British High Commission, Canberra, 2 December 1974
Confidential
Mr Whitlam’s Discussions in London: 19–20 December 1974: Part 1: Political
1. My despatches of 27th and 28th May about the economic, foreign and defence policies of Mr Whitlam’s Government were sent in preparation for the visit which he then planned to make to London. In the event his visit had to be postponed. However, he has never abandoned his intention of undertaking a European tour, despite some grumblings in Parliament and the media about the unseemliness of his being out of the country at a time when an economic crisis looms. He is therefore going ahead with visits, not only to London for talks on 19th and 20th December, but also to Brussels just beforehand; and thereafter, to Dublin, Athens, Malta, The Hague, Paris, Rome, Belgrade, Moscow and Bonn. He also plans overnight or other brief stops in Colombo, Islamabad and Dacca. In this despatch, and in a companion despatch on economic questions, I review some of the major developments since my reports of last May, and offer some comments on Mr Whitlam’s current thinking about the matters which British Ministers and he are likely to discuss in London.
2. Much of Mr Whitlam’s European tour will be concerned with economic topics. But it has political aspects too, especially in his choice of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. His talks in London will be of a more intimate character than those elsewhere. Relations with Britain are especially close, but the tensions of a close relationship are there as well. Ever since becoming Prime Minister in December 1972 and ending the 23-year-old rule of the Liberal and Country Party coalition, Mr Whitlam has been seeking to assert the independence and contemporaneity of Australia’s voice in the world and to demonstrate that Australian attitudes are no longer determined by consultation in London or Washington. (I fear that on occasion Mr Whitlam has put the desire to demonstrate his Government’s immunity from British or American influence firmly ahead of other considerations, not excluding the intrinsic merits of the matter at issue.) In our case he has shown himself to be preoccupied with the constitutional problems arising out of the peculiar relationship between the Australian Federal Government and the Australian States, and between the Australian States and the Crown. He is a confirmed centralist and seeks to cut the States’ powers down. Like them he sees the preservation of their links to the Crown through British Ministers as a prime obstacle to his endeavour.
The Political Scene
3. The Australian Labour Party (ALP) under Mr Whitlam was again returned to power in the House and Senate elections last May after a double dissolution of both Houses, provoked by obstruction in the Senate amounting to a virtual refusal of supply, and made possible by the rejection of six Government Bills in the Senate for the second time. In the new House of Representatives Mr Whitlam’s majority was reduced, and he narrowly failed to win control in the Senate. Since their defeat, the Liberal/Country Party Opposition have had their morale boosted by the Government’s difficulties in dealing with worsening inflation and mounting unemployment. They have also been encouraged by the dissensions which have occurred within the ALP, between Caucus (the Parliamentary Labour Party) and Cabinet, and within the Cabinet where an exchange of posts between Mr Crean1 (the Treasurer) and Dr Cairns2 (the Minister for Overseas Trade) was messily handled and took several weeks to achieve. Not everyone approves Mr Whitlam’s appointment of Mr John Menadue,3 a newspaperman from outside the Public Service, to the key post of Secretary to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in succession to Sir John Bunting (now designated as the next Australian High Commissioner in London). Mr Whitlam’s difficulties have been reflected in a recent Gallup poll which gave the Liberal/Country Party a 16% lead over the ALP. There are signs that the Opposition may seek to force a further election by again rejecting supply in April or May 1975 (though they will find it harder than last time to muster the necessary blocking votes in the Senate).
4. Some of the enthusiasm of Mr Whitlam’s first months in office has evaporated. He has been increasingly diverted from the subjects in which he is personally interested—and where his party has an active programme of reform—such as the social services, constitutional updating and foreign affairs, by the mounting pressure of economic and financial problems in which he has been less interested and less effective. He has much less freedom to manoeuvre than he would like. Federal power is constrained by the constitution. And his own authority as Prime Minister is limited by his inability to hire or fire his Ministers (the most he can do is to reallocate their portfolios), and by the pretensions of Caucus to sit in judgement on Cabinet decisions.
5. Gough Whitlam is a proud and gifted man who chafes at these frustrations. His physical stature and confident manner help him to dominate his own party inside Parliament, and for the most part the House of Representatives as well. There is still no obvious successor to him in sight. He is the ALP’s main electoral asset, and it will be very surprising if he does not lead the Party into the next elections. If the Opposition does successfully force another election next year, its result is not a foregone conclusion. Mr Whitlam still consistently outranks the Opposition leader, Mr Snedden, in popular esteem. In another gladiatorial tussle the latter might again fail to carry the day—except in an economic situation (should it arise) which seemed generally to be disastrous.
Foreign Policy
6. Mr Whitlam has a considerable interest in foreign affairs. In recent months he has visited Indonesia, New York (for the UN General Assembly), Washington (for a meeting with the new American President), and Ottawa (for a meeting with Mr Trudeau). He has received the Shah of Iran, and the Japanese Prime Minister. Nevertheless, there is criticism of the effectiveness of his Government’s foreign policy and of whether it is going in the right direction. Australia’s decision to recognise de jure the incorporation of the Baltic States in the USSR, revealed early in August, which seemed to be related to Mr Whitlam’s desire to smooth the path for his own visit to Moscow at the turn of the year, provoked strong protests from Baltic exiles in Australia, and from the Opposition and others who saw little reason to grant respectability to an act of piracy. Mr Whitlam’s apparent enthusiasm for transferring Portuguese Timor to Indonesia, without regard for the wishes of the Timorese, has not found favour with supporters of the ALP, who consider that more regard should be paid to the principle of self-determination and less to anticipating Indonesian wishes. Even Australia’s vote in the Security Council in favour of expelling South Africa from the UN seemed to many observers and commentators not to be entirely sincere. No-one doubted the depth of Mr Whitlam’s hatred of apartheid. But there were those who felt that the Australian vote was designed further to ingratiate Australia with the Africans and the Asians, and thus to promote the candidature of the Australian Foreign Minister, Senator Willesee, for the Presidency of next year’s General Assembly. (The luxury of a vote for expulsion was available to the Australians only because of their confidence in an American and/or British veto.)
7. Australian relations with the United States have improved markedly in the last few months. There was little love lost between President Nixon and Mr Whitlam. With President Ford4 there is a better personal rapport. There are still areas of disagreement between the two Governments, notably over Indian Ocean issues, including Diego Garcia. But according to my American colleague (Mr Marshall Green)5 Mr Whitlam seems content no longer to be one of the front-runners in respect of these matters. As regards the United States defence installations in Australia, Mr Green is confident that there should not be undue difficulty in securing the continuation of the necessary agreements, perhaps with some mainly cosmetic changes in the arrangements to satisfy Australian susceptibilities.
8. Mr Whitlam will be ready to listen to British views on a number of subjects in the field of foreign affairs although on those where our own attitudes differ from his, he is likely to argue tenaciously for his own thesis. Some difference of opinion may well come to light in discussion with us also of the Indian Ocean and Diego Garcia. Mr Whitlam favours the concept of an Indian Ocean Peace Zone and is against any expansion of facilities on Diego Garcia. His Government has urged—with a show of evenhandedness—both the Americans and the Russians to agree on restraint to prevent an escalation of their naval presence in the Indian Ocean. On Rhodesia , Mr Whitlam’s objectives are sound, but for two successive years the Australian delegation has voted for UN resolutions which were unfairly and unrealistically critical of British Policy on Rhodesia. By the time that he is in London, the Australian delegation may well have done so again. Mr Whitlam and his colleagues have not shown much interest in détente and in European affairs in general. His objective in visiting Moscow in January is probably to try to quieten Soviet suspicions that he is more interested in China than he is in the Soviet Union (which in fact he is). His views on East/West relations and détente have probably not been thought through beyond an instinctive welcome for better relations between the Communists and the West. The Australian Government has accepted the EEC as a fact of life and Australia has largely completed the consequent adjustments. Most Australian Ministers, including Mr Whitlam himself, and senior officials now say that Australia’s interest are best served by Britain remaining in the Communities both because they wish to have a friend at court, and because they think that a prosperous Britain in the EEC will be a better trading partner than an ailing Britain outside. Mr Whitlam will be anxious to hear the Prime Minister’s and your assessment of the progress of renegotiation and the prospects for continued British membership. Meanwhile, Mr Whitlam’s view of Western Europe has been somewhat brightened by the improvement in Australian relations with France following the end of this year’s nuclear tests in the Pacific, about which he and his Government felt strongly, and the French announcement that there will be no more tests in the atmosphere. The improvement is reflected in the last-minute agreement between the French and Australian Governments that Paris should be included in Mr Whitlam’s itinerary and not, as was hitherto the case, excluded on grounds of possible embarrassment.
9. Australia has signed and ratified the non-proliferation treaty and shares our views of its importance. The British and Australian attitudes to the Indian explosion and the need to bring ‘peaceful’ nuclear explosions under some degree of control are close. Australian ministers are strongly attached to the ideal of general disarmament.
10. On Simonstown , Mr Whitlam is likely to urge the maximum possible dissociation of Britain from South Africa. His Government has made a number of gestures in this direction, offering to support sanctions against South Africa (but only if South Africa’s other ‘major trading partners’ do so too), without going to the point of putting at risk Australia’s extensive trade with South Africa. Australia has offered to join the UN Council for Namibia and has generally accepted the majority UN position on this issue.
11. We need not expect any deep difference of view on the Five-Power Defence Arrangements. Australia has withdrawn its own ground forces from ANZUK while reaffirming its commitment to the consultative provisions of the FPDA, and is thus in no position to demur if we adopt a similar position. Australian Ministers have stressed their hopes for continued co-operation between British and Australian forces in the area, e.g. by the naval visits and exercises, joint training and exchanges.
12. Mr Whitlam may express his impatience over the slow progress of Papua New Guinea to independence. The target date of 1st December this year has long been abandoned: predictions of April 1975 have already given way to June or July. Certainly Mr Whitlam will wish to have this colonial millstone lifted from his neck before the beginning of the General Assembly in September next year.
Constitutional Matters
13. As he told the Prime Minister in his letter of 6th June,6 Mr Whitlam hopes to pursue in his talks in London some ‘aspects of the formal relations between the UK and Australia which derive from our former status as a British colony’. He has already changed The Queen’s Style and Titles for use in Australia. He has sought also (though with much less success) to secure general acceptance of ‘Advance Australia Fair’ as this country’s national anthem, instead of ‘God Save The Queen’ which Mr Whitlam wishes to see used in future only on Royal and gubernatorial occasions. Other changes which Mr Whitlam seeks, as he said in the House of Representatives on 1st May 1973, are ‘in no way directed against Britain (but are) solely intended to put our relationship on a more mature and contemporary basis and to reflect the development of a more independent Australian identity in the world.’7 Mr Whitlam will wish to discuss his ideas with the Prime Minister. Some of them give rise to constitutional difficulties (which have recently been discussed in London by British and Australian officials), and could cause trouble and friction for us in Australian State capitals.
Abolition of Appeals (and References) from Australia to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
14. One of the main matters on Mr Whitlam’s mind in this context is the abolition of appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council from the State supreme courts and of references thereto of other matters from Australia. (Appeals from the High Court have already been limited and are de facto virtually excluded.)
15. Mr Whitlam has submitted to the Federal Parliament a Bill for the abolition of such appeals and references. He has no majority in the Senate and if he can nevertheless get the Bill through Parliament we can expect it to be challenged in the High Court by one or more of the Australian States as being outside the Federal Parliament’s competence. A majority of States might agree to the abolition of appeals to the Judicial Committee from their courts. But few of them are likely to acquiesce in the removal of their right to refer other matters, and none likes the idea of such a change in its arrangements being made by the Federal Parliament.
16. Mr Whitlam has annexed to his Bill a draft Westminster Bill which the Australian Government wishes the United Kingdom Parliament to enact under the ‘request and consent’ procedure, as a consequential accompaniment to the Australian legislation. But there have been signs that in view of the various difficulties Mr Whitlam may now be turning his mind to another possible course of action, and one which is constitutionally more firmly based. It is that of amending the Australian constitution by a referendum of the Australian people, designed to secure the abolition of appeals and references to the Privy Council (and possibly some of the other updatings which he seeks.8 From our point of view, a useful outcome of Mr Whitlam’s talks in London would be for him to return to Australia encouraged to try to secure the changes he wants by referendum. If, as is overwhelmingly likely, the referendum went against Mr Whitlam, there could be no suggestion of action by the British Government or Parliament, since they could not be expected to frustrate the expressed will of the Australian people. If the referendum succeeded, or indeed if Mr Whitlam’s Bill survives in the Senate and the High Court, there would appear to be that much less difficulty about action by the British Government and Parliament to put the Australian decision into effect.
17. The British Government regards the relevant section of the 1833 Judicial Committee Act, i.e. the Act which Mr Whitlam wishes to see amended in respect of Australia, as part of United Kingdom law but not part of Australian law. In our view it is for United Kingdom Ministers to advise the Crown on references to the Judicial Committee. Mr Whitlam contends that responsibility for advising Her Majesty on Australian matters rests with Her Majesty’s Australian Ministers.
Communications between the Australian States and the Crown
18. In his letter of 6th June to the Prime Minister, Mr Whitlam stated his view that communications from the Australian States to The Queen, instead of passing as at present through British Ministers, ‘should be channelled through the Governor-General who, by the constitution, is Her Majesty’s Representative in Australia’. Mr Whitlam wishes to establish this principle, leaving special cases to be considered with the State Premiers; but, anticipating opposition from the States, he would prefer to get what he wants by the unilateral action of the United Kingdom Government. This might be theoretically possible, but the change would imply a shift of responsibility for advising the Crown on States’ matters from United Kingdom Ministers to Australian Commonwealth Ministers, and thus a shift in the balance of power as between the Australian States and the Australian Federal Government. In his letter Mr Whitlam made it clear that he is well aware of this implication. Action by the Crown on the advice of United Kingdom Ministers of the kind proposed would thus be resented in most, perhaps all, of the States and might lay the British Government—and perhaps also more damagingly the Crown—open to the charge, in Britain and Australia, of having helped Mr Whitlam to circumvent the Australian constitution and to strengthen Canberra at the expense of the States. It could thus bring the Crown into the arena of political controversy.
The Honours System
19. In his letter of 28th March, Mr Whitlam said that he wished to raise with the Prime Minister the intention of the Australian Government to institute an Australian system of honours,9 perhaps similar to the Canadian system.10 Mr Whitlam’s advisers have been reminded that the question of a new system of honours for the Commonwealth of Australia is a matter for him to submit to The Queen and not one for United Kingdom Ministers. But the matter is also related to the question of channels of communication (some of the State Governments will no doubt wish to continue to use existing channels of communication for recommending British honours through United Kingdom Ministers to the Crown, whether or not Mr Whitlam initiates a new system of Australian honours) and Mr Whitlam may therefore raise it with United Kingdom Ministers. (I have learnt informally that Mr Whitlam recently invited the State Premiers to comment on the suggestion that purely Australian awards be substituted for British honours awarded on the recommendation of the State Governments. According to my information two State Premiers are responding by conveying to The Queen, through their State Governors, their strong antipathy to this proposal.)
The attempt by the Queensland Government to obtain from the Privy Council a ruling on whether the Queensland Parliament is competent to declare The Queen ‘Queen of Queensland’
20. The Queensland Government (bitterly opposed to Mr Whitlam and to all attempts to strengthen the Federal Centre at the expense of the States) has begun a process of seeking to refer to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, for the Council’s advice, the question whether the Queensland Parliament has power to enact legislation under which in Queensland, Her Majesty’s Royal Style and Titles would be changed to make The Queen’s designation in Queensland: ‘Queen of the United Kingdom (sic), Australia, Queensland and Her other Realms and Territories …’. Anticipating this move, Mr Whitlam has tendered advice to Her Majesty not to refer any such application to the Judicial Committee. Meanwhile he is seeking a ruling from the Australian High Court that the Queensland Government’s action is unconstitutional. He has also informed the British Prime Minister of the action he has taken, reminded him that the matter is sub judice , hinted that he would prefer United Kingdom Ministers not to claim a right or responsibility to advise The Queen on such a question, but also indicated indirectly his hope that if they nevertheless do so, they too will advise against any reference to the Judicial Committee of the Queensland application. Meanwhile the Queensland Government has apparently not yet submitted its application for a reference to the Judicial Committee, nor has the High Court yet handed down its ruling.
21. The Queensland Government’s action is not merely jingoistic or frivolous. Their intention is probably to try to secure the Judicial Committee’s endorsement of the link between the State of Queensland and the Crown, in order to undermine any attempt by Mr Whitlam (or his colleagues or successors) to take over from United Kingdom Ministers the role of intermediary between the State capitals and the Palace. If the High Court rules in Mr Whitlam’s favour the question whether United Kingdom Ministers can or should advise The Queen on the Queensland application, either instead of, or in addition to, Mr Whitlam, will become academic. Even if it does not, the problem should be contained unless United Kingdom Ministers considered that they were obliged to tender advice which was contrary to or inconsistent with that already offered to Mr Whitlam.
Conclusions
22. For the reasons which I have given the British Government have little freedom of manoeuvre on these constitutional issues. I think Mr Whitlam realises this now somewhat more clearly than he did. But he is still preoccupied in his attitude to Britain with the frustrated wish to sweep away what he sees as irritating anachronisms. In the past this preoccupation has overshadowed discussion with us of the many other (and more important) matters, where there would be benefit in enlarging the area of mutual understanding. One such matter is the situation of Commonwealth developing countries such as India and Bangladesh. This is a subject on which British Ministers can speak from close knowledge. It is one with which Mr Whitlam for his part is to all intents and purposes the first Australian Prime Minister to concern himself. The oil crisis; world energy problems; and the likely outlines of future resource diplomacy are other matters on which there should be advantage for us in sharing thoughts at first hand with the Prime Minister of a Commonwealth country which has so much in common with ourselves. Over and above whatever emerges from the discussion of Anglo/Australian constitutional minutiae , I hope that Mr Whitlam for his part will leave London after his talks with an enhanced appreciation of the role which Britain is playing, and still has to play, in helping to get the present dangerous world economic and financial situation under control; and of the merits of Australia for her part playing a responsible role and not a selfish and narrowly nationalistic one.
1 Frank Crean, Treasurer, 1972–74, Minister for Overseas Trade, 1974–75, Deputy Prime Minister, 1975.
2 See Document 432, note 2.
3 From 1960 to 1967, Menadue was Private Secretary to Whitlam. He was then General Manager, News Limited, Sydney, publisher of The Australian. From 1974 to 1976 he was Secretary at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
4 Gerald Ford succeeded Richard Nixon as US President in August 1974.
5 US Ambassador to Australia.
6 On which see Document 493.
7 See Document 461.
8 See Document 485; also Documents 486 and 487 (paragraph 4).
9 See Documents 475 and 476.
10 See Document 419, note 4.
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