The only remark of any political substance was that he understood that the difficulty over Malta was that Mintoff was having trouble with his wife. 1
2. I am told that if, as the Australians here clearly expect, Labour prevails over the Government at the next election, there will be pretty radical changes. To start with there will be a sharp reversal of the recent Australian tendency to consider foreign policy a matter of defensive military arrangements, and a greater effort to protect the Australian image and to pursue Australian interests in more positive form. This could, I am warned, have its tiresome aspects of the Evatt/Diefenbaker variety but there should also be a greater realism. I am told to expect corresponding changes over Commonwealth institutional philosophy with Australia ceasing to attach importance to High Commissions as distinct from Embassies, and Australia House becoming much more professional an institution headed from the Department of Foreign Affairs. I should perhaps repeat ‘I am told’. I recall that Labour as well as others in Australian office, have attempted to use overseas Missions as asiles2 for political figures difficult otherwise to dispose of.
3. I need hardly add that it could be very awkward if any word of this letter ever got back to an Australian.
1 Dom Mintoff, Leader of the Malta Labour Party, 1949–84, and Prime Minister of Malta, 1971–84. The ‘difficulty’ presumably referred to negotiations in 1971–72 between Mintoff’s government and the United Kingdom over the closure of the British military base in Malta.
2 French for a retirement home.
[UKNA: FCO 24/1369]