Witness Seminar:
The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
gov.uk/fco
The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
Thursday, 8 November 2012 India Office Council Chamber, Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Edited by M. D. Kandiah ICBH, King’s College London Additional editing assistance: Rebecca Korbet Transcribed by: Stephen Farrell
ISBN: 978-1-910049-03-7
The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
Contents Introduction
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Brief chronology
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Session One – The Whitlam, Fraser & Hawke Years
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Chair: Professor Carl Bridge, Director of the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College London. Witnesses: Peter Collecott CMG: First Secretary (Economic/ Commercial/ Agricultural), 1982-86; Charles Cullimore CMG: Deputy High Commissioner, 1982-86; Gavin Hewitt CMG: First Secretary, 1973-1978. Session Two – The Keating and Howard Years
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Chair: David Fitton, Acting Head of Pacific Department, FCO. Witnesses: Sir Brian Barder KCMG: High Commissioner, 1991-94; Sir Roger Carrick KCMG, LVO: High Commissioner 1994-97; Hon. Sir Alexander Allan, KCB: High Commissioner, 1997-1999; Rt. Hon. the Lord Goodlad KCMG: High Commissioner, 1999-2005; Rt. Hon. the Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke PC: High Commissioner, 2005-2009. Appendix 1: Old Canberra House and the British Connection by Jane Barder
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Appendix 2: Early British Diplomatic Representation in Australia by Jane Barder
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The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
Introduction This witness seminar examines the role and functions of the UK High Commission in Canberra, principally from the testimonies and perspectives of those who served there. It is the third in a series of six witness seminars sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and it is part of the Witness Seminar Programme of the Institute of Contemporary British History (ICBH), King’s College London. The Menzies Centre for Australian Studies was also a partner. The first witness seminar in the series focused on the British High Commission in New Delhi: it was held on 17 November 2011 and the transcript has been published. The second, on the British Embassy in Beijing, was held on 7 June 2012 and the transcript has also been published. Over the past 26 years the ICBH Witness Seminar Programme has conducted nearly 100 witness seminars on a variety of subjects: two in particular have related to the functions of UK Embassies: in Washington (held in 1997)1 and in Moscow (held in 1999).2 Both of these witness seminars were chaired by Lord Wright of Richmond and both have been published. These witness seminars have been well received by the academic community, who have increasingly come to see that it is important to examine and analyse how Embassies and High Commissions have worked historically in the promotion of British policy overseas, and also by practitioners. A recent volume (2009) on The Washington Embassy, edited by Michael Hopkins, Saul Kelly and John Young, demonstrated precisely why it is necessary to know more about how UK Embassies operate and has suggested why Embassies will continue to be important for those who study diplomacy. The volume, as the introduction suggested, offered ‘valuable insights into change and continuity in British diplomatic practice’ over the period; it also showed ‘how the balance of attention . . . varied according to the pressure of circumstances, the current priorities of the government in London and the preferences of individual ambassadors’; and, importantly, confirmed ‘the pivotal role’ played by the Embassy and the Ambassadors in maintaining healthy bilateral relations.
Gillian Staerck (ed), ‘The Role of the British Embassy in Washington: Witness Seminar’, Contemporary British History, Vol.12, No. 3 (1998), pp. 115-38. 2 Gillian Staerck (ed), ‘The Role of HM Embassy in Moscow: Witness Seminar’, Contemporary British History, Vol.14, No.3 (2001), pp. 149-61. 1
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The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
However, the editors have also pointed out that ‘there are real difficulties in studying the broad work of the embassy’—how it interacted with local staff; precisely how it performed day-to-day necessary social tasks; and so forth.3 The significance of history and the importance of gathering and utilising oral history interviews have also been identified in the report of the Foreign Affairs Committee, The Role of the FCO in UK Government (published 29 April 2011). In oral evidence Foreign Secretary William Hague stated: ‘history is vitally important in knowledge and practice of foreign policy’. He further stated: ‘One of the things that I have asked to be worked up is a better approach to how we use the alumni of the Foreign Office, [and] . . . continue to connect them more systematically to the Foreign Office.’ He went on to say: ‘these people who are really at the peak of their knowledge of the world, with immense diplomatic experience, then walk out of the door, never to be seen again in the Foreign Office.’ Aside from Lorna Lloyd’s Diplomacy with a difference: the Commonwealth Office of High Commissioner, 1880–2006,4 there have been few studies focusing on the work on High Commissions and none specifically on the Canberra. The British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, based at the Churchill Archive Centre, Cambridge, contains a number of important interviews of those who served at the High Commission. To name just three: Sir Brian Barder; Sir Roger Carrick; and Sir Curtis Keeble.5 Additionally, Sir John Leahy6 and Sir Roger Carrick7 have written about their experiences as High Commissioners in their memoirs, as had Sir John Mason.8 However, testimony relating to the more recent period is absent and needs to be collected. For these reasons, it is important to gather the memories of those FCO alumni who have worked at the Canberra High Commission in the recent past. Dr M. D. Kandiah Director, Witness Seminar Programme Institute of Contemporary British History King’s College London
Michael F. Hopkins, Saul Kelly and John W. Young, The Washington Embassy: British Ambassadors to the United States, 1939-77 ( 2009), p. 2. 4 Lorna Lloyd, Diplomacy with a difference: the Commonwealth Office of High Commissioner, 1880–2006 (2007). 5 http://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/archives/collections/BDOHP/ [Accessed 25 Feb. 2013]. 6 John Leahy, A Life of Spice (2007). 7 Roger Carrick, Diplomatic Anecdotage: Around the World in 40 Years (2012) and Rollerround Oz (1998). 8 John Mason, Diplomatic Despatches (1998). 3
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The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
Brief Chronology9 NOTE: The following was circulated to participants in advance of the witness seminar. It was not meant to provide an exhaustive chronology of AngloAustralian relations. It was intended to help refresh people’s memories by covering significant events and milestones in the history of Australia, with reference, where relevant, to the UK and to major world events. 1970
HM Queen Elizabeth II and HRH Duke of Edinburgh made an extensive tour of Australia in connection with the bi-centenary of Lt James Cook sailing up the east coast of Australia. England won Ashes cricket series.
1971
Five-Power Defence Agreement signed with Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and the UK. Prime Minister William McMahon announced that the bulk of Australian troops in Vietnam will be withdrawn by Christmas.
1972
Under Gough Whitlam, who became Prime Minister, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) was elected to power federally after 23 years in opposition (December). ACTU banned French ships and planes from Australian ports in protest against French nuclear tests in the Pacific. Ashes cricket series drawn.
1973
UK-Australia Trade Pact ended following UK accession to the EEC. As a result, many Australians felt ‘abandonment’, ‘betrayal’, and ‘edged firmly from the imperial nest’.10 Three-year trade agreement between Australia and China. Whitlam become first Australian Prime Minister to visit China. HM Queen Elizabeth II opened the Sydney Opera House. The Queen was designated ‘Queen of Australia’.
1974
SEATO dissolved. Australia won Ashes cricket series.
1975
Papua New Guinea gained independence from Australia. Five journalists were killed by Indonesian troops during a border dispute in East Timor.
Compiled by Jatinder Mann, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College London and M.D. Kandiah, ICBH, King’s College London from a variety of open sources, which have been acknowledge when appropriate. 10 See James Curran and Stuart Ward, The Unknown Nation—Australia after Empire (2010). 9
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The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
The Whitlam government was plagued by resignations and the blocking of its budget by the upper house of the parliament. In an unprecedented move, the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, dismissed the government. A caretaker administration under Malcolm Fraser was installed. 1976
Australia-Japan Friendship Treaty signed. Fraser government reintroduced export of uranium after previous bans by the Whitlam government. First federal Aboriginal Land Rights Bill enacted.
1977
The Queen’s Silver Jubilee tour of Australia. Centenary Test match between Australia and England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (March). Launch of Kerry Packers World Series Cricket following High Court case in London. Record Australian wheat sales to China.
1978
Death of former Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies. Vietnamese ‘Boat People’ began to arrive on Australian shores.
1979
Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher met in Melbourne, Australia, and discussed jointly purchasing an island in Indonesia or Philippines to house Vietnamese ‘Boat People’ (July). At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Lusaka, Zambia, Prime Minister Fraser suggested to Prime Minister Thatcher not to recognise the Government of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. Following the December 1979 Lancaster House Agreement, the Australian Government implemented a number of measures including establishing a Liaison Office in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, contributing a contingent of 152 to the Commonwealth Ceasefire Monitoring Force, sending an eight-person national observer group and appointing an Australian official to the Commonwealth Observer Group for the elections which led to the establishment of Zimbabwe.
1980
The Queen opened the new High Court building in Canberra.
1981
CHOGM in Melbourne. England won Ashes cricket series. Media baron Rupert Murdock purchased the Times and the Sunday Times. He already owned the Sun.
1982
In support of the UK, Australia banned Argentine imports during the Anglo-Argentine Falklands War. Australia won Ashes cricket series.
1983
TRH Prince and Princess of Wales toured Australia, accompanied by Prince William of Wales. 5
The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
1984
New Zealand effectively withdrew from the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS) by banning visits by US nuclear ships.
1985
McLelland Royal Commission reported on the need to clean up nuclear testing sites in Australia.
1986
The Australia Act: Australian courts could no long appeal to the Privy Council in London. The series, Neighbours, debuted in the UK and quickly became a popular television staple (October). England won Ashes in Australia (November).
1987
The British Government went to Australian court to prevent the sale of Peter Wright’s Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer.
1988
The Queen toured Australia as part of the bicentenary celebrations. She opened the new Parliament House in Canberra (May). Australia visited by several members of the Royal Family, including the Prince and Princess of Wales, HRH the Duke and Duchess of York and HRH the Duke and Duchess of Kent. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visited (August).
1989
The television soap, Home and Away, debuted in the UK and, like Neighbours, soon became a favourite (February).
1990
Murdock’s Sky satellite network merged with British Satellite Broadcasting, forming BSKyB, which has since then dominated UK pay-television provision.
1991
Both the UK and Australia participated in the First Gulf War. The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) provided vessels for the multi-national naval force. Australian personnel took part on attachment to various British (and American) ground formations. At Twickenham, England lost Rugby World Cup to Australia.
1992
The Australian Citizenship Act was amended, which removed swearing an oath of allegiance to the Queen. Prime Minister Keating pledged to make the country a republic and to strengthen links with Asia. The Queen visited to celebrate the sesquicentary of the incorporation of the City of Sydney.
1993
Keating won the federal elections. The Native Title Act 1993 established a process for the granting of Aboriginal land rights.
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The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
UK government agreed to pay £20m to settle claims for clean-up of nuclear testing sites in Australia. British Airways purchased 25 per cent of Qantas. 1994
Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd visited Australia.
1995
France undertook a series of nuclear tests on the Pacific island of Muroroa in French Polynesia, 5,700 kms east of Australia. British Airways-Qantas Joint Services Agreement (JSA) enabled the two airlines to share revenues and costs.
1996
Keating defeated in Australian federal elections. John Howard of the Liberal Party became Prime Minister. Defence Secretary, Michael Portillo, visited Australia (September).
1997
Prime Minister Howard visited the UK and met newly-elected Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair. ‘newIMAGES: Britain and Australia into the 21st Century’ programme of events launched by both governments.
1998
Howard’s Liberal and National Party coalition re-elected with a reduced majority following federal elections. Constitutional Convention voted to replace Queen Elizabeth II as Head of State with a president chosen by Parliament. The issue would be put to a referendum in 1999, when the proposal was to be defeated by a 55 per cent margin. British Airways and Qantas announced an expansion of their cooperation on the ‘Kangaroo route’, with the launch of codesharing services via Bangkok (April).
1999
Australian-led intervention force went to East Timor, which included a British component, to counter pro-Indonesian militia violence after territory’s independence vote. Relations with Indonesia worsened.
2000
Sydney Olympic Games opened by the Queen, who then made an extensive tour of Australia.
2001
Australian centenary (January). Sir Donald Bradman, Australia’s most famous cricketer, died at the age of 92 (February). Prime Minister John Howard criticised by churches for failing properly to acknowledge suffering of thousands of Aborigines under past assimilation policy. Howard had refused to apologise to ‘Stolen Generations’ of Aborigines who as children were forcibly removed from their parents to live with whites (May). Over several months, Australia turned away boat people refugees. Australia paid Nauru to detain many of them (August). Howard won a third term in federal elections (November). Census revealed 107,871 Australian-born people resident in UK. 7
The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
2002
Aid agencies, rights groups and a UN report criticised Australian policy of holding asylum seekers in detention camps until their visa applications were processed. The Woomera desert camp in South Australia saw riots, hunger strikes and escapes. Night club bombing in Bali, Indonesia, resulted in 88 Australian citizens being killed. Some called this event Australia’s September 11. CHOGM held at Coolum, Queensland, opened by the Queen.
2003
In an unprecedented move, the Australian Senate passed a noconfidence motion against Prime Minister Howard over his handling of Iraq crisis (February). Bushfires ravaged Canberra: more than 500 homes destroyed. Other fires raged across New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania. Governor-General Peter Hollingworth resigned after admitting that, as an Anglican archbishop in the 1990s, he allowed a known paedophile remain a priest (May). Australian-headed peacekeeping force attempt to restore order in Solomon Islands (July). Public protests following Australian government’s decision to deploy troops the Persian Gulf ahead of the second Gulf War (August). The Queen unveiled the Australian War Memorial, Hyde Park Corner, London (November).
2004
Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (May). Multi-million dollar cruise missile programme announced: Australia was to have the region’s ‘most lethal’ air combat capacity (August). Bomb attack outside Australian Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, which killed at least nine, injured dozens more (September). British Airways sold A$1.1 billion stake in Qantas (September). Howard won fourth term as Prime Minister; his party extended its control of parliament (October).
2005
Worst bush fires for more than 20 years in South Australia (January). Australia deployed 150 Special Forces troops in Afghanistan to counter rebel attacks. The original contingent was withdrawn in 2002. Further deployments were announced in 2006 (July). England won Ashes series (September). Australian Police claimed they foiled a planned ‘large-scale terrorist attack’ (November).
2006
Australia and East Timor agreed to a deal dividing billions in expected revenues from oil and gas deposits in the Timor Sea and postpone discussions on disputed maritime boundary (January). The Queen opened the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne (March). Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Australia and addressed both Houses of Parliament (March). Australian troops lead peacekeeping forces in the Solomon Islands and East Timor following unrest in both countries (April-May). 8
The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
Amid the worst drought in a century (December), the government slashed economic growth forecasts, reflecting a slump in farm output. 2007
Major bomb attacks on the transport system in Central London (July). Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party swept to power with landslide victory in federal elections (November). Prime Minister Rudd ratified Kyoto Protocol on climate change (December). The UK was the largest consumer of Australian wines, with sales worth £1.65 billion.
2008
Rudd Government apologised to the indigenous population for past wrongs (February). The controversial policy of sending asylum seekers into detention on small Pacific islands brought to an end, with the last refugees leaving Nauru. Abandonment of policy of holding all asylum seekers in detention centres until their cases were heard. ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (August). First woman Governor-General Quentin Bryce sworn in (September). First annual AUKMIN — Australia-UK Ministerial Consultations — held in Leeds between respective foreign and defence ministers (November).
2009
Bushfires in the south-eastern State of Victoria killed more than 170 people (February). A$70 billion military modernisation programme announced: plans included more than doubling the RAN’s submarine fleet and purchasing 100 US Stealth fighters (May). England won Ashes Cricket Series (August). Sale of Australian wines in the UK drop by 20 per cent following global financial crash but UK remained the largest market. Imports to the UK from Australia grew by 44 per cent and exports to Australia grew by 47 per cent in real terms between 1999 and 2009.11
2010
Following the longest trial in Australian legal history, a court in New South Wales sentenced five Muslim men to lengthy prison terms for conspiracy to carry out attacks (February). British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologised for the policy, which had ended four decades previously, of sending children to colonies under a migrant programme. Julia Gillard replaced Rudd as Prime Minister (June). Australian federal elections failed to deliver a clear winner. Gillard clung to power after securing support of independents to form a minority government (August). HRH Prince William of Wales visited Australia. UK exports to Australia went up 14 per cent.
11
http://ukinaustralia.fco.gov.uk/en/news/?view=News&id=559549782 [Accessed 25 Feb. 2013].
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The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
2011
Queensland floods: described as the most expensive natural disaster in the country’s history (January). Foreign Secretary William Hague visited Australia. He stated: ‘On major issues concerning global security there will be a lot for us to do together. On reinvigorating the Commonwealth there is a lot for us to do together . . . There are many special links with Australia that already exist, but they need reviving, they need some new impetus, and I think there is great enthusiasm for that in Britain’.12 British Airways announced reduced frequencies between London and Sydney. CHOGM held in Perth, Western Australia, opened by the Queen, who then toured the country (October). Driven by a construction and mining boom, Australian GDP rose 2.5 per cent on the year (December).
2012
Talks collapsed between government and opposition over the issue of asylum seekers (January). Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd resigned, in order to mount a challenge to Prime Minister Gillard’s leadership, but was defeated (February). Controversial carbon tax, which penalised big polluters, came into force. Prime Minister Gillard stated that it was needed to meet climate change obligations; opponents argued that it would cost jobs and raise prices (July). Five Australian troops were killed in Afghanistan in what Prime Minister Gillard said was Australia’s deadliest day in combat since the Vietnam War (August). After an independent panel recommended setting up holding centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea to cope with rising numbers of asylum seekers, the government said it would send the first group for processing in Nauru. Australia also signed an agreement with Papua New Guinea to conduct offshore processing on Manus Island (September). The UK remained the largest consumer of Australian wine, with a 36 per cent share of Australian wine exports.13 Ending of British Airways-Qantas Joint Services Agreement (JSA) (September). Over a million British-born individuals were living in Australia (5.3 per cent of population; down from 5.8 per cent in 2001).
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/william-hague-keen-to-build-bridges-after-16years/story-fn59niix-1225988026236 [Accessed 25 Feb. 2013]. 13 http://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2012/04/australian-wine-exports-slide/ [Accessed 25 Feb. 2013]. 12
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The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
The Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra Session One – The Whitlam, Fraser & Hawke Years Chair: Professor Carl Bridge, Director of the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College London. Witnesses: Peter Collecott CMG: First Secretary (Economic/ Commercial/ Agricultural) Canberra, 1982-86. Charles Cullimore CMG: Deputy High Commissioner, 1982-86. Gavin Hewitt CMG: First Secretary, 1973-1978. Audience Participants: Nigel Cook, Australian Deputy High Commissioner, London, 1979. Professor David Lloyd, Deakin University. York Membry. Professor Philip Murphy, Institute of Commonwealth Studies. Dr Sue Onslow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies. Professor Patrick Salmon, Foreign and Commonwealth Office. DR RICHARD SMITH (FCO): Ladies and gentlemen. First, let me welcome you all to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for this seminar on the High Commission in Canberra. My name is Richard Smith, and I am from FCO Historians. This is the third in our series of seminars on High Commissions and Embassies. The first one was on New Delhi and the second on Beijing. They are organised in conjunction with the Institute of Contemporary British History at King’s College London, and also the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). On this occasion we are very pleased to collaborate with the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, also based at King’s. I have two apologies to make, one from Lord Carrington,14 and one from Sir John Leahy.15 As former High Commissioners both had hoped to be here today, but in the end were unable to attend. However, I think you will agree that we have a very impressive line-up of former High Commissioners, Deputy High Commissioners and First Secretaries to listen to this afternoon, ranging from the 1970s to the recent past. I should say that the session will be recorded and a transcript produced, so everything that is said today is on the record. Without further ado, I would like to hand over to the Chair of the first session, Professor Carl Bridge, director of the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies. Thank you.
14 15
Lord Carrington, High Commissioner, 1956-9. Sir John Leahy, High Commissioner, 1984-8.
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The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
PROFESSOR CARL BRIDGE (Chair): Thank you very much. My job is to chair the first session, which covers the Whitlam,16 Fraser17 and Hawke18 years, so 1972 to 1991. We have three First Secretaries from that period; it is good that they were First Secretaries because they will be young enough to remember things, we hope. When Sir John Mason19 went to Canberra Lord Carrington said to him, ‘You don’t bother me, John, and I won’t bother you. That is the best way that this should work, and it works pretty well.’ Well, I don’t think it quite worked that way in this period. A lot of things happened. Some of you will remember Spycatcher, for instance, which took place during this time. The Maralinga cleanup business20 also started at this time, as well as the dismissal of the Whitlam government by the dreaded Governor-General, Sir John Kerr21, who may or may not have colluded at this end. There was also the Bicentennial, Young Endeavour,22 lots of visits by members of the Royal Family opening all sorts of things, and other elements. There were the Thatcher23 years, and Hawke thinking he could still bat like a Test batsman as Prime Minister24 and getting hit in the head.25 I do not know whether that was on the BBC, but it was certainly all over the ABC.26 It happened, I think, in your presence? GAVIN HEWITT: I was there when some of it happened. BRIDGE (Chair): You were there when it happened. That is what this is all about, that you were there when it happened. So without further ado, I call upon Gavin Hewitt to introduce himself and give us an initial statement. HEWITT: Thank you very much. I was in Australia from the end of 1973 to the beginning of 1978. I recall that the High Commission was extremely well-staffed. I was just reminded that there were six Counsellors; there was a defence attaché, there was an air attaché, there was a military attaché. I do not know how we all actually got into the building, but we did, and we also operated the normal functions of an Embassy, rather than a High Commission. The Consular Section was there, and it would not have been quite a Consular Section but it was actually issuing passports. I went to Canberra in the very year, 1973, that we joined the European 16
Gough Whitlam, Australian Prime Minister, 1972-5. His Labor government was dismissed by Governor-General Sir John Kerr (see below). 17 Malcolm Fraser, Australian Prime Minister, 1975-83. 18 Bob Hawke, Australian Prime Minister, 1983-91. 19 Sir John Mason (1927-2008), High Commissioner to Australia, 1980-4. 20 British nuclear tests took place between 1955 and 1963 at Maralinga in South Australia, which at the time was inhabited by Aboriginal people, who were forcibly relocated. See Lorna Arnold and Mark Smith, Britain, Australia and the Bomb: The Nuclear Tests and their Aftermath (2006). 21 Sir John Kerr (1914-91), Australian Governor-General, 1974-7. 22 The sailing schooner STS Young Endeavour was the gift from the UK to Australia on the occasion of the bicentenary. 23 Margaret Thatcher (Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, 1925-2013), Prime Minister 1979-90. 24 Paul Keating, Australian Prime Minister, 1991-6. 25 During the 1985 federal election campaign Hawke was injured, during a cricket match (politicians versus the press), when a cricket ball hit him in the face and shattered his glasses. http://www.library.unisa.edu.au/bhpml/anniversary/1984.asp [accessed 25 Feb. 2013] 26 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
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The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
Communities. I had been one of the resident negotiators in Brussels, so I was very involved with our entry into Europe. Therefore I remember full well that when I arrived, there was a certain amount of complaining that was actually going on. There was a sense of people asking why we had dropped our most dearly valued friends in it, and why we had left the fold of the Commonwealth. There were two First Secretaries in Chancery at that time, one of whom covered the internal matters and the other external matters, and they swapped over after the first two years. So I looked after foreign affairs, I remember, for the first two years, and then moved on to internal affairs. Foreign affairs during that period were very much a question of trying to understand the Australian readjustment away from an interest in the UK and Europe and towards Southeast Asia. It was a fitful interest in Southeast Asia, but one knew full well that Australia had to start looking after what is its hinterland. During all that time the relationship with Indonesia was very, very dominant. I remember very well the huge fuss about five Australians being killed by the Indonesian troops which invaded East Timor27 and took over East Timor, and the row that went on there.28 I remember the Whitlam sacking29 terribly well, and all the things that went on. I was struck by the extraordinary political shenanigans. We think shenanigans go on in Westminster but Australian shenanigans are there to be written up large. There were other things too, looking back at some of the names. We had the hurricane in Darwin which destroyed the wireless station in the Christmas of 1974, and John Stonehouse30 being discovered in Melbourne after escaping and trying to do a dash for it. We had trial flights of Concorde into Melbourne, which never actually went commercial. We had the fascinating issue of State Governors who were of course appointed by the Queen of the United Kingdom rather than the Queen of Australia, whereas the Governor-General was of course an Australian appointment by the Queen of Australia. I remember above all whom I talked to and who the MPs were that I talked to; I think it is very interesting. I remember well Don Willesee31 as the Minister for Foreign Affairs. I remember going to a conference in Adelaide held by one of those prestigious think tanks in Australia, and the buzz at that point was whether Australia was going to actually recognise Guinea-Bissau; that was the level of interest at that time. The two people I remember playing squash on the Parliamentary squash courts were Senator John Button32 and—believe it or not—Paul Keating, before he became anything of any importance. So we dealt with a lot of fascinating things, but above all I remember that we were portrayed by Australia as the ‘sick man of Europe’. There was the idea that our economy was absolutely on the down; the Australians actually tried to impress on us that we had nothing to be proud of. It was not a very easy time to be a diplomat, trying to look after the interests of your country and promote its 27
East Timor declared independence from Portugal in 1975. That same year Indonesia invaded and later declared it to be a province. In 1999, Indonesia relinquished control and East Timor was recognised as a sovereign nation. 28 See chronology for the year 1975. 29 See chronology. 30 John Stonehouse (1928-88), Labour MP, 1957-76. In November 1974 he faked suicide and attempted to start a new life in Australia. He was arrested by Australian authorities a month later and subsequently deported to the UK. 31 Don Willesee (1916-2003), Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, 1973-5. 32 John Button (1933-2008), Leader of the Australian Labor Party in the Senate, 1980-93.
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The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
interests, and trying to say that we were strong, powerful, and still interested in a country as far away as Australia. So it was a mixed bag. BRIDGE (Chair): And yet there were very, very large numbers of British immigrants in Australia at the time. HEWITT: A huge number. Of course they expected us to look after their interests, but that wasn’t our role, because by that time they had already settled in Australia. That reminds me of one story that still sticks with me. A RAAF33 officer phoned me up from Europe, actually from Brussels. He had been seconded by the RAAF to the RAF34 in the United Kingdom, and for some reason or other had then been moved to NATO35 in Brussels. He was furious, because although his parents were British he was travelling on an Australian passport, and in the job he was doing in Brussels he was denied access to NATO secret documents as he was not a NATO national. He phoned me—probably the switchboard put him through, our Consular section put him through to me to explain—and he said, ‘Listen, I am fed up with this situation, I want to be able to access NATO secret documents as a British national. Effectively I am eligible for a British passport, so how can I do it?’ He had gone to Petty France, where he was told that they had an arrangement where any Australian national with an Australian passport who wanted to take out British citizenship, and was eligible, would have their Australian passport returned to Australia House. He asked whether that was what we would do in Canberra. I said, ‘No. Get on the plane and bring all your papers. Come in on Monday morning, and we will issue you a passport in half an hour.’ He duly did so, and we reissued the passport in half an hour. He then got on a plane back to Brussels, via London no doubt, and I remember him phoning me after he’d got to Brussels and had gone into the NATO security office. He had slapped his British passport on the desk of the security office and said, ‘Now give me those effing papers!’ BRIDGE (Chair): You mentioned the ‘sick man of Europe’ business. Part of this job is trade promotion and commercial work, isn’t it? Were efforts made to make up for this, as it were? The Australian economy started to do some interesting things too, later on. HEWITT: There was a slightly dysfunctional approach, I think, on that side. Admittedly I was looking at it, remember, from Chancery, rather than having my hands in the commercial side. We had a Commercial Counsellor Consular in Canberra, but a lot of the trade work was actually done by the Consulates General in the State capitals, and of course in Sydney, Melbourne, places like that. So the 33
Royal Australian Air Force. Royal Air Force. 35 The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is an alliance which was formed in 1949 on the basis of the Treaty of Brussels (1948) by Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. Greece and Turkey joined in 1952, the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955, Spain in 1982, and the united Germany in 1990. Since 1999 the following countries have also joined (in order of accession): the Czech Republic; Hungary; Poland; Bulgaria; Estonia; Latvia; Lithuania; Romania; Slovakia; Slovenia; Albania; and Croatia. 34
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The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
Commercial Counsellor Consular in Canberra really had only a supervisory role, and I do not remember an awful lot of commercial work being done in the High Commission. BRIDGE (Chair): That is the impression I get, but there has obviously been quite a shift. HEWITT: The Director of Trade Policy was of course moved down to Sydney eventually, and I think stayed there. BRIDGE (Chair): Indeed. So you were very close to the dismissal, a ringside seat? HEWITT: I was there, and watching it with fascination. BRIDGE (Chair): The High Commission was at arm’s length from it all, in terms of reporting and being involved in events. You were reporting it, but you weren’t— HEWITT: We were reporting it, and I think Brian Barder,36 who is here in the audience and was my Head of Chancery then, will step in if I get it wrong. We had to make it absolutely clear that we had no hand in what was going on, that everything was being done on Australian channels. Whatever was being sent to the Palace was actually an Australian message and we had completely clean hands, we were not behind it and we were not interested in it. BRIDGE (Chair): But you were though? You had to find out what was happening, because presumably that was part of your political reporting? HEWITT: That is when someone like Senator Button came in very useful, to actually understand— BRIDGE (Chair): So you wrote about it on the squash court? Or perhaps not on the squash court, but — HEWITT: Either on the squash court or in the Lobby restaurant, which is just across from the old Houses of Parliament. BRIDGE (Chair): Who were your main informants? John Button? HEWITT: I think the story was all set out beautifully in the press. Nothing was actually being hidden in the press, it was still the case that secrets cannot be held very long in Australia. I remember being woken up every morning to another scandal of one nature or another in the Australian newspapers, the Sydney Morning Herald37 or The Age.38 36
Participant in Session 2, High Commissioner 1991-4. Founded in 1831, the Sydney Morning Herald is a leading Sydney newspaper. 38 Founded in 1854, The Age is published in Melbourne. 37
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The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
BRIDGE (Chair): The dismissal came, of course, at the end of a whole series of scandals in the Whitlam government. So if anyone was a ‘sick man’, you might have said that they were. HEWITT: Well, they were certainly getting their hands in the till. You remember people like Cairns, the Treasurer,39 and Connor,40 the Energy and Minerals Minister. Whitlam had given them a letter—I think to Connor—to raise something like $4 billion worth of loans. I do not know what the loans were for, but Connor was given the job. There was a very mysterious man called Khemlani41 who kept on resurfacing, and that was effectively the downfall of Cairns, who of course had unseated the previous deputy Prime Minister. The whole thing was simply internecine fighting in the ALP.42 BRIDGE (Chair): The Whitlam government43 tried to, as they said, ‘remove the relics of colonialism’, and they were quoting Nkrumah44 although not saying so. Privy Council appeals were being abolished and a whole range of things were changing the relationship. You were presumably advising about that? HEWITT: Obviously we had a direct relationship because of the nature of the Constitution as it was then in relation to the State Governors. There were a lot of things on which we were commenting back to London. We were in an awkward position because the High Commission had no role other than to say that the basic position of State Governors was an anomalous position, because you had this bifunctional— BRIDGE (Chair): It is an interesting business though, isn’t it? The High Commission represents the government to the other government, because it is a High Commission and not an Embassy. So that creates one difference, but the other one of course was that you have sovereign entities in the States. Their Governors are appointed on the advice of the State Premiers, but by the British Crown not the Australian Crown, as you said earlier. HEWITT: That was certainly the situation then. BRIDGE (Chair): It was the situation until 1986. So you have a direct involvement, which you cannot avoid, and that means an involvement in State reporting activities. HEWITT: Yes. But that did not mean that we were ever part of the chain of reporting. Effectively, although it came to the Queen of the United Kingdom on those sort of appointments, it never to my knowledge came via the High
39
Jim Cairns (1914-2003), Treasurer, 1974-5. Rex Connor (1907-77), the Energy and Minerals Minister, 1972-5. 41 Tirath Khemlani (1920-1991). 42 Australian Labor Party. 43 See chronology. 44 Kwame Nkrumah (1909-72), leader of Ghana and, previously, the Gold Coast, 1951-66. 40
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The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
Commission, and nor were we consulted. We were watchers, rather than participants. BRIDGE (Chair): But the colonial relic was not removed by Whitlam and Murphy,45 who tried to do so by direct action. It was removed by consent later on, by Hawke. That says a lot about Hawke, I think, and about the different circumstances. DR PETER COLLECOTT: Gareth Evans46 was going on about ‘relics’ at exactly that time, when he was shadow Attorney General at the age of 32, or something like that, I seem to remember. BRIDGE (Chair): Yes. Forthright, but not as confrontational as Murphy, I suspect. He did not knock up Sir Alec Douglas-Home47 at half past one in the morning. Much less confrontational, but at the same time he was determined that he was going to do that, and that was one of the ways in which he was going to make his mark as Attorney General when the time came. CHARLES CULLIMORE: Can I chip in from Sir John Leahy’s text of what he would have said, as sadly he cannot be here? I did not get personally involved in a really very delicate situation, but he did. The State Premier of Victoria wanted to get rid of the Governor. He spoke to John Leahy about it, and asked for his help, saying, ‘Whatever you do I do not want Canberra to know about this. It is nothing to do with the Federal Government. This is our link—my link—with the Crown, and through you and the Foreign Office’. And it was really a very delicate situation indeed. Eventually it did get resolved, but I think it put John Leahy in a difficult position. He did in fact speak very confidentially, I think to Hawke’s Principal Private Secretary at the time, to let him know that this was going on. Eventually the Governor was actually removed. So that illustrates how at that stage the High Commission could be in the position of piggy in the middle, which was really impossible. That was resolved by the Australia Act 1986, but it did go on until that time. BRIDGE (Chair): It is an interesting business that it did persist for as long as that. And of course, some of the States wanted it to persist. CULLIMORE: Absolutely. They were very jealous of this direct line to the monarchy, to the Queen, that was nothing to do with the Federal Government. BRIDGE (Chair): It was not just Queensland, either. It was also the Labor States, we find, when we look at the archive these days, which some people might not realise. CULLIMORE: Yes, it was not just Queensland. 45
Lionel Murphy (1922-86), Australian Attorney General, 1972-5. Gareth Evans, Australian Shadow Attorney General, ALP, 1980-3; Attorney General, 1983-4; Australian Foreign Minister, 1988-96. 47 Sir Alec Douglas-Home (14th Earl of Home (disclaimed); Lord Home of the Hirshel, 1903-95), Foreign Secretary, 1960-3 and 1970-4; Prime Minister, 1963-4. 46
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The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
BRIDGE (Chair): Perhaps we should move on to your initial statements, and then we will come back to some of these things. Thank you very much, Governor, and as I say we will come back. Charles Cullimore, would you like to make your initial foray? CULLIMORE: I was there as Deputy High Commissioner, first of all to Sir John Mason and then to Sir John Leahy, from the end of 1982 to 1986. Val and I arrived in Canberra on a cross-posting from Delhi. The contrast could not have been starker, from the hustle and bustle, smells and crowds and dust of Delhi to this lovely wide-open empty space, and the peace, relatively speaking, and order of Canberra. There are one or two very initial impressions that I would like to mention. I think we were surprised by the formality of the social scene in Canberra, which we really had not expected, with the image of the laid-back Aussies and all that. But it was not actually quite like that in Canberra, where I had to quickly change what I wore when I went out for dinner, for instance. I had got used to Delhi, which was incredibly informal, and also far too hot to wear anything much at all. But it was not like that in Canberra, and to discover that people turned up in dark suits, white shirts and dark ties for dinner, and bang on time, was even more difficult to adjust to after India. So that was quite a shock. I think that was atypical, and it just applies to Canberra, certainly not to much of the rest of Australia. In a way at the same time and in parallel with that, we had a very informal, easy relationship with officials, parliamentarians and ministers at all levels. It was almost too relaxed and easy and informal, and you had to keep pinching yourself and thinking that we must not take this for granted, and it is important not to take it for granted. We need to work at it and recognise that just as within a family the family relationships need to be worked at, so we needed to work on this relationship, the fact that it was very close notwithstanding. I can illustrate this by referring back, as has already been mentioned, to when Sir John Leahy arrived. His arrival coincided, almost inevitably, with yet another Australian federal election, which was just about to take place. It was a slightly fraught situation because, of course, being a realm he did not have credentials to present, but he had a letter of introduction which he needed to deliver, from the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to Bob Hawke. He arrived at the weekend, and the election campaign was due to start on Monday. Bob Hawke was about to go off on the campaign trail, and that would have been it for about a month. How to get the letter to Hawke? So his private secretary and I cooked up a scheme. On Sunday, which was the last day Hawke was going to be in Canberra, there was a cricket match between the Parliamentarians—who he was captaining, if I remember rightly—and the Journalists, the press, at the Manuka Oval. So he suggested that I just bring John Leahy up to the pavilion, where he could then hand over his letter to Bob Hawke. It seemed like a great idea at the time. So we did, but it so happened that when we arrived the Parliamentarians were batting and Hawke was next in. He already had his pads on, and was ready to go in, and just as we got there the man ahead of him was out. So there was just time to say, ‘This is Sir John Leahy, this is the Prime Minister’, and ‘Hello, hello’, and ‘Here’s a letter’. Hawke took it, and said ‘Thanks a lot’, shoved it in the back pocket of his cricket flannels and walked up to bat. I cannot imagine that happening in any 18
The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
other country; perhaps New Zealand. I tell this partially to illustrate the nature of the relationship. The other thing that was striking at the beginning was that, although we did not know it, a terrible five year drought was just ending. You will remember that, but it tends to be overlooked now. Possibly it was one of the worst droughts, certainly in living memory at the time. Farmers were committing suicide, cattle were raiding into the national parks, and sheep were grazing on the embankments of the roads. It was pretty dire actually. COLLECOTT: Lake George, just outside Canberra, had disappeared. CULLIMORE: Yes. Most seriously, many of the reservoirs and damns feeding the big cities, including Sydney, were down to about 15 per cent of their capacity. It was so serious that people were not talking about it, because what was going to happen? That tends to be forgotten, but fortunately the drought broke in February, I think it was, of 1983, and the rains came. COLLECOTT: I think it was in March, just after Hawke had been elected. Everybody said that Hawke had done it, he had even fixed the weather. CULLIMORE: Yes. There was a very sombre mood when we first arrived. Val and I travelled very widely, both officially and on local leave, including—at her instigation—camping in the Stony Desert.48 I shall never forget that, but at least we met some lovely cattle ranchers, who we are still in touch with. One of the official visits I was deputed to go on was the handing over of Ayers Rock—as it was, Uluru as it is now49—by the Governor-General to the Aborigines.50 I shan’t forget that in a hurry either. It was a total and complete shambles from beginning to end. The government in Canberra had decided in its wisdom that this must be an Aboriginal occasion, and so they must be allowed to organise the whole thing; sadly, it was total chaos. I hope this will not be interpreted as in any way racist, but I realised then that the ‘lucky country’ had at least one serious domestic problem which was not going to go away. I am going on a bit, but can I just touch on one or two of the issues there to illustrate the kind of role—? BRIDGE (Chair): You have a few minutes, according to my watch. CULLIMORE: Thank you. First of all, I thought I should mention Maralinga, which was the place where nuclear tests had been carried out by the Brits, with Australian involvement, in the 1950s. It wasn’t so much the tests, however. There had been a totally botched clean-up operation, in the 1970s I think it was, or the 1960s, which had made a bad situation really rather worse. Hawke came under a lot of pressure to do something about it, and in particular to get the British to do something about it. A great deal of animosity was stirred up at that time, partly by the press. A Royal Commission was set up by Hawke to investigate, chaired by an 48
The Sturt Stony Desert in Queensland and New South Wales. Ayers Rock, now also known as Uluru, is a sandstone rock formation in central Australia. 50 On 26 Oct. 1985, the Australian government returned ownership of Ayers Rock or Uluru to aboriginal peoples. 49
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The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
extremely combative character, ‘Diamond Jim’ McClelland,51 who was a judge. I don’t know whether some of you may remember him. He launched quite a nasty personal attack on John Leahy at one stage, and the whole thing could, I think, have become quite unpleasant. It was rather nicely defused by Sir John, who decided to take the bull by the horns. He rang up McClelland and said, ‘If this had been two hundred years ago, in the light of your remarks I would have challenged you to a duel. Since unfortunately I can’t do that, will you come and have lunch with me instead, and let’s discuss it?’ And they got on very well after that. Eventually, although it was long after our time, I think the British government did actually make a payment of about £20 million by way of compensation. BRIDGE (Chair): The argument was about whether the British government should appear before the commission. CULLIMORE: Yes. BRIDGE (Chair): And McClelland wanted them to, and London hadn’t decided at that stage. So you were in the middle, in a sense. CULLIMORE: Eventually it was decided that they should appear, and the defence obviously was that there was no clear-cut evidence that anyone had actually suffered as a result of actually ingesting the plutonium articles that were still lying around. There was no argument that they were. The area was contaminated, but the argument was whether anyone had been affected. BRIDGE (Chair): The Australian government of the day was complicit in the testing too, which I’m sure was argued. CULLIMORE: Yes, it was. We were very involved day to day, and one lesson I took from that was that the press made up stories from day to day, and they bore absolutely no relationship to what was actually being discussed between the two governments. But there were so many of them that there was no point in trying to deal with them or rebut them or deny them, we just had to let it roll. What’s new? It’s a story— BRIDGE (Chair): Did you have any friendly journalists? CULLIMORE: Not on that issue. It was too good an opportunity for Pommybashing, I think, and they took it. Eventually it was resolved. That was an issue, but another development—which never became an issue but was interesting nonetheless—was that during my time there Australia revised its Nationality Act.52 For the first time a provision was introduced that if you wanted to apply for Australian citizenship, you had to renounce all existing citizenships. That was a new provision, and it caused a lot of angst and worry among the roughly 3 million British citizens in Australia at the time, who were worried they would lose their 51
JR ‘Diamond Jim’ McClelland (1915-99), President of the Royal Commission into British nuclear tests in Australia at Maralinga, 1984. 52 In 1992 (see chronology).
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The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
British citizenship. We, the High Commission, went back to consult the Home Office on that, and at the end of the day we were able to tell people that they could renounce their British nationality until they were blue in the face, it would make no difference, they would still have it. I’m not quite sure if that was accurate but we were certainly telling them that. If people wanted to renounce their British citizenship they had to go through a very specific procedure to do so. So people were reassured that all would be well. I think the Australians turned a blind eye to it. BRIDGE (Chair): I think the Australian law has changed again since then. You can have both. CULLIMORE: You can. You always could have both as far as the UK was concerned, of course, it was not a problem. So that was something which came up. One of the things mentioned in your list was the defence relationship, which was extremely close. I think at any one time then we had something like 200 or 300 British defence personnel on various secondments in Australia, and about the same number over here. I gather this is still the case. So it was, almost by definition, very close, with a multitude of contacts. The defence advisor post at the High Commission was at major general level, and the Defence section was by far the biggest in the High Commission, far bigger than any of the others. All of which worked very well in some ways; in other ways it did not. I remember the occasion when we had a visit by Invincible,53 the aircraft carrier that had taken part in the Falklands campaign. Invincible developed engine trouble during this visit, and it was hoped that she could put into Sydney for repairs. The trade unions were absolutely up in arms, and it was quite clear that they were opposing this because of their concern—or their stated concern—that this ship might be carrying nuclear weapons. Of course, that was an issue in other places too at the time, as some Royal Navy ships were thought to carry nuclear weapons. There was a British government policy of neither confirming nor denying this, which most people presumably took as confirmation, although probably it wasn’t. I mention this because it could have become an issue, you can see the potential for a political issue: ‘My goodness, what is this? Australia is one of our closest friends and allies, and we can’t even have a ship repaired which has gone on a courtesy visit!’ Eventually Invincible ended up in Singapore, where the engine was fixed. The issue did not develop, and I think partly it did not because the links were so close that everybody recognised that this was really about the trade unions in Sydney, it was not about relations between Britain and Australia. We certainly did not want to put Hawke in the position of having to have a confrontation; he was already having enough trouble with the unions anyway. So it just got smoothed over and the problem went away, otherwise it could have been a political issue. It is worth saying that. Finally—well, we’ll leave that bit out. Regarding the monarchy, we have already discussed a bit about the position of piggy in the middle in relation to the States. As far as the Queen was concerned, the only effect on the High Commission was a non-effect, in the sense that when she came to visit Australia, as she did when we were there, it was made 53
HMS Invincible was refused permission to dry-dock in Sydney in Dec. 1983.
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very, very clear that it was nothing to do with the British High Commission. ‘This is our Queen, our Head of State. Keep out of it mate, it is nothing to do with you guys’. I do not know whether you have had the same experience. It was actually quite nice because we were able to sit back, we had no responsibility whatever, and if anything went wrong it was all their fault. But it was quite interesting that that was the way it was played. The other thing to say is that when Hawke initially came in there was some concern that he might make it an issue; the ALP had put it up the agenda. But he quickly put that to rest and said it was way down his agenda, he was not going to call for a referendum. I personally think that one day there is going to have to be a change. As Australia becomes more and more important in the world, I think it is going to become quite difficult for the country to have a head of state who is actually somewhere else most of the time, in purely practical terms. What happens when the Queen pays a state visit to France or another country; is she representing Australia when she does that? Also, another practical problem, if the Australians invite a head of state, for instance the President of the United States, to visit Australia, how can they reciprocate that by the Australian Head of State going to the US? So there are those sorts of practical problems. In the end, I suspect, for those reasons if for no other, it will be necessary for there to be a change. But I do not think there is any great— BRIDGE (Chair): You mentioned the Falklands in passing. What was the involvement of the Australian government in the Falklands? We know that no Australian troops were involved, or maybe there were, on secondment, but— CULLIMORE: Were you there, when that took place? I was not, that was before my time. There was a great interest, and a great reason to talk about it. I remember talking to RSL Clubs54 up and down the country about the Falklands campaign on the basis of fairly detailed briefings that we were given from London. As to Australian involvement at the time, I guess they must have been very supportive in the UN. BRIDGE (Chair): Well, there was certainly diplomatic involvement, trade embargoes and that sort of thing were put in place. CULLIMORE: I am sure that is the case. But all that happened before I was there. Well, I think those are enough incidents to give an idea. BRIDGE (Chair): Had the smarting over Britain joining the EEC died down by the time you were there? CULLIMORE: I was going to say that, but I thought I was taking up too much time. No, not entirely. I sensed—I do not know whether Peter did—certainly a residual resentment, not so much at the fact that we had joined the common market, as it then was, as to what that said about our relationship with Australia. I think there was a sense that we had not done enough to secure access for Australian produce, particularly sugar. I got the sharp end of that on one occasion 54
Returned & Services League of Australia.
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in Queensland, with a huge group of Queensland sugar cane growers who felt that we had not done enough to protect their access to EU markets. I think there was some resentment about that. BRIDGE (Chair): Being a member of the family cuts both ways, doesn’t it? They’ll tell it to you straight. CULLIMORE: Yes. Sure. COLLECOTT: This being Australia, it rankled even more that we had gone out of our way to make sure New Zealand got a bit better access than Australia through New Zealand butter quotas and things like that. It rankled. ‘Why the hell did you do it for those guys? We were left to fend for ourselves’, and the only answer to that was, ‘Well, you’re big boys, you can cope’. BRIDGE (Chair): Yes. All matters other than rugby. CULLIMORE: Or cricket. BRIDGE (Chair): New Zealand, that’s the line. They can join the Australian Federation, we will have them in and they can keep their rugby team. CULLIMORE: I think perhaps we should read the text, as neither of us can colour the time when we were not there. I have the text of some of the things Sir John Leahy was going to say, covering the period up to 1988, when he was there. We both left in 1986. There were two interesting bits. One is about Young Endeavour and the Bicentenary. I would just say—he does not say it but it happened—that in my time the idea of building a sail training ship came up, and it was agreed that we should do so as Britain’s gift to Australia for the Bicentenary. It fell to Sir Peter Gadsden,55 I think, who was Lord Mayor at the time and on a visit to Australia, to convey this news to Hawke, which he did, and said this was going to be our gift. Apparently Hawke was not actually at the meeting, but he was not terribly enthusiastic about this idea, not least because the Japanese had just announced that they were going to gift some fantastic all-singing, all-dancing research laboratory to the Australians. I think he must have made it clear that he was slightly underwhelmed by this offer, to which Peter Gadsden famously replied, ‘Could I just remind you, Prime Minister, that this is actually meant to be a birthday present, not an aid programme?’ That was a pretty good comment, just right. Carrying on, I’ll read the bits of Sir John Leahy’s statement that are relevant here: Eventually, on 25 January 1988 I handed over the Young Endeavour to the Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, in a televised ceremony near Sydney Opera House. It was an impressive occasion, attended by the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Governor-General, the Premiers of all Australian States, and a large crowd of well-wishers. The next day, Bicentennial Day, the Young 55
Sir Peter Gadsden (1929-2006), 652nd Lord Mayor of London, 1979-80.
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Endeavour had the honour of leading the tall ships out of Sydney harbour. My wife and I were among those on board, and what a wonderful day it was. A few days later I retired from the diplomatic service. The ship is now in the hands of the Australian Navy and is still in use for sail training today. The other piece which may be of general interest, I think, is about Spycatcher, which again was after our time. He wrote: A problem of a different kind, and not at all easy to handle, concerned the book Spycatcher and its ex-MI5 author Peter Wright,56 who had taken up residence in Tasmania. I was not consulted by anyone in London about the launch of litigation in Australia intended to prevent publication of the book in breach of Wright’s obligations under the Official Secrets Act. Predictably, the first hearing of our case did not receive much sympathy from the New South Wales Court, and was turned down, surprise surprise. More important still, the horse was already bolting, as it became apparent that publication of the book was underway in North America. When, despite the unfavourable omens, it was decided to appeal to the New South Wales Court of Appeal, I took the opportunity of a short visit to London to see the newlyappointed Attorney General, Sir Patrick Mayhew,57 an old school acquaintance, and pass on some friendly advice from Gavan Griffith,58 who was the Solicitor General, to the effect that we would be well advised to bring in fresh counsel for the next round. He demurred, but did agree to speak to Griffith on the telephone, which he did. But he stuck to his guns. We lost again, and by then it was too late to retrieve the position. In retrospect, it would have been better if HMG had prevented Wright from making any money out of publication, by taking legal steps to distrain any profits he or the publishers might make. But afterthoughts rarely come in time. As it was, for a short time the local press had a field day, and the High Commissioner had to take it on the chin. But that was part of my job anyway, and as a former FCO spokesman used to the brickbats of the press I soon got over it.’ BRIDGE (Chair): Thank you very much. It might be that we will return to some of that. That is your initial statement, and we may be able to come back. We should move on now to Dr Peter Collecott, who was there at the same time but was doing slightly different things. COLLECOTT: Yes, pretty much the same time. I arrived a few months before Charles in August 1982, and was there until I think around August 1986. But, as you say, I was doing different things. Before I get onto that, one piece of personal background—which also says something about UK-Australian relations—was that 56
Peter Wright (1916-95), authored Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer (Viking, 1987). 57 Sir Patrick Mayhew (Lord Mayhew of Twysden), Attorney General for England and Wales, 1987-92. Leahy and Mayhew were contemporaries at Tonbridge School. 58 Dr Gavan Griffith, Solicitor General of Australia, 1984-97.
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The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
I had got married just before arriving in Canberra, and indeed had married an Australian diplomat. The reason I was going to Canberra was because she had been posted from the Middle East back to Canberra, and I actually wanted to be there as well. I was very lucky that at the time the FCO was flexible enough to say that there was great job in Canberra, and ask if I wanted it, and I said yes. But also, in a sense more seriously, they and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs sucked their teeth for several months over whether this was actually allowable, for an Australian diplomat and a British diplomat to be married to each other and both be operational in Canberra at the same time. The background to that was that my predecessor in exactly the same job in Canberra, Ivor Roberts,59 had married an Australian diplomat ten years before, and been told that his wife Elizabeth had to resign from the Australian service because this was just not allowable. Luckily, after some months’ cogitation, the Office came down in the right direction and the Australian Foreign Service came down in the right direction, but only after one suggestion which was, ‘Well, wouldn’t it be a lot easier if Collecott just went and joined the Australian service?’. I think that was probably a suggestion from here, so I am not quite sure whether they wanted to get rid of me. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier if Collecott just went and joined the Australians? I’m sure they’d have him’; that would make it different. But the Office is ever adaptable in things like that. It was rather fun to see a transcript from Hansard a couple of years later, with Patrick Wright,60 as PUS61, appearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee, making an absolute point of how wonderful the Office was and how flexible it had been, that it was able to post people like this together, and how this was the brave new world. This is the piece of personal background. I did not have very much difficulty in integrating myself into Canberra life, given that not only was my wife an Australian, but in fact she was actually born and bred in Canberra as well. I was the First Secretary heading up the Economic, and Commercial and Agricultural Section of the Embassy, which sounds to me as if it was considerably smaller and of lower rank than it was in Gavin’s time. The kind of issues we were dealing with were quite significant, and there was certainly plenty to do. I guess one should say first of all that we wanted to make sure that Australia remained a welcoming and profitable destination for British investment, that which was there and that which wanted to come. And similarly, that it remained—in so far as it was and could be—a market for our exports to Australia, which were multifarious and not as big as they might have been. That led us into looking fairly closely at a number of things, such as the foreign investment rules in Australia which were gradually changing, and into issues such as the liberalisation of the banking system, which happened when the Hawke government came in, under Paul Keating as Treasurer.62 We also watched the issue of protectionism fairly closely. I cannot remember the name of the body, it was the Tariff Review Board or something like that at the time, and it was hugely efficient. It went through a long bureaucratic process but produced really very detailed reports, justifying—or not—reductions in tariffs on manufactured goods. As was hinted before, there was 59
Sir Ivor Roberts, First Secretary, Canberra, 1978-82. Sir Patrick Wright (Lord Wright of Richmond), Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1986-91. 61 Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs: PUS. 62 Paul Keating, Treasurer of Australia, 1983-91. 60
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a dichotomy because of different positions. The Australians were struggling with reducing the tariff levels on manufactured goods into Australia, and at the same time they were quite reasonably putting pressure on us to try to ensure they got greater access for their agricultural produce into the EU. But that was actually quite a good relationship, quite an easy relationship, because we were manifestly the most liberal on trade policy within the EU, and one of those pushing continually for reductions in common agricultural expenditure and hence barriers to imports. It was indicative of the nature of the relationship that I remember that we used to get instructions from London in a telegram, and we would have to go and talk to the Department of Trade about it them at a pretty senior level. It was very easy for a young First Secretary to get access, occasionally at ministerial level but usually at levels just below that. Because of this relationship you would almost always just give them the telegram and say, ‘Look here, these are my instructions, let’s just go through them and you tell me what you agree with and what you don’t agree with, and then we’ll cobble together the response’. That kind of relationship worked very well. I think it also worked very well in the other related sphere, which was that we were in the very beginnings of the run-up to the Uruguay Round of GATT negations,63 in which the Australians were prime movers. Therefore it was actually quite a learning process, but it was also good to have very close relationships with them as they worked out how they wanted this to go forward. We were to a degree still struggling with how our relationship worked within the EU and with the degree to which we could try to push the things we wanted, as well as having those relationships with other contracting parties in the GATT, as it was then. The other related but more extensive set of issues was really to do with tracking the health of the Australian economy fairly carefully. This was obviously important for investment and trade, but it was also an important time because of the process of the integration of the Australian economy into the East Asian economy. At that time there had been for many years—and this was always a sort of totem—a very close relationship with the Japanese in particular. Huge amounts of coal and iron ore were being shipped out of Australia and into Japan, and to a degree the Japanese were trying to do what the Chinese now do, which is buy into the Australian end so they had some leverage over the price negations which took place. Particularly towards the end of my time, you could see that not just the political relationship but also the trade relationship between Australia and China was beginning to come up. We devoted quite a bit of attention to trying to track that, and predicting how that might go into the future, and lo and behold one eclipsed the other over the next decade, which was very interesting. BRIDGE (Chair): And you predicted that? COLLECOTT: Actually, yes; or at least said that we have to watch this. I remember doing an analysis for Sir John Mason, halfway through my time, which found that the same kind of stuff was happening in the Australia-China relationship that we were familiar with from the Australia-Japan relationship ten or fifteen years previously. That was important to us. Firstly because the world 63
The Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 1986-94.
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The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
was changing, but also because there were big UK or Australian-UK mining companies that were deeply involved, such as Rio Tinto.64 BRIDGE (Chair): Yes indeed, British interests as well as Australian interests. You were not just watching it. COLLECOTT: Yes. We were not just watching it, and we were also quite closely in touch with the Australian side of these joint enterprises. There are perhaps just a couple of other things I might mention that were going on at the time. Charles mentioned Maralinga and the clean-up of the nuclear test sites in Australia. That was, in a sense, the background or the subliminal background to one other thing which was going on. After the Hawke government came in there were discussions over the degree to which the Labor government would permit Australian uranium resources to be mined, and developed, or not, which we tracked very closely and in which we had a very close interest. We wanted the mining to continue, and we also had a big commercial interest because we, the Dutch and the Germans had Urenco,65 the uranium enrichment company. We spent quite a lot of effort trying to ensure that it got a foot in the door in case those uranium deposits were to be exploited and somewhere to process and enrich the uranium was needed, because at the time it was pretty clear that was not going to get done in Australia in the foreseeable future. I’ll briefly mention also that, although it was 15 years ahead, some of the preparations were underway for the handing back of Hong Kong to China.66 One of the things that I got quite heavily involved in was the air service negotiations, separating out the Australia-UK Air Services Agreement (ASA) into an AustraliaUK ASA and an Australia-Hong Kong ASA, which was necessary. This brought me into the realm of the indomitable an official of the Department of Transport, who had a reputation around the world as a fierce negotiator but was actually a very nice man. Having got over my initial nervousness we seemed to get on quite well, and understand each other. BRIDGE (Chair): Who won? COLLECOTT: I do not think anybody won, and as always with these things the Embassy or the High Commission finds itself rather in between, because the British government position is heavily influenced, shall we put it that way, by the big airlines which have an interest. In this case it was British Airways in the UK and it was Cathay Pacific in Hong Kong. Finally, there was the issue of the procurement of new submarines for the RAN,67 which was the biggest defence contract around at the time in Australia, in which we had an interest because Vickers was one of the bidders with the Type
64
The Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto Group is an international metals and mining corporation. See www.riotinto.com/ [Accessed 25 Feb. 2013]. 65 The Urenco Group is a manufacturer of enriched uranium for the nuclear power utilities worldwide. See www.urenco.com/ [Accessed 25 Feb. 2013]. 66 In 1997 Hong Kong was returned to China. 67 Royal Australian Navy.
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2400.68 This came almost to a head; I think the final decision was taken just after I left, but it was pretty clear where things were going. Eventually the contract was awarded to the Swedish, to Kockums,69 which produced the six Collins class submarines which the Australian Navy still have, albeit with some problems.70 But it was an interesting process. I think initially we thought that because the RAN had previously had British submarines and seemed to be relatively happy with them, and because there were very close relationships between the RAN and the RN, and the exchanges that people have talked about, somehow we had an in and we ought to do quite well. We also had a highly capable machine. There were an awful lot of shenanigans, and there were all kinds of accusations flying around in the press of brown envelopes here, there and elsewhere. There was talk of disreputable practices relating to the efficacy of the escape hatches on one of the two German submarines bidding, and so on. But eventually we came to realise, and I think this was the truth, that there was a political feeling within the RAN that they were not going to buy British, almost whatever the British bid had been. They had got to the state where, just like the Imperial relics, they wished to cut the umbilical cord and do their own thing, and that therefore we were in a sense on a hiding to nothing. I think it was quite sobering to realise that that was probably affecting something big like that. I think I will stop there.71 BRIDGE (Chair): Thank you very much. One issue we have not touched on is that of the broader Commonwealth concerns at the time. Fraser and Hawke saw themselves as in the forefront of putting pressure both on Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and on South Africa, and I presume that muddled up from time to time. That must have come up on your watch, I think, Charles, is that right? Was that a problem you had? CULLIMORE: It had of course happened, because the Lancaster House Agreement72 had already taken place, and Fraser had played his rather major role in that. That was obviously before my time, but one was conscious that he had played a very important part, and that he was a very leading figure in the Commonwealth in that sense. BRIDGE (Chair): And still was, wasn’t he? That didn’t happen through the High Commission, it happened government-to-government, as it were?
68
Vickers Type 2400 submarines were built by the UK firm, Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd. 69 Kockums is a naval and maritime company, based in Malmö, Sweden. See www.kockums.se/en/ [Accessed 25 Feb. 2013]. 70 ‘The Collins Class submarines are a key element of Australia’s Defence Force, both as an intelligence-gathering platform during peace time and as a forceful opponent during times of war’: see http://www.asc.com.au/aspx/submarines_collins_class_submarines.aspx [accessed 25 Feb. 2013]. 71 For some current debates, see Peter Yule and Derek Woolner, The Collins Class Submarine Story: Steel, Spies and Spin (2008). 72 Lancaster House Agreement 1979 brought an end of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence of Southern Rhodesia and the creation of the state of Zimbabwe. See M.D. Kandiah and Sue Onslow (eds), Britain and Rhodesia: The Route to Settlement, Witness Seminar 5 July 2005 (2008).
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CULLIMORE: I think so, yes. I do not know the extent to which the High Commission got involved in 1980, when the Lancaster House Agreement was being negotiated. BRIDGE (Chair): They had that problem in Melbourne in 1982, didn’t they? CULLIMORE: It is a great shame that Lord Carrington isn’t here, because he would be able to talk about it from both ends, but there we are. Gavin, would you have been there? Lancaster House took place in, what was it, 1980? HEWITT: I left in 1978. BRIDGE (Chair): It just falls between you then. Perhaps before we open this to the floor we could return to your remarks on Indonesia, Gavin? You said that this was a major issue in 1975, which you were keeping a very close watch on. HEWITT: If my dates are right, because remember that Papua New Guinea (PNG) was still a protectorate of Australia. It did not gain independence until 1975. BRIDGE (Chair): The same time, yes. HEWITT: And of course PNG abuts Indonesia. Whitlam and his team certainly wanted to cultivate the right relationship with Southeast Asia, with Indonesia, particularly to the North. The events in East Timor completely soured the ability to engage properly with the Indonesian government, because of course it denied any responsibility whatsoever for the killings of the Australian journalists.73 I remember it really dominated, not just for months, I think it ran on for about a year and a half. It still runs on in a way. It ran on all the way to the liberation and independence of East Timor, finally, in its own process. BRIDGE (Chair): I think there are a lot of parts of the world that do not realise how big Indonesia is, both geographically and in terms of population, and otherwise.74 HEWITT: If I were looking at it now I would still think that the AustralianIndonesian relationship is a fascinating thing to watch. It is a very uneasy relationship, and it is not made any easier by some of the history. These things do keep coming back, I think, and are a reminder of how we can’t actually trust them, we’re being overwhelmed by them, potentially. Of course the current process, of boats coming with immigrants to Australia for whom the last stopping place is Indonesia, is itself part of the difficult relationship. BRIDGE (Chair): I think it was Sukarno75 who said during the Confrontation76 that the British will go away but the Australians won’t, because they live over 73
See chronology. Indonesia is an archipelago covering an area of 1,904,569 kilometres and has a population of over 238 million people. 75 Sukarno (1901-70), President of Indonesia, 1945-67. 74
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there and we live here, and we always will. It might be uneasy but the relationship is important. HEWITT: Picking up Peter’s point, the ease of talking to the Australians, particularly the Minister in the Department of Foreign Affairs, was quite extraordinary. You really did exchange your telegrams, you did actually put your papers on the table, and you had an extraordinary exchange, a very frank one. Sometimes we would say, ‘We are telling you this but please don’t actually do anything, don’t report it’. It made the access that we had to the DFA very easy. I remember that I would regularly talk, not to the desk officers or the heads of department, but actually to Alan Renouf, 77 the Permanent Secretary, and do business with him, and for a First Secretary to do that is rather unusual in other places. BRIDGE (Chair): There were no other places you had experience of where that happened? HEWITT: I had, but on the basis of cultivating a relationship. BRIDGE (Chair): New Zealand? HEWITT: You did not actually have to cultivate these people as friends to be able to go and see them, the doors were open for you. BRIDGE (Chair): So these were common cultural assumptions about who can do what, where? HEWITT: I think so. The issue was very much an economic one, an easy one, but otherwise concerned attitudes to the rest of the world, to the United States; I remember Pine Gap78 coming up regularly. Maralinga was fascinating. Peter’s and Charles’ references to that reminded me that that was my first education in how not to trust the press, because at some time in my period I had been at a party on a Saturday night and misguidedly I had mentioned that there were discussions going on between the Australians and the British government on Maralinga, and this appeared on the Monday morning on the front page of the Australian. I remember Morrice James, my first High Commissioner,79 sitting us all down at a huge long table. There were about 28 of us, sitting around a table in the conference room in the High Commission, and Morris James, with his very beady, sort of angry look, said, ‘Who has been speaking to the press?’. So I—very judiciously—sat on my hands.
76
The Indonesian-Malaysian Confrontation or Konfrontasi, 1962-6. Alan Renouf (1918-2008), Permanent Secretary, Australian Department for Foreign Affairs, 1974-7. 78 Located near the geographic centre of Australia, the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap is a satellite tracking station operated by both Australia and the USA. 79 Sir Morrice James (Lord St Brides, 1916-89), High Commissioner, 1971-6. 77
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BRIDGE (Chair): I wondered about relations with other embassies and NATO partners, with their representation in Canberra, over issues such as French testing or other things that were going on, or with the Americans in the Canberra setting. HEWITT: The relationship with the Americans was close and good, and we talked to them regularly. And frankly the others were so much behind the game that it was very seldom actually worth talking to them, other than that I occasionally talked to the Malaysians or the Singaporeans or people who were actually being courted by the Australians, to find out the other side. Frankly, it was a relationship where the High Commission was better informed and had better access, and people other than the Americans wanted to get information from us. We were being used as interlocutors to understand what the Australians were doing. BRIDGE (Chair): The other major EEC countries, the French and the Germans, would come along to you and say, ‘You’re part of the EEC, tell us what is going on with these Australians?’ HEWITT: They just simply didn’t have the access that we enjoyed. BRIDGE (Chair): Was that your experience as well? CULLIMORE: Absolutely. I think the only other countries I would mention that we had very close contacts with, and which had pretty good access too, were Commonwealth countries. New Zealand—and of course the New Zealand High Commission was next to ours anyway so we used to talk to them a lot—and the Canadians. My Canadian counterpart and I frequently had lunch and they had pretty good access. That was really a Commonwealth link. BRIDGE (Chair): The Indians? CULLIMORE: To a lesser extent. They didn’t have that sort of access. BRIDGE (Chair): More so these days on some things? CULLIMORE: Possibly, with the increasingly large Indian population. BRIDGE (Chair): I think the time has come to open this to the floor for questions. COLLECOTT: Could I just say that we spent quite a lot of time co-ordinating with our EU colleagues, as one always does. Obviously among those it was always the French and the Germans and to a degree the Dutch who were reasonably well-informed. CULLIMORE: One final example about the closeness of the relationship, which I was reminded of by your remarks on Hong Kong. It was just the beginning of the negotiations with China over the future of Hong Kong, terribly delicate and very, very carefully guarded, but we had detailed telegrams from London telling 31
The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
us what was going on and saying please pass the following to the Australians, and I think only the Australians. This was obviously because it was recognised, by us in the High Commission and in London, that Australia had a particularly direct interest in what was going to happen in Hong Kong and we needed to tell them, and we tried very much to keep them in the picture. And they were talking to the Americans too, I imagine, in Washington, and probably nobody else. BRIDGE (Chair): Reciprocity went in both directions presumably, so the Australians were sometimes telling you things that you needed to know? CULLIMORE: Yes. BRIDGE (Chair): The floor is now open, but I would remind you to say who you are and where you’re from, and to keep your questions and any observations succinct, so that other people can also ask. Do we have a first question? PROFESSOR PATRICK SALMON: Gavin made the point that he was representing Britain at a time when we were regarded as ‘the sick man of Europe’. Both Charles and Peter were there at almost an opposite extreme, when Britain was doing much better than it had ever done. I wonder whether that economic success perhaps improved the morale of Britain at that time? Did that influence the Australians, and help you in the work you were doing? CULLIMORE: Yes. But I think more than anything it was our success in the Falklands.80 That made a huge impact, and finally reawakened the recognition that Britain was still a country of power to reckon with, and could project its power overseas, and that it was actually quite important for Australia to know that. So yes, it was. COLLECOTT: Economically it took a little while for that recognition to come through. We had the early 1980s recession at the very beginning of our time. I think it took a little while, into the mid-1980s, before people realised that we were doing much better than we had been, that we had recovered from the ghastliness of the 1970s, and that this was sustainable, or at least for some period. That did have an effect. DR SUE ONSLOW: A question just to expand upon your role regarding connections with South Africa in the 1980s: you answered a question about Rhodesia, and of course in the early 1980s there was growing pressure upon the British government to institute economic sanctions against South Africa. You were in Canberra in the run-up towards the Nassau Conference,81 the decision to send the Eminent Persons Group,82 and of course Bob Hawke played a leading
80
The Anglo-Argentine Falklands War, 1982. See Andrew Dorman, M.D. Kandiah and Gillian Staerck, ‘The Falklands War’, Witness Seminar, 5 June 2002, Proceedings of the Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, Occasional Number 46 (2003). 81 The Commonwealth Accord on Southern Africa, the Nassau Accord. 20 Oct. 1985. 82 An Eminent Persons Group was set up at the 1985 CHOGM in Nassau to investigate apartheid in South Africa, which they visited the following year.
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part in encouraging the EPG mission. Was this seen as a Commonwealth issue, or were you involved in any bilateral Australian-British discussions on this? CULLIMORE: It was always seen as a Commonwealth issue, yes. I suspect it was more of an issue here, it didn’t impinge much on what we were doing in the High Commission. We were conscious, obviously, that Hawke was playing a leading part and there was tension because of that, but I would not have said it was a major issue that we had to deal with. We were aware of it as a background problem. BRIDGE (Chair): I suppose the Concorde business was also a part of this comeback, the technological comeback of flying Concorde in, and it was a pity that— HEWITT: The Concorde test flights were way back in 1976. BRIDGE (Chair): You were the ‘sick man’, but you were still producing Concorde. HEWITT: That was the irony, that we were still able to do that. Extraordinary. BRIDGE (Chair): It was the Malaysians who messed that up, wasn’t it? The population of Melbourne was quite distraught when it did not get Concorde. YORK MEMBERY: I wondered whether relations were easier with either the Labor or the Liberal governments in Australia, or whether they were very similar. HEWITT: Without a shadow of a doubt, with officials it was exactly the same. You didn’t have problems, but obviously there is the question of the degree to which officials actually represent government policy. Whitlam was a man who clearly was not very much enamoured of the UK. He wanted to carve out something else which was different, and that I think did affect some of the way that officials handled us. But there was a very, very good personal relationship. On that basis, under Fraser’s administration with Andrew Peacock83 as Foreign Minister, there was suddenly a reversal, and you felt that there was again a relationship which was closer at the top of the political level. You did see that, but because our relations at official level—and talking to people—were in any case close, it was more of an issue right at the top of government, when you actually reflect on it. BRIDGE (Chair): Sir John Mason says in his memoir that he worried when Labor first came in that they would be too protectionist and all the rest. He then realised they weren’t, because Hawke was introducing reforms. HEWITT: Whitlam was the first Labor Prime Minister after the Liberal and Country Party had been in power for 25 or 23 years. A little anecdote: I had a very 83
Andrew Peacock, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, 1975-80.
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good neighbour, who is still a friend of mine today, and he was a massive ALP supporter. I remember exactly how vicious he felt about the Liberal and Country Party governments over the years. After Menzies’s84 death the Australian newspaper had the whole front page simply black, with only two words on it, which were ‘Menzies Dead’. James came to me the next day and said, ‘I am extremely surprised that the Australian coverage today isn’t just “Menzies still dead”.’ COLLECOTT: I think Gavin is right. I had what was really the very end of the Fraser administration, and after that the Hawke administration. I think at official level it did not make any difference at all, they were almost exactly the same people. But by then the tenor was rather different. One got the impression that the Fraser government was on its last legs; Fraser had been there a long while. It was quite a difficult time, and there was the feeling that the government did not have the flexibility to address the problems. Bill Hayden’s85 famous remark, once he had been kicked out of the leadership of the ALP before the election, was, ‘A drover’s dog could win this election’. There was that kind of feeling around. BRIDGE (Chair): What they don’t say is that drover’s dogs are very smart. COLLECOTT: Regarding your comment—we have spoken about the one from John Mason—it was pretty clear fairly soon that Hawke was going to be a pragmatist as far as a lot of things were concerned, he was not going to be an ideologue. Things get said in election campaigns to calm the troops in the ALP, but certainly on economic policy the underlying philosophy was that of the economic rationalist. There was a lot of discussion in Canberra on precisely what that meant. Keating was the guy who was pushing that line very strongly, and he was very strong within the government. So I don’t think it was going to change. The combination of Keating and John Button made sure that went forward. BRIDGE (Chair): Absolutely. Keating’s famous speech, ‘Do you want to be a banana republic?’86 CULLIMORE: As to the questions about a change in the atmosphere and relations with the UK, I agree with everything Peter has said. Probably it is also the case that at a personal level the relations between Hawke and Margaret Thatcher were not terribly good. In a way perhaps it is again an indication of the strength of the underlying relationship that one could almost say that it didn’t matter, whereas with other countries it would matter a lot. It did not really matter, but it was not very good. I am telling tales out of school, and so I will not repeat who said this, but somebody who was there told me about it. It took place at one of the CHOGMs,87 I think Margaret Thatcher was in the chair, so presumably it must have been here. One of the African heads of state—probably of Nigeria— was trying to make a point, and he was sort of stumbling a bit and going rather 84
Sir Robert Menzies (1894-1978), Australian Prime Minister, 1939-41; 1949-66. Bill Hayden, ALP politician; Governor-General of Australia, 1989-96. 86 Remark made on 14 May 1986, on Radio 2UE. 87 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting: CHOGM. 85
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slowly, and Margaret Thatcher kept interrupting until Hawke apparently said from the back of the room, ‘For Christ’s sake, will you let the poor bastard finish?’. BRIDGE (Chair): We are not going to finish until you keep going. NIGEL COOK: I am an Australian ex-diplomatic officer. I was very happy to hear how full and frank the relations were between Australian officials in Canberra and the British High Commission over the years. You might be interested in hearing a little bit about the other side of that coin. I was Deputy High Commissioner in 1979, and had very full and frank discussions with a chap who became a great friend of mine, Tony Duff.88 When in 1979 there was the conference in Zambia which led up to the Lancaster House Agreement on Southern Rhodesia, there was a meeting in Nigeria, of all places, of the Fraser team which was going to Zambia. Rather to my surprise, I was made a member of that team. At a big meeting of this team Fraser began by saying, ‘Of course, I don’t think much of Maggie Thatcher, I am absolutely convinced that she is not going to do the right thing about Rhodesia’. I knew because of Tony Duff that that was absolutely wrong, and I said so, and I think that had a big impression on how he handled himself, and on relations with the British, when it came to the conference in Zambia. Just on a personal note, the only bad thing about that was that at the end, after I had spoken in Nigeria and tried to put Fraser right, all the other officials came up and said, ‘You must be mad, nobody speaks to Fraser like that’. The bad thing was that a month or so later he asked me to be the head of his private office. It was the worst two years of my life. BRIDGE (Chair): We have time for one or two more questions. PROFESSOR PHILIP MURPHY: Charles mentioned that when the Queen visits the High Commission is told that it’s none of their business and to keep out. But I suppose the problem is that on the whole people don’t really understand the notion of a divisible crown. And if the visit went badly, if it saw a protest, it would be seen as reflecting badly on Britain’s relations with Australia, and would certainly be seen so in the British press. Isn’t this a huge source of frustration for the High Commission, and what did you do about it? CULLIMORE: Well, that is completely hypothetical. Inconceivable that it could happen, and certainly it did not happen. BRIDGE (Chair): You mean you were never frustrated? CULLIMORE: We did not need to get frustrated, because there was nothing to get frustrated about. BRIDGE (Chair): They get trained in these things. PROFESSOR DAVID LLOYD: Canberra has always had something of a distinctive reputation, I think, for its unusual setting and the closeness of the 88
Sir Antony Duff (1920-2000), Director General of MI5, 1985-8.
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community of public servants and academics and diplomatic representatives. It had a reputation for informality which sometimes encouraged politicians to be incautious in talking to foreign representatives. Recently one of the WikiLeaks revelations was of politicians doing precisely that, talking to the Americans about things going on within the party. I wondered what your own reflections were on that score? Was Canberra unusual in that? Did people come and spill the beans on their colleagues and talk about shenanigans within the party to a greater or lesser extent than in other places? HEWITT: Without a shadow of a doubt. I think during the Whitlam dismissal, you were not only being fed the stuff obviously by the press, but you were then able to use the stuff in the press to actually go in behind, and the politicians of his own party were being fantastically indiscreet. This made good reporting, but it didn’t actually add very much. You were able to put a lot of colour into your reporting even if you were not actually able to add very much to the substance. Indiscretion would quite often take place over a good lunch at the Lobby. BRIDGE (Chair): Were you talking to the opposition parties as well? HEWITT: The opposition parties, indeed. One was currying as much favour as possible with them and trying to find out what was going on. But they were a little bit more hesitant, because they did not want to reveal exactly what their game plan was to unseat Whitlam. Fraser and others had a very clear game plan which was then played out, and you saw some bits of it when the caucus had made a decision to do something but you did not then see the undercurrents. So the Liberal Party was a bit more cautious in talking to you freely. CULLIMORE: Could I just add a codicil to that? In answer to that question, we used to have very informal supper parties at our house, at which we would sometimes have parliamentarians from all three parties who were quite happy to come with each other. They would talk to each other completely frankly and openly about what they were doing and what was happening and who should have done what and who did so, and so on, as if we weren’t there, practically. It was that open. I cannot imagine that happening—it certainly never happened to me— anywhere else. BRIDGE (Chair): You didn’t have a vote, you see. It didn’t matter. CULLIMORE: Never anywhere else. India occasionally a little bit, but not to that extent. BRIDGE (Chair): In vino veritas. If there are no more questions, I might throw something in. At the end of Sir John Leahy’s memoir of the Australian section he quotes his valedictory or farewell dispatch, saying, ‘I think the relationship between the two countries is inevitably drifting apart’, and talks about republicanism and declining trade and various other things. Was that your sense when you were there, or did you think that this was a passing phase and the relationship might grow again, based on common interests in other things?
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CULLIMORE: I did not think it was inevitably drifting apart. I thought that we were certainly guilty, if that is the right word, of taking it too much for granted, at that time. If I had any regret it was that, certainly during the time I was there, I think we had a total of two ministerial visits from the UK, both by relatively junior ministers. Well, that was not good enough, but it is perfectly remediable. It was a tactical thing, and we should have been doing better than that. There was not, I think, an underlying problem that we were inevitably drifting apart, except obviously in the sense that for Australia the region of Asia was becoming more and more important and that was a sort of historical process. BRIDGE (Chair): Was anybody suggesting that the UK going in to Europe or Australia getting more enmeshed in Asia would actually create benefits for both ends which could then be mutually useful further down the track? Or were they just saying, ‘No, separate spheres, it won’t happen’? CULLIMORE: Perhaps Peter would like to say more on that. I can’t really speak for Australians, someone else should do that, but yes, there was definitely a consciousness on our part that Australia, if you want to put it this way, would increasingly become an important springboard for UK companies trying to get into Asian markets. COLLECOTT: Which has happened. I think that was very conscious, that quite a lot of the investment in Australia was actually to be a springboard into Asia; it was in order to set up regional headquarters there. So, I agree with Charles. However, that I think the British did not appreciate quickly enough the degree to which the Australian orientation was changing, and that Australia was completely dedicated to imbedding itself in Asia, and that was in their interest. We tried to hang on to a relationship in terms which did not really take that into account. We therefore were not conscious enough of the degree to which we could, and should, have been using the Australians, not just as an economic springboard but also as eyes and ears and people who know a lot about what was going on in Asia whom we could work with there, and who could actually give us a lead there, because we did not have very much heft. HEWITT: I was very conscious of Australia’s Asian destiny, because that was Whitlam’s policy. Fraser came along, and he did not actually have that same embedded view. He was not nurturing the relationship with Asia in the way that Whitlam wanted to. And I wonder, therefore, whether coming into the 1980s Australia was still feeling a little bit astray, turning back again and looking a little bit more towards Europe. COLLECOTT: The economics were pointing that way. The relationship with Japan, which we were talking about earlier, was clearly huge and of vital importance to Australia. There were any number of ministerial visits from Australia to Tokyo at that time, it was extraordinary. I think that may be true of Fraser, that he was instinctively less Asian, but I think that changed once Hawke came in, and in particular with Keating, who was more Asia-focused than Hawke. We will doubtless hear about him when we come to the Keating government.
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BRIDGE (Chair): One of the things I remember is that there was a communiquĂŠ after some meetings between Hawke and Thatcher, so it much have been in the late 1980s or in 1990, where they made the point that Australia was the ideal place for British companies to establish their regional offices to trade into the AsiaPacific. Contrariwise, Britain is the obvious place for Australians to invest and to establish their trading into Europe. Were you encouraging that side of the equation as well? COLLECOTT: Yes, certainly both of those actions, although perhaps not as actively as in hindsight one might have done. BRIDGE (Chair): Australian investment into Britain these days and in the last 10 or 15 years has been very high, so there was a shift. They are not just going to Asia. COLLECOTT: At that stage it had not taken off. I do not think even the big guys, the big investors such as AMP, really had a significant presence here. That came in the 1990s. CULLIMORE: I think it probably slightly also reflects the different culture here. Certainly at that time, not only in Canberra but elsewhere, I do not think we had a consciousness of needing to be very proactive about trying to invest and trying to attract investment into the UK. Certainly, yes we tried to ensure that there were good conditions for UK companies to invest in Australia or wherever it might be, but I think the reverse has become a much more prominent feature of diplomatic life than it was, perhaps over the last ten or twenty years. I think it is partly that. BRIDGE (Chair): I think that is absolutely correct, right across the board. We have passed our allotted time. Thank you very much indeed to our three witnesses. We could have gone on, and I think we have had some very useful discussion indeed.
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The Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra Session Two – The Keating and Howard Years Chair: David Fitton, Acting Head of Pacific Department, FCO. Witnesses: Sir Brian L. Barder KCMG: High Commissioner, 1991-1994 Sir Roger J. Carrick KCMG, LVO: High Commissioner, 1994-1997 Hon. Sir Alexander Allan, KCB: High Commissioner, 1997-1999 Rt. Hon. the Lord Goodlad KCMG: High Commissioner, 1999-2005 Rt. Hon. the Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke PC: High Commissioner, 2005-2009. Audience Participants: Lady (Jane) Barder Professor Carl Bridge, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College London Peter Collecott CMG: First Secretary (Economic/ Commercial/ Agricultural), 1982-86 Professor Robert Holland, Institute of Commonwealth Studies Benjamin Mountford, Corpus Christi College, Oxford. DAVID FITTON (Chair): Ladies and gentleman, thank you very much for coming back to your seats. This session, like the previous one, is very much on the record, and it will have a similar format. I would like to ask our speakers to give an introductory talk, and we will aim to touch on one or two themes as we go through and come back in time for questions at the end. My name is David Fitton, and I am the head of the newly-formed Pacific Department here at the FCO, which is only a month old. Of course, Australia is a very big part of that Pacific Department. When listening to the witnesses speaking earlier I was very interested to hear a number of themes which have continued through until today. Charles and Peter were commenting on the ease of the relationship, the closeness of the defence relationship. Our next speakers will take us back a little bit, but coming right forward to today, we are now extremely close. Unlike in Charles’s day, when there were only two ministers visiting during the whole time, we have many more going to Australia now. We have now set up the annual Australia-UK ministerial dialogue, and the fifth one will take place in January, when our foreign and defence secretaries will travel out to Perth for dialogue. We are investigating colocation with the Australians in a number of places. As they join the Security Council next year they are looking for premises in some parts of the world where we may have space to offer. We also now share our diplomatic telegraphic reporting with Australia, as they do with us. It is not just a question of going in to 39
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show them telegrams; we now press a button on our computers and they can read our telegrams. So we have moved forward a long way. Interestingly though, many of the themes which were discussed are still very lively themes. I would like to come back to the relationship with Indonesia, the monarchy, republicanism and so on. I have a suspicion that this will come out in what we are about to hear, but you can rely on me that if things do not come up I will make sure that we come back to them and try not to forget them. I would like us to start at the start, as it were, at the historical beginning of this second session. I hope that during the course of the comments from our five distinguished speakers we will notice how the relationship has developed and how the work of the High Commission has perhaps developed over time since the 1990s. So if we could perhaps begin with Sir Brian talking about the time he was there? SIR BRIAN BARDER: My name is Brian Barder, and I was High Commissioner between 1991 and 1994; thankfully I am now retired. It was a return to Australia because I had been in the High Commission as Head of Chancery during the 1970s, exactly the same time as Gavin Hewitt, who was speaking here earlier. It was an especially interesting posting because it was possible to compare Australia in the early 1990s with Australia in the mid-1970s, about a 15-year gap, and to see what changes had taken place. The changes, I think, were enormous, much greater than perhaps you would expect. As an example, I remember that when I first arrived as head of Chancery in the 1970s, I was taken by the rather grand High Commissioner, Morrice James, to call on Sir John Bunting,89 who was the Permanent Secretary to the Prime Minister’s department, and a very senior and powerful Australian public servant, to introduce me and have a general chat about current affairs. Morrice James and Bunting sat in easy chairs and chatted exactly as two British civil servants might chat. Indeed at one point, which I shall never forget, Sir John Bunting quite naturally and without any sort of emphasis turned to Morrice James and said, ‘You know, it’s funny about us British’; that obviously came absolutely naturally to him. When I was there in the 1990s I couldn’t imagine any Australian public servant talking about himself as British. It would have jarred, certainly on any Australian under about 60, I should think. But as late as the 1970s there was still a strong tradition that in some way all parts of the Empire were the same and equal, and we were all British together and had a shared history and so on. So there was a special relationship. I don’t believe that really existed any longer in the 1990s. This was to some extent a party affair. The Australian Labor Party was much less instinctively and automatically pro-British than the old Liberals, and it was also partly a matter of personalities. Remember Menzies’s role at Suez,90 and remember his famous remark about the Queen in a public speech: ‘I did but see her passing by, / And yet I love her till I die’—a quotation from a poem by the
89
Sir John Bunting (1918-95), Permanent Secretary to the Prime Minister’s Department, 1959-68; 1971-5. 90 Following a conference in London, Menzies led a mission to Egyptian President Nasser in Sept. 1956. See WR Louis and R Owen, Chapter: ‘Australia and the Crisis’, Suez 1956: The Crisis and its Consequences (1991); WM Ball, ‘.The Australian Reaction to the Suez Crisis: July-December, 1956’, Australian Journal of Politics & History, Vol.2 No.2 (1957).
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Elizabethan poet Thomas Ford.91 Again, it is very difficult to imagine an Australian senior politician talking in those kinds of terms today. I think that one of the great differences is that the British are congenitally sentimental about the relationship and most Australians no longer are. It is a much healthier relationship, I believe, when it is unsentimental. It is of course true that the history goes back a long way and the friendship goes back a long way. Nevertheless, an awful lot of Australians, when Brits—Poms—go on too much about the Australia-Britain love-in, will remind them of Gallipoli,92 or about Britain joining the European Economic Community as it was then, indeed even about the fall of Singapore. Also mentioned is the failure of Britain to come to Australia’s rescue when she was threatened by Japan, when Britain inevitably put the German threat to the UK first. So ‘perfidious Albion’ is a phrase that rings a bell with quite a number of Australians. I think we should not deceive ourselves that it is any longer an internal family affair. There is still quite a lot of affection, but there is also a certain amount of distrust. A general point I would like to make is that inter-government relations, which of course are the primary concern of the High Commission in Canberra, are only a very small part of the overall Australian-British relationship. If you took away the two governments, the relationship would really hardly be affected. It consists of sport, it consists of innumerable family visits in both directions, running into the millions, it consists of shared entertainment such as television series and programmes, and of exchanges of comedians and singers and opera groups and so on. It is somewhat corrupted by an Australian feeling that British people patronise Australians, and it is true that a lot of British people do. It is partially corrupted by the Australian suspicion that Britain doesn’t really treat Australians seriously. I think many British people appear as comic characters to Australians, and the feeling is mutual. So there is quite a lot of work to be done in keeping the relationship healthy. But it is inevitable that Britain will become less important to Australia as time goes on, and Australia probably somewhat less important to Britain also over time. It’s probably a period of declining relations, which nevertheless remain strong and very good, useful and productive to both countries, but it has to be worked on and it could easily dissolve. There are four specific issues that I would be happy to talk more about if the discussion goes that way. One is Maralinga, which we have already heard quite a lot about, and another is the problem of British pensioners in Australia. Something that loomed large during my time in the 1990s was the republican campaign in Australia and Britain’s role in that. Something which is not very much recognised is the huge help that Britain got from one of the greatest half dozen or so Australians ever, Sir Ninian Stephen,93 over Northern Ireland. This was a quite extraordinary example of altruistic help for Britain over an appalling
91
Thomas Ford (1580-1648): the poem is entitled: ‘There is a Lady Sweet and Kind’. The Gallipoli Campaign or the Battle of Gallipoli was fought during the First World War, between April 1915 and Jan. 1916. This campaign occupies an important place in the national consciousness of both Australia and New Zealand, and has been identified as the point when these two nations separately but properly began to conceive of themselves as distinct nations. See John Williams, The ANZACS, the Media and the Great War (1999). 93 Sir Ninian Stephen, Governor-General of Australia, 1982-9; Chairman, Chairman of Strand Two of the Talks on Northern Ireland, 1991. 92
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problem, and I don’t think Sir Ninian or Australia have really had enough credit for the help that was given then. FITTON (Chair): Could I just pick up on one of those four? You mentioned republican campaigns, and this was touched on by a number of our previous speakers. Could you say a little bit more about how that affected you when you were there as High Commissioner? BARDER: When Paul Keating became Prime Minister, replacing Bob Hawke, he made it clear that he was a republican, and that he thought Australia should have its own head of state. This rang a bell, I think especially with younger Australians. Of course, among the changes that I didn’t mention over the previous 15 years was the huge influx of non-Europeans, non-British people, new Australians, for many of whom the British monarchy meant absolutely nothing. There were Vietnamese, there were Chinese, there were Maltese, there were Yugoslavs, who were people for whom the British connection was really a mystery. I always took the view with London that we should keep out of it, and we should make it clear that our relations didn’t depend on sharing a Crown. The relationship was rooted in numerous other things, in mutual investment and trade, family links, sport and all the rest of it. The question of what head of state Australia should have was entirely a matter for Australians. This didn’t go down very well at official level in the Foreign Office, which felt that this sounded—or could be represented as— disloyal, and that British public opinion would expect its representatives in Canberra to stand up for the monarchy and support the monarchists against the republicans. So those were my instructions and naturally I tried to obey them. Of course it tended to arise in, for example, meetings of the Australian-Britain Society, where British expatriates or people with strong British connections in Australia, particularly elderly ones, automatically assumed that the High Commission was ‘on the side of the monarchy’. That was radically changed by Douglas Hurd94 when he came out, in I suppose 1993 or 1994. After two or three conversations with Australian ministers and other leading Australians he came quickly to the conclusion that this was something we had to keep out of, and that it was quite wrong to take sides with the monarchists or the republicans. He decided that we should make it absolutely clear that whatever choice the Australian people made was fine with us, and that this was not a necessary component of the relationship. We tried to get that across in speeches and television interviews and so on. Just before I left I remember there was an article about me by a columnist in the Sydney Morning Herald, about the departure of the British High Commissioner, recognising that I had been resolutely neutral on a matter that was purely for the Australians, and that this was exactly the way the Brits ought to be. FITTON (Chair): Let’s stop for a second on the way the Brits ought to be. Sir Roger, I wonder whether you would take up the narrative? SIR ROGER CARRICK: I arrived in Australia in the middle of 1994, after having been Ambassador in Indonesia for four years, which actually gave me a 94
Douglas Hurd (Lord Hurd of Westwell), Foreign Secretary, 1989-95.
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great ‘in’ to the Australians and to Australian academia. I served in Australia until I retired in October 1997. I retired in sheer anger, however. The only time I was ever really cross with the Foreign Office was when I had to retire at the mandatory age when I thought I had just learned how to do the job. The late great Curtis Keeble95, who was number two in the High Commission at one stage, in his FCO oral history, describes Australian national politics in his time as unstimulating.96 I think most of us were much more fortunate than Curtis, because the politics were exciting. When I arrived, Paul Keating was still Prime Minister, and I was there in 1996 when he lost the election and John Howard97 became Prime Minister. An important part of my job early on was to manage relations between two very different Prime Ministers, from different political parties, and with a surprising number of issues and arguments between them, only a few of which ever reached the press. All that was against the background of the historical relationship which we heard about this afternoon, and which we have read more in Jane Barder’s very helpful papers.98 The British High Commissioner has, and certainly had, very ready access to the Australian Prime Minister, as well as to the Foreign Minister. There is also the difference in time zones that makes telephone chats between Australian and British Prime Ministers almost impossible, although Malcolm Fraser did tell me of one occasion when he woke up in the middle of the Australian night, reached for the telephone and had what might be described as a robust conversation with Margaret Thatcher. Paul Keating and John Major99 were two very different animals and men. For example, Paul Keating hadn’t the least idea of the noble game of cricket. He did not understand it at all, and nor was he in the least interested in it. Mike Atherton100 led his team around Australia on a disastrous test tour. One traditional match is with the Prime Minister’s XI at Manuka. I sat next to Paul Keating for the whole of this match. He did come and he did sit there, and we talked about business, business, business. He said absolutely nothing about cricket; he did not even look at the cricket. At the end of the match, he asked me who’d won, then stood up and made a speech linking the Australian cricket win to the success of the Labor Party at both the previous election and the next one. Disputes between these two men certainly happened in my time. There are several examples, one of which is a French nuclear explosion on the Pacific atoll of Mururoa,101 which was designed, the French explained, at a certain depth below the sea level to test the safety of their nuclear weapon. The Australian Foreign Minister of the day, Gareth Evans,102 was in Tokyo at the time and made what I thought was a rather sane statement about the nuclear test explosion. Paul Keating countermanded this statement and issued the most anti-French, anti-nuclear statement you could imagine—although it was not difficult to imagine if you knew Paul Keating and how he felt about these things. For once in my diplomatic 95
Sir Curtis Keeble (1922-2008), Deputy High Commissioner to Australia, 1968-71. British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, Sir Curtis Keeble’s memoir (see pp.42-8): www.chu.cam.ac.uk/archives/collections/BDOHP/Keeble.pdf [accessed 25 Feb. 2013] 97 John Howard, Australian Prime Minister, 1996-2007. 98 See Appendices I and II. 99 Sir John Major, Prime Minister, 1990-7. 100 Mike Atherton, English cricket captain, 1993-8. 101 Between 1966 and 1996 Mururoa was used several times by France for the purposes of nuclear testing. 102 Gareth Evans, Foreign Minister of Australia, 1988-96. 96
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career the Brits were absolutely at one with the French, sand I was involved to quite an extent. The Australian unions and the Australian public behaved—and this is not an attitudinal matter, but by any standards—disgracefully to the French and to the French offices around Australia. The Honorary Consulate at Perth was run by an Australian doctor, and that building and all its patients’ records were burned. Nastier things happened elsewhere. I will give just one example of what the French Ambassador103 and his wife had to put up with. Madame Girard,104 whose husband was also my colleague from Indonesia, was the curator of a then forthcoming exhibition at the Louvre, and the Louvre had sent her through the post some very important and valuable first edition material which she needed to read for her research. Australian customs officials tore pages out of the book and scribbled on others. Gareth Evans, to do him credit, apologised for that as Foreign Minister, and he did try, but he did not really get anywhere, and there were French boycotts and so on. It was really dreadful, and when the French Ambassador’s children had to be withdrawn from their schools and sent home to boarding schools in France, that seemed to me to be close to the ultimate. It was a pretty disgraceful period.105 John Major was really very cross, and took the line, ‘How dare countries like New Zealand or Australia, which shelter under the Western nuclear umbrella question a nuclear state’s efforts to ensure the weapon is safe?’. So there was a big difference in opinion and I was sitting in the middle. CHOGM was about to happen in New Zealand. Paul Keating rang me and said, ‘Hey Roj, will you fix it so I don’t have to have a row with John at CHOGM?’I said, ‘Well, I am not sure I can achieve that end, Prime Minister, but I recognise that something needs to be done, because the positions have to get a bit closer and you have to be brought to accept the realities’, so sent my telegrams. Fortunately, at CHOGM there was a major row over Nigeria, and the subject of Mururoa was dealt with very quietly and bilaterally. That was just one example. To support the French was one of my undying memories; I quite enjoyed that. Switching subjects, I am sure it is implicit in what has gone before and what will follow, but it is vital for the High Commissioner in my day and no doubt other times especially to support and to pursue commercial work and inward investment promotion. This, as Charles implied, required travel. Sydney and Melbourne were the most visited, I think, and we did have rows with the States also, so one had to go and deal with those. There was a state preference on steel by New South Wales, which seemed to me to be deliberately aimed against Britain, because we were the only other people bidding for special steel for a Newcastle to Sydney rail link. Although British Steel reduced their price as far as they possibly could, the preference was not removed despite my representations, and we lost the contract. Interestingly, the Commonwealth government of the day was absolutely on our side in saying that these tariffs should be removed, but the New South Wales government of the day, led by Bob Carr,106 who is now Foreign 103
Dominique Girard, French Ambassador to Australia, 1995-2000. Maud Girard. 105 Also see Roger Carrick, Diplomatic Anecdotage: Around the World in 40 Years (2012), pp. 261-3. 106 Senator Bob Carr, Minister for Foreign Affairs, 2012-; Premier of New South Wales, 19952005. 104
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Minister, was determined to keep the tariffs, because of course NSW had an interest. We had quite some battles. It is a useful reflection of the frankness of the relationship that one did not have to beat about any diplomatic bushes, one could just go in and have an argument. Bob Carr told me two or three years later in London that when I argued the case for a review of, and then for the abolishing of these tariffs NSW had reviewed, and later abolished, because I’d been such a ‘damn nuisance’. That’s fine; it would not work in Indonesia but it worked in Australia, except that it was too late and we had lost the contract. Official travel was vital. The Consuls-General who have been referred to were in my time all men of high quality, and several were very successful commercial diplomats; there is one here this afternoon. Incidentally, while they were all UK-based, they were supported by some first-class locally engaged Australian staff, as indeed we were in Canberra; it was a very well-staffed High Commission. Although I opened a new locallyengaged and led trade office in Adelaide, I do have to regret the reduction in the FCO’s real resources over the years that led to the localisation of some of the Consul-General jobs, notably Perth and Brisbane. On ‘management matters’, which appears in the papers we are asked to address, even in Australia the deputy High Commissioner and I had to spend really far too much time on management. I do support that wail of complaint about Diplomatic Service management practices in a later valedictory from Sir Ivor Roberts in Rome, included in Matthew Parris’s Parting Shots.107 One big management job we were glad to undertake was to move out of the British High Commission office building for 15 months. We went to the old Parliamentary Annexe with no difficulty at all; this was another feature of the bilateral relationship. We had to rebuild much of the office to transform it from a rather cheap (exchange-control constrained) 1950s Ministry of Works block-house, to a much more attractive, user-friendly and customer-friendly building. We did that within the FCO discretionary authority, so the Treasury couldn’t stop us. On a small and tight budget we even managed to commission a sculpture—and a rather fine one—for the office garden, with words around its base about the shared sacrifice of British and Australian men and women in the defence of freedom. The morning after we opened the Embassy there was a single rose laid on that new sculpture, a practice that was repeated. I have only ever seen that before in the hand of Winston Churchill’s108 statue outside the Embassy in Washington. So there was quite a lot of management. (There is much more detail about all of that in my book, which you would be astonished if I did not mention, and I may even mention it again.) The refurbishment included, I may say, the stroke of genius, design genius, that my wife contributed to the building, which was significantly to deepen the fenestration and turn it from a block-house into a rather elegant building. Back to Paul Keating and John Major, and thinking of Charles’s points and those Brian picked up, we did have a few ministerial visits in the days when Paul Keating and John Major were Prime Ministers, but rather few, despite our efforts. We secured one Cabinet Minister in that time, and the Foreign Office Minister 107
Matthew Parris and Andrew Bryson, Parting Shots: Undiplomatic Diplomats—The Ambassadors’ Letters You Were Never Meant To See (2010), pp.145-50, esp. p. 148. 108 Sir Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965), Prime Minister, 1940-5; 1951-5.
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was Alastair’s predecessor. Tony Blair,109 the then leader of the Opposition, or as he might have put it even then and certainly as young Powell110 would have put it, Prime Minister in waiting, came to Australia on quite a long visit, which is covered in the book. Of course heads of UK missions, diplomatic missions, do support what used to be called leaders of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, and I spoke on the telephone quite a lot to Tony Blair during that visit and helped ensure that he met Paul Keating and one or two others whom he had never met., Tony Blair also asked for advice, including on one or two sensitive matters. One High Commission success during Paul Keating’s time was to turn around his earlier inaccurate description of the Brits at and after the February 1942 fall of Singapore.111 Some of you may remember that he was distinctly disobliging about that. During the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II, in a marvellous Australian year-long exercise called Australia Remembers that touched everybody and every child, we did manage to turn Paul Keating round. At the end of Australia Remembers he said the right things not the wrong things about the Brits. That was quite an effort. I think I was particularly devoted to it because I’d served in Singapore and knew how wrong he was. Paul Keating resigned, honourably I thought, at his electoral defeat in March 1996. There was a rather super cartoon on the front page of one of the main newspapers, I forget which, of Paul Keating dressed improbably in white tie and tails, beautifully drawn, taking a bow Placido Domingo-style112 with red roses strewn around the stage. As soon as I saw it I rang the newspaper and asked if I could buy the original. I was told that it has already gone, and I knew who had bought it. At home now I have a very faded framed newspaper copy of that the cartoon. So he resigned, and Hilary and I were in the Tally Room on the night of his loss and John Howard’s victory That was in 1996, when the High Commission and the British Council, to whom I pay enormous tribute on this front, were already well into planning and delivering something called newImages. This was born of the obvious misconceptions most Australians had of Britain. They were mostly the classic misconceptions which everyone knows of: we thought we would try to do something about them. Some people thought we were crazy, and we would never change any minds. At the end of the year-long exercise there was—I hope an objective, certainly an independent—survey that said it had had real success. It was a major exercise, but I felt at the time it would probably have to be done once every ten years, but I’m sure the Foreign Office does not have the resources to repeat it. The techniques were copied for Cool Britannia113 but that was much more controversial, and whether that was a compliment to newImages I do not know. Now we had a new relationship. John Howard and John Major were two cricketing friends. The relationship was much easier to manage but in a different 109
Tony Blair, Labour leader, 1994-2010; Prime Minister, 1997-2010. Jonathan Powell, Chief of Staff to Labour Party Leader, 1994-7; Downing Street Chief of Staff, 1997-2007. 111 For discussion of Keating’s speech, see Mark McKenna, The Captive Republic: A History of Republicanism in Australia 1788-1996 (1996), p.261. 112 Placido Domingo, Italian operatic tenor. 113 For popular definitions of Cool Britannia, which emerged in the mid-1990s and lasted to the end of the decade, see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6766539.stm 110
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way just as busy, and rather more productive, unsurprisingly. There were many more ministerial visits at all levels, from Cabinet Ministers downwards. Ministerial visits of substance included policy discussion, development and cooperation on subjects such as health, education, even devolution. There was one particularly memorable and enjoyable visit by the then FCO Minister for the region, Alastair Goodlad, who came with Cecilia, for a marvellous visit. Alastair spoke of the South Pacific Forum at a time when we were steadily reducing our aid commitment, so it was quite tricky. I recall our calling on the then Deputy Prime Minister in Brisbane. Alastair was of course in total command of his brief. At the end of the conversation Alastair kindly asked Tim Fischer114 how his farm was. In his one-word answer we learned a lot about Australia: the answer was ‘Dry.’ There was another widespread drought, when Lake George dried up again, and it was really quite tough. Ministerial visits happened, but we did again have a few major disagreements. The best example is probably over climate change in Kyoto, on which we had really quite serious arguments. The Permanent Under Secretary from the Foreign Office115 came and we sat across the table with Alexander Downer116 and Philip Flood,117 secretary of DFAT118 at the time, and others over a perfectly nice lunch, but it became a rather uncivilised discussion. Part of the frankness of the relationship and part of our sorrow was that the Australians seemed to be sheltering behind the skirts of the Americans over climate change, and Kyoto was coming up.119 As this is on the record, I’ll just leave it at saying that the PUS was distinctly upset. That is one example of the fact that serious disputes occur between these two terribly frankly related countries. Again, I do not think any of them that matter got into the press. Defence has been mentioned; we worked a great deal on defence, including on defence sales, which were directed in Canberra. We ran a big defence sales operation in Canberra, because of course the Department of Defence and the decision-makers were there. The Hawks120 sales campaign was run out of the High Commission, with BAE and Rolls-Royce in and out of our offices in Canberra a good deal. That was quite a campaign. There was opposition and there was competition from other European nations, who were up ‘dirty tricks’, but I swear we didn’t pull any dirty tricks. Very interestingly, given what was said before, I think we got over the period when there was the attitude of, ‘We won’t buy British just to show that we are really independent, we’ll buy Swedish rubbish’, or whatever it might be Our negotiations were straight and objective. I took my hat off to the Department of Defence, Tony Ayres121 and his chaps, they really were marvellously objective. The only serious difficulties we had in defence sales negotiations were 114
Tim Fischer, Australian Deputy Prime Minister, 1996-9. Sir John Coles, Permanent Under-Secretary of State, FCO, 1994-9. 116 Alexander Downer, Foreign Minister of Australia, 1996-2007. 117 Philip Flood, Australian Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 1996-8. 118 Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. 119 ‘The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which commits its Parties [principally the world’s leading industrialised countries] by setting internationally binding emission reduction targets’: from http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php [Accessed 25 Feb. 2013]. 120 Hawk: a single-engine, advanced jet trainer aircraft produced by BAE Systems. 121 Tony Ayres, Secretary, Australian Department of Defence, 1988-98. 115
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with the British suppliers, who typified what I found to be commercial complacency all over the British export industry. They thought the Australian market was just the same as the British market, and that the customers ought to do as they were advised. The RAF had a certain type of Hawk aircraft, so the Australians ought to be pleased to have that one. Of course it was not actually any good to the Australians at all. Firstly they wanted an up-dated version, with headsup display, which if you know the RAAF you will understand why they really needed that, and secondly they needed air-conditioning in the cockpits. The manufacturers said, ‘But the RAF does not have air conditioning in the cockpits’. Well finally we arranged for someone to be flown around the Northern Territories in aircraft without air-conditioning in the cockpit: air conditioning it was then supplied. That is an example of one of the big worries, the complacency of UK industry across the board. They have heard me say it umpteen times, but there was a lot of work to do on that front. The then Secretary of State for Defence, Michael Portillo,122 came on a visit, partly to help deal with the Hawks but also involving other things as well, including defence co-operation, which was still intense. We did not have a MajorGeneral but we had a Commodore, one rank down, as defence attaché, and we had one from each of the three services and a fairly large defence section still. However, the number of exchange officers in the other nations’ forces was by then only 70 each, compared to Charles’s 230. I suspect it is rather lower now. When the Secretary of State for Defence came, it was no real surprise that he was lent the Prime Minister’s aeroplane. It was a surprise that he could come to Canberra—and I did have to persuade him, across his desk at MoD—during the Bosnian War123 and still conduct the business of the Secretary of State for War, if you like, from Canberra. We worked out that there were only three capital cities in the world where he could have done that, because of the communications and the level and secrecy of the communications that could be had between London and the two other capitals, one of which was Canberra. So that was another measure of the relationship. Before I go to my last subject, I was asked to follow up a bit on Maralinga, on which we may need to come back to Brian’s part in it. My job was to go to Maralinga with a scientist and a couple of Geiger counters and see whether the British taxpayer had received £20 million worth of defence expenditure, whether it was accountable and whether we had secured value for money. That was fascinating, to go and see what the real problem was. There were two huge holes in the ground, one marked ‘radioactive-free’ and the other marked ‘radioactive’, into which equipment had been dumped. Unfortunately, some radioactive equipment had been dumped by the Brits in the wrong hole. After studying the thing at some length I thought I understood why. If you look at the dates on the papers you find it reasonable to conclude that the boys wanted to be home for Christmas and they hurried the job: there had been some carelessness. That led eventually to some bits of active plutonium stuff appearing on the surface and a risk of hurting or burning Aboriginal children’s bare feet, and so on. My job was to go with the scientist from the UK to check that the vitrification of the radioactive material that had been dug up worked. There were huge cubes of glass, of 122 123
Michael Portillo, Defence Secretary, 1995-7. Bosnian War, 1992-5.
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vitrified material, about one eighth of the volume of this room, in which there sealed, say, half an aeroplane and a Land-rover. We walked around the cubes and climbed over them with a Geiger counter and found they were safe. We measured the background material across the ground and found that there was a lower level of radiation there than from the Rocks in Sydney. So we thought we had secured value for the British taxpayer’s £20 million. Of course, the Australians paid quite a lot too. Other themes that I have been asked to comment on include the republican debate. By the time I called on Douglas Hurd he had been converted by Brian Barder, and he instructed me that under no circumstances was I to enter the republic debate in any possible way. I felt rather offended, because I did not think I needed that instruction. It was pretty obvious that the last thing we were to do was get involved in an internal constitutional Australian matter. Well, I kept to that instruction until my very last month and then I defied it. As the momentum grew towards the constitutional conference and the referendum, I had been inundated with invitations to speak from both sides, the monarchists and the republicans. Ignoring my instructions from the revered Douglas Hurd I accepted two of the invitations, one from each side, and apart from a very short introductory paragraph I gave exactly the same speech to each side. It was a speech which, had I not worked hard, might have attracted the charge of being a bit arrogant. I had been so impressed with the ignorance of so many Australians at so many levels, including in the academic world, of their own constitutional history that I felt I had to give them a speech with some lessons about why it was nothing to do with us. My speech, which owed much to the immaculate work of the Research Department of the FCO, also traced the Anglo-Australian constitutional history and the British contribution to that constitutional history and development (which I think was in large part admirable). I made those speeches to pretty stony silence as you can imagine, but I did get it off my chest and did make that contribution. The history was almost unknown to most of the audience. So I was on balance pleased. However I confess I did not report in that to London. Briefly to cover other topics raised, the Balibo Five124 were still being pursued, and there is a journalist and historian in the West Country who is still pursuing me on the subject. Somebody mentioned the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible. She came to Perth to join one of the major defence exercises. It was the last time this country had such a major flotilla participate in major AngloAustralian exercises, with the Americans involved too. It was serious stuff, with nuclear submarines. I was standing on Invincible with one of the Australian Ministers of Defence when the Royal Marines came down on the aircraft lift playing ‘Advance Australia Fair’, and an Australian Minister of Defence wept, saying to me afterwards, ‘If you ever tell anybody of this I shall have you shot’. So I won’t tell you which Defence Minister was. The EEC issue was still smarting, certainly in my time. Building on Peter’s answer of ‘You’re big boys now’, I used to say, ‘Actually we did you a favour, because your economy had to diversify and it did, and aren’t you doing well? So say thank you, not the reverse’. On the Young Endeavour, just a little background on that lovely story about it being a birthday present not an aid programme— 124
Five journalist killed in 1975. See chronology. [NB: in corrections Carrick said he was not certain that all 5 killed were Australians; 2 may have been British.]
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which is so Peter Gadsden. The ship was funded by the Foreign Office originally; Geoffrey Howe125 gave a very large cheque to a chap called Arthur Weller126 who was to organise it. Building it in Lowestoft—I bet you did not know there was a ship-building yard in Lowestoft—was a signal failure, and the ship-building company nearly went bankrupt. Arthur Weller, God bless him, put his hand in his pocket to the tune of just over a million pounds, and the ship was built and delivered. Arthur Weller was a Scot who married an Australian, never renounced his British nationality, never took Australian nationality. He died recently after fighting Parkinson’s for 17 years. He also took over the building of the Bark Endeavour from Alan Bond127 the British-born Western Australian convicted crook who served time in jail. I have sailed with Arthur Weller on the Bark Endeavour. As I say he died recently, and his son tells me—although they have not yet told his widow—that at his express wish his ashes are to be fired from the cannons on the Bark Endeavour across Sydney Harbour. What a way to go. Gavan Griffiths was mentioned, a fine Attorney General. He was a name at Lloyds128 and lost everything. I can still see his daughter weeping when she was told she had to give up her cello lessons. Gavan is now practising as a lawyer in London. Peter Collecott spoke of his Australian diplomatic wife. I should add two things, one is that Peter was later the equivalent of deputy Head of Mission in Indonesia when I was Ambassador there, and his wife was the Australian political counsellor in the Australian Embassy in Indonesia. We used to talk about pillow talk, but certainly Anglo-Australian relations and what we were doing together in Indonesia was at times passionate and effective. The other thing I ought to say is that my wife was a British diplomat who had to resign on marriage in 1962, a rule that lasted until 1973. The Indonesian-Australian relationship, which Gavin spoke about, throughout my time, my years in Indonesia and later in Australia for three and a bit years, I found it to be an absolutely exciting roller-coaster, it really was. Sometimes it was very positive, as for example when Alexander Downer took on the IMF on Indonesia’s behalf after the Indonesian economy had pretty well collapsed following the Japanese financial failure and the effects falling south down the map:129 and things going badly wrong over East Timor.130 It is now on a rising slope. When all the speakers so far at this seminar went to Australia, the standard war game at the Australian College of Defence Studies began with invasion from this great cloud or umbrella to the north, over three thousand, three hundred miles 125
Sir Geoffrey Howe (Lord Howe of Aberavon), Foreign Secretary, 1983-9. Sir Arthur Weller (1929-2011), Chairman of the Britain-Australia Bicentennial Schooner Trust, 1985-8. 127 Alan Bond, born in Hammersmith, London, was involved in the biggest Australian corporate collapse in 1980s, declared bankrupt in the 1990s and subsequently spend 4 years in prison. See http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s981486.htm [Accessed 25 Feb. 2013]. 128 Lloyds of London, the insurance market which experience severe problems in the late-1980s and 1990s. 129 In mid-1997 Indonesia appealed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for help. The economic crisis eventually led to President Suharto’s resignation in May 1998. [Carrick noted in corrections—‘it was more than the economic crisis that brought Suharto down. He might just have weathered that, were it not for the political failure and corruption leading at the same time to widespread and deep dissent’—see also his Diplomatic Anecdotage, p. 241’] 130 See chronology. 126
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wide, with the world’s fourth largest population. Nowadays Indonesian military officers attend courses, including the main staff courses, at the ACDS (Australian College of Defence Studies) and so on. That is one good measure. But the Indonesia-Australia relationship will probably always be a roller-coaster, I think. Somebody mentioned the immigrants; that is another problem. But I think things are going to be up rather than down between Indonesia and Australia under the present President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono,131 who was in London just last week on a state visit, a remarkably successful state visit I am told. There was a mention by John Leahy of the two countries allegedly ‘drifting apart’, but I think that phase was over by the time I got assigned to Australia. Having had the ‘cultural cringe’ years before, we were almost up to the ‘cultural strut’ of Australia. And now of course so many Australians are now running so much of this country, from the Maritime Museum at Greenwich,132 via a great chunk of the Olympics133—the Olympics Delivery Authority was run by an Australian for a long time—to arts administration and Heaven knows what else. So I think times have changed a good deal. I will shut up after saying that I went and sat at the feet of Sir John Bunting, who had by then retired, and he was still talking about ‘us Brits’. He was an absolutely marvellous man, .You may prove me wrong, but I would claim to be the last British High Commissioner who actually heard a senior Australian use the phrase ‘mother country’. FITTON (Chair): Thank you, Sir Roger. I had written down Indonesia, but you’ve touched on that. You have also touched on some issues which I think will come up in the following presentations, the Kyoto Protocol and some of the new issues which we were starting to discuss with our colleagues in Australia. Let me ask Sir Alex to take it up. SIR ALEX ALLAN: Again, starting by way of introduction on how I got to be High Commissioner, it was a slightly different path so far as I was concerned. My late wife134 was Australian, and I had been in the Treasury and had taken two years off in 1983 and 1984, and we had spent two years in Australia. Originally I had thought of trying to get a secondment to the Australian Treasury, not knowing anything about Canberra, but then most of my friends in Sydney said, ‘God, you don’t want to go to Canberra’, and so I decided not to. I spent a year in Sydney and a year in Perth doing freelance computer programming. I then went back to the Treasury and ended up as John Major’s Principle Private Secretary in No.10, where I saw the other side of quite a few of the spats that Roger described between John Major and Paul Keating. Then, after I’d been in No.10 for about three years the Treasury started pressing for me to come back. John Major wanted me to stay and said, ‘Look, I really want you to stay until the election, which will be in 1997 at the latest’, so I was in quite a strong position. I had spotted that Roger came to the mandatory retirement age in late 1997 so I said to John Mayor, 131
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, President of Indonesia, 2004-. In 2007 Dr Kevin Fewster was appointed Director of the National Maritime Museum. Previously he had been Director of the South Australian Maritime Museum in Port Adelaide and Director of the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney. 133 In 2011 David Higgins was appointed the Chief Executive of the London Olympics Delivery Authority. 134 Lady Allan, formerly Katie Clemson, married Sir Alex in 1978. She died on 23 Nov. 2007. 132
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‘I will stay on until after the election but I would like my next job to be High Commissioner in Australia’, and by good fortune he spoke to Douglas Hurd, who thought it was a good idea, and fixed it up. I have to say that the Foreign Office was not entirely convinced by this at the official level. Indeed, after the 1997 election, when I was still in No.10, Robin Cook135 was put up to come in and argue with Tony Blair that it was a terrible idea and should be undone, but I am glad to say that Tony Blair was very supportive. The one thing, of course, that the Foreign Office was slightly worried about was the prospect of somebody who did not have a background in diplomacy going in and taking one of the plum posts. And of course in that sense they were right, because I was succeeded by Alastair and Helen and then Valerie, and it was only relatively recently that the Foreign Office got the post back, so I can understand why they were not too keen. The point has been made about access, and one of the things I noticed when I arrived in Canberra was that I had enormous access at both ministerial and official level, and everybody was very easy to deal with, very open. We had a number of ministerial visits early on, one of them was a junior defence minister and we had a meeting in the Defence Minister’s office in Parliament House. One of the things that struck me first of all was how much time ministers in Australia spend in their Parliament House offices and relatively how little time they spend in their departments. I was quite amazed when the Australian Defence Minister started talking about ‘them’ and ‘us’, and after a while I realised that he was referring to his officials, to himself and his team in Parliament House, in a way that certainly shocked me, after having been used to what until recently have seemed to be rather better relations between ministers and civil servants in the UK. One set of issues that has already been covered, which was a very big concern for me during my time in Canberra, is constitutional issues. There was a lot of Australian interest in the UK constitutional changes, because in 1997 Tony Blair came in and undertook a big programme of constitutional change, devolution, House of Lords reform, a whole lot of other things, and there was a lot of Australian interest in what was going on. Of course it played in partly to the republican debate, which picked up pretty soon after I had got there with the Constitutional Convention, which actually generated huge amounts of energy and enthusiasm. I remember Gareth Evans coming back to dinner at the residence from a day at the Convention, he was fantastically enthusiastic and bubbly about how it was all going and how they were getting consensus. I think actually what emerged was that there was a lot of momentum when the Constitutional Convention reported, but there was a long gap before they actually had the referendum, and some of the energy and enthusiasm had dissipated.136 It is very well known that the unholy alliance between the monarchists and the so-called real republicans, who wanted an elected president, outweighed the people who wanted the rather more institutional type of change that was put forward in the referendum. I went to some fascinating debates in Canberra. Malcolm Turnbull,137 who attracted attention by his role in Spycatcher some years earlier, lead the 135
Robin Cook (1946-2005), Foreign Secretary, 1997-2001. See chronology. 137 In 1986 Malcolm Turnbull successfully defended Peter Wright against the British Government in the Australian courts. Subsequently he wrote ‘Spycatcher’ Trial (1988). 136
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Republican debate, and there was a range of people on both sides. In the line that Brian and Roger described, I kept very much out of it. Rather like Roger, I found that people in the Australia-Britain Society138 all expected me to be a staunch monarchist and to advance it and were slightly disappointed when I said, ‘No, no, we’re strictly neutral in this debate’. Regarding ministerial visits, in the early days of the Labor government quite a lot of ministers came out, we had Derry Irvine,139 and it was very interesting to hear about all the constitutional changes, and had lots of interesting sessions with the High Court. John Prescott140 came out in the run-up to Kyoto, and as Roger indicates there were some fairly difficult discussions. One of the memorable things about that was how it showed that the Labour government was still in its honeymoon period. John Prescott is quite a noted scuba-diver, and he announced that since he was dealing with protecting oceans he was going up to inspect an ocean. So he flew up to Cairns and went off diving with a film crew, and everybody said, ‘What a good fellow’, and you could just imagine that about four or five years later he would have been crucified. Not having been a diplomat I was slightly surprised when one minister came out and we were given the food preferences for him and his wife, and I found it slightly insulting that this unknown minister’s wife’s dislikes included cheap white wine. I thought that was an insult, but there you go! As several people have said, the economic links are very important, particularly on the resources side. One of the things I did that I found very worthwhile was going on what the Western Australian Chamber of Commerce called their resources tour. They took about 16 people in a couple of planes—the others were mostly financial services people and so on—and we flew around all the resources sites in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. We went to the Kalgoorlie gold mines, nickel mines, iron ore mines, diamond mines, uranium mines, oil and gas developments and so on. It was absolutely fascinating, and I found that it made me appreciate the scale of it. You do not realise this until you have actually been to the iron ore mines and seen the scale, the size of the trucks chipping ore. When you go out to the ports, and you know that they export 50 billion tons a year from that port, it is not until you actually see a pile of a million tons that you begin to realise the scale of it all. There are very big British interests in there, with Rio Tinto and BP141 and lots of other firms. Picking up a few of the other points, regarding the European Union, one of the things that was a bane of my life in Canberra was the EU Ambassador. He was incredibly active and I used to have to in some cases trundle around after him and put the Australian officials that he had seen right about where we were. There was a tradition of all the EU Ambassadors meeting monthly to discuss what was going on. In my time the meetings were nearly always a complete waste of time, but I had to go. There was the time when Britain had the presidency, and so we had to actually host the meetings. I hit upon an idea I was rather proud of, which was 138
The Britain-Australia Society: ‘A social networking society promoting and encouraging the cultural, historical and sporting ties between Britain & Australia’. See: britain-australia.org.uk/ [Accessed 25 Feb. 2013]. 139 Lord Irvine of Lairg, Lord Chancellor, 1997-2003. 140 John Prescott (Lord Prescott), Deputy Prime Minister, 1997-2007. 141 BP, formerly British Petroleum, is a UK-based oil company. http://www.bp.com/ [Accessed 25 Feb. 2013].
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hiring a coach and taking all the EU Ambassadors off to the Sydney Easter Show where we had lunch with the committee, so they could actually meet real Australian farming people, and that worked well. Going back to the discussion about relationships with Ambassadors from other countries, by and large of course for a lot of EU countries Australia is not seen as a very significant posting, at least when I was there. I remember that the German Ambassador did a swap with his opposite number in Tehran, Iran. He was absolutely delighted to be going to Tehran and the Australians were completely bemused, they could not understand how anybody would think that going to Tehran was preferable to Canberra. There has been quite a bit of discussion about the defence relationship, and I agree with everything that has been said. My last job was as Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee in the Cabinet Office,142 and one other thing is that the intelligence relationship is also a component, perhaps, of the defence relationship, but it is hugely important. There is what was known as ‘Four Eyes’, now back to being ‘Five Eyes’,143 the community of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and now New Zealand is back in again. There is very close working, particularly on the signals intelligence side but also on the human intelligence side. It is very significant for all of us. I think the only other thing I would say is to pick up Charles Cullimore’s and also indeed Roger’s stories about cricket and the Prime Minister’s XI. I had another absolutely similar experience. I got a message that Lord Levy,144 who was a Labour party fundraiser and a chum of Tony Blair’s, was coming out bearing a personal message from Tony Blair to the Prime Minister, and I had to make sure that he had a meeting with the Prime Minister to deliver it personally. This was a nightmare, because how much credit did I want to use up in forcing a meeting? Anyway, luckily he happened to be there on the day that the Prime Minister’s XI was playing the West Indies, I think it was. I was invited, so I managed to get Lord Levy invited too and got him sat next to John Howard, and so he was able to deliver the message. I felt I had done my job beautifully. These Prime Minister’s XI matches were very useful occasions. The only other point to pick up was, as Charles Cullimore mentioned, arriving and finding it extraordinary that everyone was wearing suits and ties. I had slightly the opposite experience when I did my first official visit to Darwin. I arrived wearing a suit and tie and was kept waiting outside the Chief Minister’s office for a long time, and eventually it transpired that his people had seen that I was wearing a jacket and tie and he did not have a jacket, and so he had to send his car home to pick up a jacket and bring it into the office so that he was suitably dressed. It was very silly. I think I will pause at that. FITTON (Chair): Thank you. May I ask you one question? You mentioned that you were coming in as a non-diplomat, without the diplomatic background. Did you notice any change in the behaviour of the High Commission? 142
Chairman, Joint Intelligence Committee, 2007-11. The United Kingdom-United States of America Agreement 1946 for signals intelligence cooperation between United Kingdom, USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. See Richard Aldrich, ‘Allied code-breakers co-operate—but not always’, Guardian, 24 June 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/24/intelligence-sharing-codebreakers-agreement-ukusa [Accessed 25 Feb. 2013]. 144 Lord Levy (Michael Levy), Member, Labour Party Donations Committee, 2002-07. 143
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ALLAN: I was very lucky in that I had a very good Deputy High Commissioner, Andrew Pocock,145 who was able to help me and put me straight and point me in the right direction. As I have said and everybody has said, the relationships and the access you get to ministers and senior officials are fantastic, and it is a very easy relationship. It was not difficult to go and call on people, talk to people, make points to people and argue cases with people. I met quite a few of them when they came to London, because once I’d got the plan to go to Canberra I managed to make sure I saw people when they came to London. FITTON (Chair): I think the ease of access and the marvellously close relationship seem to come through from all our speakers in this session and the previous one. The two speakers to my right have been very patient, so I will give them a chance now. Lord Goodlad, you and your successor speaker came in from a different world again from Sir Alex. Was that a big change? GOODLAD: It was a big change for me, and a very welcome one. I was very lucky to go, and I have to say that the Foreign Office was extremely welcoming, perhaps long-suffering, and they put up with my amateurism. I inherited as my deputy Andrew Pocock, who has since been High Commissioner in Zimbabwe and Canada, and is now going to be High Commissioner in Nigeria.146 He taught me all I needed to know about diplomacy as he saw it in about half an hour, and then he of course did most of the work and deserves any credit for what happened. I came in just after the referendum on the monarchy, and it was pretty much dying down as an issue. I obviously took the line described well by Brian Barder, that this was not a matter in which the United Kingdom had any locus. In reply to interviewers on the radio or television who asked whether that meant that Britain does not care about Australia, I would say, ‘No, Britain cares greatly about Australia, but we do not think Australia’s constitution is a matter for us’. And that put the matter pretty much to rest. Occasionally elderly ladies in Melbourne would curtsey to me. The Queen visited twice when I was there, and I would get complaints from people that they had not been invited to such and such a lunch or dinner. Usually those complaining would be the most vociferous republicans, and I was able to say that it was not a matter for me, and the matter really went away. As Brian has said, national relationships are rather an abstraction beloved of diplomats, but the government to government relationship was extremely strong. John Howard was the Prime Minister the whole time I was there, and Alexander Downer was the Foreign Minister. I had the access that my predecessors had, I played tennis with Alexander Downer every week and John Howard and Janette treated us as family. They got on well with their opposite numbers in London. It was a completely trouble-free relationship on a government to government basis. An event which is worth just touching on is 9/11, which happened when I was there, and which was as traumatic a shock to the Australians as it was to us. Immediately after our intervention in Afghanistan I had close protection for the rest of my time there, as did my Israeli colleague and my American colleague. The 145 146
Andrew Pocock, Deputy High Commissioner, Canberra, 1997-2001. Andrew Pocock, High Commissioner: Zimbabwe, 2006-9; Canada, 2011-12; Nigeria, 2012-.
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Australians could not have been more careful and generous about that. They felt it very deeply, and still do. They felt the Bali bomb147 very deeply; there was a shockwave of grief throughout the country, which we shared. They had lost more people than any other country, but we lost quite a large number, and that was a shared period of great grief. The public diplomacy difficulties that we had centred on the Iraq war, on which opinion was very divided, as it was here. It was my task to convince— which I hope I did—the newspapers and other media that the Iraqi regime did indeed have weapons of mass destruction. The other difficult issue was BSE.148 We had to convince the Australians, who are traditionally extremely careful about allowing any importation of infected matter into their country, and had been very successful at avoiding it, that BSE was under control, we were a safe country to visit, it was localised and it was not a threat to Australia. The team in Australia did a lot on that with great success. The centenary of federation was in 2001, and there was a visit here. The war memorial at Hyde Park Corner was opened by the Queen, and John Howard came, and there was an immense national navel-gazing in the nicest possible way about the history of Australia and the future of Australia. We had the Olympic Games shortly after I arrived. They had been heralded by the Australian press as an imminent catastrophe which would humiliate Australia in the eyes of the world; precisely the reverse happened. They planned it immaculately, they invested enormously in infrastructure in Sydney, there were 50,000 volunteers on the streets, and everybody was for once very polite to each other. Australia did very well, and was seen on the television screens of the world as a very modern, successful nation, and it did unquestionably change the national mood, then and I think thereafter. We had the World Cup rugger when I was there, when I had the happy experience of watching Jonny Wilkinson149 drop the winning goal. I took Tessa Jowell,150 who was Minister of Sport at the time, round to congratulate the winning team in the changing rooms. As we got to the door I said, ‘You do know, Tessa, don’t you, that they are going to be in the showers?’, and she said, ‘Never mind’, and in fact they were not. We also had a test series, which Australia won by four to one. Our spirits were kept alive by the Barmy Army, who when Australia was doing particularly well sang, ‘You all live in a convict colony’ or ‘God save your gracious Queen’. So all went extremely well on that front. We had a CHOGM when Australia was Chair of the Commonwealth. We were able to solidify our relationships with the Australians by being—I hope and believe, and they certainly believe—extremely helpful to them in quite a few aspects of their relationships with Commonwealth countries, and in dealing with the India-Pakistan dispute of the time. It was extremely interesting to hear what my predecessors said about ministerial visits. I would not say I was inundated with them, but I had about two a week, and they were very welcome and I 147
12 Oct. 2002, which killed 88 Australians and 27 British nationals. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is a transmissible, neuro-degenerative fatal brain disease of cattle. See http://www.who.int/zoonoses/diseases/bse/en/ [accessed 25 Feb. 2013] 149 Jonny Wilkinson: since the late 1980s English rugby union player and former member of the England national team. 150 Dame Tessa Jowell, Labour politician and Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, 2001-7. 148
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encouraged them. And there were huge numbers of senior defence people, intelligence people, and officials from all departments in Whitehall. Some set up regular dialogues which continue to this day, while others came for one-off exchanges of views to learn what we could from Australia, which was usually quite a lot. That more or less covers it really. Like everybody else I travelled an enormous amount, because I was told before I left that Australia is not in Canberra, it is outside, and of course most people live outside Canberra. If you really want to have a long talk with a minister, do not spend half an hour waiting for him to see you in Parliament House in Canberra, go to a cricket match or a rugger match or a race meeting and you will talk all day, which is what we did. Our finest hour I think was when we were invited, Cecilia and I, to AlburyWodonga, to the greyhound racing track. They had written to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, to ask whether they could have a race and a cup to celebrate her hundredth birthday. Queen Elizabeth had written back saying that she was extremely touched and indeed they could, hopefully they would understand that she was unable to be present, and she hoped they would have a very happy day. So they wrote to me asking if I would come and present the cup, and of course I would. So down we went to Albury-Wodonga with all flags flying and we watched the race, and we were given lunch by the committee, and presented with a race card. The chairman of the Committee said, ‘Sir Alastair, very good of you to come, and I hope your wife will be pleased that we have named the race after the Queen Elizabeth Queen Mother Centenary Stakes in her honour’. So Cecilia simpered, and we looked at the race card and it said ‘The Lady Goodlad Eight Best Bitches’, and we have the photograph to prove it. FITTON (Chair): You can’t beat that. You mentioned that the number of visitors increased while you were there. Was that partly because of an increased attention to counter-terrorism operation after Bali and 9/11? GOODLAD: I think there probably was a slight increase as a result of that, but it was across the board. It was not just security people, every department in Whitehall sent a minister and senior officials. They were never out of the place. FITTON (Chair): Last but not least, Baroness Liddell. I am sorry to have kept you waiting so long. We move now into territory with which I am more familiar, but to introduce yourself could you explain how you got there? BARONESS LIDDELL OF COATDYKE: Certainly. I have to confess that I was one of the ministers who went to visit Alastair and had quite a successful visit under his tutelage, which put the idea of sending his High Commissioner into the mind of Tony Blair. As you may have noticed in the 30 seconds I have been speaking, I am different. Alex as a non-career diplomat was at least a senior civil servant, Alastair was a Foreign Office Minister, and I am the first woman High Commissioner to Australia, and I am Scottish, as indeed is Alastair. But I was the enemy, I was an ex-Treasury Minister,151 so I was one of the ones who were programmed to say no, so I had to build some bridges with the Foreign Office. I 151
Economic Secretary to the Treasury, 1997-8.
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have to say that when I joined the Foreign Office I had a very good training session with them over a period of nearly a month, and the focal point of that was obviously that having been a Cabinet Minister I knew the arguments about Iraq and Afghanistan, I knew the stories, I was completely up to speed. I had been a trade minister, and I was up to speed with trade and investment. Interestingly, the area that the biggest concentration was on in my training was China, because the key thing that was asked of me was to see China through the eyes of the Australians. Things were knocked slightly off-course on the day that I arrived. I was greeted in Sydney by the Consul-General, who had come out to the plane to meet me. I had to be down for a week to take my letter of introduction, because John Howard was coming to Britain. He always managed to come round about the time of the Ashes, to see Tony Blair and have his discussions with the Queen. The door opened, and Tim Holmes,152 the Consul-General, was there, along with my personal protection squad, to tell me that there had been a terrorist assault in London and the Tube bombings had taken place that day. So I got to Canberra and you can imagine the shock in Australia, because so many Australians have family here in the United Kingdom. Even the stewards on the little Dash 8 we flew in up to Canberra were shaking hands with me and wishing me well. That day as the story was breaking about the London bombings our website crashed because of the number of calls, all our electronics went down. I arrived in Canberra to the media, and of course normally all the Foreign Office people say that you can’t do anything if you haven’t presented your Letters of Introduction. I had to overrule that and say that if there is a terrorist atrocity in London, any senior Brit who is wandering around cannot pretend not to be there. I went to the residence and had a shower; I had not managed even to pick up my luggage, so I only had the clothes I had travelled in. Fortunately I had travelled in a black suit, just by coincidence. I went in to the office for the first time as the new High Commissioner, and John Howard phoned immediately and said he was interrupting his holiday, he wanted to come to Canberra within the hour to sign a book of condolence, and so we had to find a book of condolence. It was dressdown Friday, and I have never seen so many military wives run up the driveway with suits and uniforms for people to put on. John Howard and the accumulated media came to sign the book of condolence, and I actually did my first engagement before being formally accepted as the British High Commissioner. We went up to my office after he had signed the book of condolence, and we had both done a press conference. We sat down in my room, and he had Paul O’Sullivan153 with him as his Chief of Staff. I got the letter out of my handbag and said, ‘By the way I’ve got to give you this, this is my letter of introduction’, which he put in his pocket. I suspect it was never seen again until his wife Janette put his suit into the cleaners. So that was the formality all gone completely. This took place on a Friday, and on the following Wednesday there was a decision that there should be a memorial service, which took place in St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral in Canberra. All programming across Australia was stopped so that they could show live the memorial service. I had only been a diplomat for 152
Tim Holmes, British Consul-General, Sydney, and Director General Trade & Investment Australia & New Zealand, 2004-8. 153 Paul O’Sullivan, Australian Director-General of Security, 2005-9.
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about four days, and having to do a speech to Australia was quite daunting; John Howard and I both did speeches. I do not know whether it was that which gave me a very high profile immediately, or whether it was the recognition that we were family, but I never really at any stage got any anti-British feeling at all. It could be the Scottish accent; I could not be called a whingeing Pom. I used my difference, I unashamedly used it and exploited it. It caused me one or two problems, and the cricket was a case in point. When we came over here to see Tony Blair it was the day of the aborted London bombings, 21 July. We were in No. 10 at the time having breakfast, and the first messages were that it was a CBRN attack,154 so they wouldn’t let us out of Downing Street. I had to sit with John Howard and his team in the white drawing room in Downing Street for about two hours with no newspapers, nothing to pass the time, so I said ‘I don’t know much about cricket, could you explain it to me?’. He saw that I wasn’t getting it — I was really seriously not getting it — and from that point on I had a real difficulty with cricket. Alastair will remember this and possibly Alex as well, every Wednesday the National Press Club has a live broadcast of a speech, which I did three or four times in total. On my last occasion a tabloid journalist was obviously ready for a Scotswoman on the year of the Ashes, to ask me who I was supporting in the Ashes. To which I replied, ‘Cricket? You don’t ask a Scotswoman about cricket, especially if your name is Glen, I support shinty.155 Which shinty team do you support?’ And he was furious at me, and I got wonderful press after that. But unfortunately I got letters from people asking me to ask the ABC to publish the shinty results. I kept off the issue. Because I had come in such dramatic circumstances everything changed, and my concentration moved on to defence, intelligence and security. Richard Lindsey is here, who was First Secretary, and he had to hold my hand through much of that. It meant that we actually didn’t have time to muck about on the fringes, we really needed to get the heart of issues. I found it very easy to have access to ministers, and I am actually going to speak a little bit about the Rudd government in a minute, because I think it will bring to a close an awful lot of the issues that have been floating around. I had as good a relationship as it’s possible to have with John Howard, and he had an excellent relationship with Tony Blair. Tony Blair came to Australia for the Commonwealth Games, but what most people do not realise is that Tony Blair lived in Australia until he was six, so he actually has a lot of knowledge of Australia. He began speeches to both Houses of Parliament by talking about what it was like to be swooped by magpies, and every Australian knows what it is like to be swooped by magpies. All his advisors had said that he couldn’t say that, and he handed it to me and I said, ‘You’ve got to say that, because it establishes the rapport’. I am probably the only High Commissioner who ever had to smuggle a Prime Minister and a Chancellor into Australia. Tony came down subsequently because a very close friend was dying, and with the help of the Australian government we got him in and out without anybody noticing. Gordon Brown156 came down for the marriage of his brother-in-law in Sydney. We got caught there, he was spotted walking with his baby around Circular Quay, so we had to do a 154
CBRN attack—chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attack. Shinty is team game involving hitting a ball and with a curved stick. It is similar but different to hockey. See http://www.shinty.com/shinty/understanding-shinty/origins/ [Accessed 25 Feb. 2013]. 156 Gordon Brown, Prime Minister, 2007-10. 155
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little bit of shuffling. Fortunately the government knew about it. So the closeness of that relationship was very considerable, and indeed I think I probably ended up in Australia because I loved the Australian experience when I had gone to visit Alastair. A lot of change was underway. By the time I became High Commissioner budgets were a serious issue. The Australian economy was strengthening and in 2008 you had the global financial crash, which caused the pound to drop and the Australian dollar to become very strong. When I went to Australia you were getting about 2.8 dollars to the pound; when I left you were getting about 1.5. That had a huge impact on the finances of the High Commission. The decision was taken to move the passport operation to New Zealand where it was cheaper, and of course visas were to be moved to Singapore, I think. We also had a programme of localisation. The High Commissioner’s PA is now locally engaged, as are a lot of the staff. Some of this is because of the closeness of the relationship, and technology plays a part as well. We were able to install a secure link into the Prime Minister’s office, with the help of GCHQ, meaning that there is a secure video conferencing link between the Australian Prime Minister, the Foreign Office, DFAT and No.10. When the speakers at the beginning were thinking about the nature of the world they inhabited, no one could conceivably have thought that this could be done, and frankly the links became so close. The only difference I experienced with the Howard administration was about climate change. It was a big area of difference, largely because of the power of the coal lobby, which was and is extremely powerful. But when the Rudd government was elected, the very first act of Kevin Rudd157 was to ratify Kyoto. So the climate change differences moved off. We had some minor, but never anything that was particularly major. We were able to work together and really meld together because of the work that we were doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was a constant flow of ministers, and it does not help when the ministers are all friends because they all think, ‘Well I will go in with them over the weekend before the meeting, I will just go and stay with Helen’, so I ran a boutique B&B for about four and a half years, which was pretty challenging. Of course we started the Olympic preparations when I was there, and I was in at the start of the wonderful opening ceremony, with the genesis of people coming down to ask the Aussies about the beginning of the ceremony. I had similar problems to Alex in that I had a presidency of the EU within weeks of my getting there, so I put all 21 EU Ambassadors on a plane and took them to Shepparton, the fruitgrowing part of Victoria, and we ran competitions for children. It didn’t actually break down any of the barriers, but it did wake up some of our EU colleagues to the scale of the differences that there were. Problems constantly came up. The Fall of Singapore was the kind of thing that was often mentioned, and membership of EU; it was always handy to have a little map showing where Britain is in relation to continental Europe. The other one was pensions, the failure to upgrade pensions. I can’t say that I was able to do the Queen Mother Stakes, but I was able to be Chieftain of the Bundanoon Highland Games.158 Bundanoon is an hour and a half south of Sydney, and they change the name of the village for one weekend of the year to Brigadoon, and 157 158
Kevin Rudd, Australian Prime Minister, 2007-10 and 2013-. Bundanoon Highland Games: http://www.brigadoon.net.au/ [Accessed 25 Feb. 2013].
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14,000 people come from all over Australia to the Bundanoon Highland Games. They were a bit different to Highland Games that you have in Scotland, they have all the normal things like tossing the caber, but it took me a little time to keep calm when I had to judge the parade of the Scotty dogs and the clan tartans. That was something I had never done before, although I had been a chieftain on a number of occasions. It was also very handy to go to Perth, and I did a lot of broadcasting when I was there. When I went to Perth before any broadcasts I would say, ‘Could we just have a little minute to talk about the name of your city? It’s not Perrff’, and that usually broke any ice. I had a wonderful time, and it was a challenging time. Australia is now one of the strongest economies in the world because of the growth that it has had, but it is experiencing difficulties because of the decline in growth or the reducing growth in China. It exports a huge amount of minerals. Olympic Dam159 in South Australia is so big it can actually be seen from space, and it is a major uranium mine. Gold is found there as well, I remember driving round and seeing yellow posts and asking what they were for. I was told, ‘Well, that’s gold, we’ll get back to that’, because the uranium was the main thing. BHP Billiton160 is scaling back its operations at Olympic Dam, there is change afoot in the Australian economy, but it is still extremely powerful. The key is that it has given Australia selfconfidence that it has never had before. I said at the beginning that I was different, that I was the first woman British High Commissioner. When I left there was a woman Governor-General161 and now there is a woman Prime Minister.162 I had great difficulty in going to meetings of the Melbourne Scots Club, because they didn’t allow women in. And one of the funniest skits I ever saw in Australia was about a dummy of the Governor-General being attempted to be thrown over the wall into the Melbourne Club. So there has been change, but there is a wee way to go. FITTON (Chair): Thank you very much, that was certainly worth waiting for. I think one of the messages or themes that seems to come through is that with this vital diversification and growth, this success—or maybe because of it—the relationship with the UK is perhaps stronger in the areas where it matters to us and to Australia. I want to give time for questions now, and we can perhaps run over a little bit. Perhaps I could start with a question put to Sir Brian about the pensions issue, which Baroness Liddell raised at the end of her talk. In your time there, was that raised with you primarily by your government interlocutors, or by the general public? BARDER: Mainly by the Australian government, which understandably resented having to pay annual increases in British pensioners’ pensions. The argument in London from the Treasury, and indeed from the Department of Pensions, was that inflation-proofing of pensions applied to inflation in Britain, which had nothing to do with inflation in Australia. Therefore when pensioners arrived in Australia to settle their pensions were effectively frozen, the value of their pension decreased year by year and the Australians obviously could not let them starve. The 159
Olympic Dam is a mining centre in South Australia. BHP Billiton: an Anglo-Australian multinational mining and petroleum company. 161 Quentin Bryce, Governor-General of Australia, 2008-. 162 Julia Gillard, Australian Prime Minister, 2010-3. 160
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Australians found themselves topping them up, and quite reasonably said that the responsibility for these people was Britain’s, and that ‘what Britain does about inflation and so on is up to them, but there is no reason why Australia should be subsidising them.’ The discussion was proceeding reasonably well until we had a visit from a UK minister who shall be absolutely nameless, who was extremely— how shall I say it on the record?—abrupt with his Australian interlocutors, and who made the situation very much worse. After that it became really quite badtempered, and as far as I know it has not been solved yet, has it? FITTON (Chair): No, it is still very much on the agenda, I’m sure. Sir Roger? CARRICK: Jocelyn Newman163—Senator Newman—was the minister who summoned me fairly frequently on the same subject, and became really quite emotional about it. During my very last call on her she said, ‘We are working out how to abrogate the Anglo-Australian Treaty on this subject, but we will not do it while you are here, Roger’. Well, I only had a day or two to go, and so it did not make very much difference. ALLAN: As far as I know they didn’t abrogate it, but it bubbles away. It was periodically an issue, but not continuously. FITTON (Chair): Thank you. Questions from the audience? BENJAMIN MOUNTFORD: I have a question for Lord Goodlad, principally about the centenary of federation. Coming so soon after the republic referendum, I wondered how the High Commission in Canberra dealt with the question of sentimentality, which Sir Brian raised? Did the republican debate perhaps influence the High Commission’s thinking on how the history of Britain’s constitutional engagement with Australia should be presented? GOODLAD: What we did—which was started before my day, but it took place after I arrived—was put up some money to build Magna Carta Place in the Parliamentary Triangle in Canberra.164 The money was matched by a sum raised by the Australia-Britain Society. Magna Carta Place, for those who have not visited it, is an extremely moving and dignified place where people can walk along a wall which commemorates Magna Carta, and a pavilion where you can sit and contemplate. It was opened by John Howard as our tribute to Australia on the centenary of federation. It was a way of continuing to mark our shared heritage, the rule of law and all the other elements that bound us together from the time of Magna Carta onwards. We had a Magna Carta lecture; the first one was given by Lord Irvine, the next by Murray Gleeson,165 the Chief Justice of Australia, and the next one by David Sainsbury,166 the Science Minister, and we have those every year or every other year in different parts of Australia. So the centenary federation is commemorated permanently in Canberra by the British government and the British people, and annually or bi-annually in a lecture on an appropriate subject. 163
Senator Jocelyn Newman, Australian Minister for Family and Community Services, 1998-2001. To celebrate the seven hundredth anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carter. 165 Murray Gleeson, Chief Justice of Australia, 1998-2008. 166 David Sainsbury (Lord Sainsbury of Turville), Minister for Science, 1998-2006. 164
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PETER COLLECOTT: This is not so much a question as a comment, I think Alastair said something about the number of people you had from various departments coming and the learning process which went on. I think we didn’t really bring this out in the first session, but it was certainly clear to me that the relationship with the Australians and the exchanges with them were not all about bilateral issues which needed to be resolved, or even relations in multilateral organisations. There was an awful lot of learning going on there, because Australia was one of the few countries around the world which not only had the same structures but was addressing some of the same problems, whether they were social problems or structural problems within the economy or whatever. I think we have not quite brought it up to the surface that that is also part of the relationship. It is noticeable now that we were doing that with Australia 20 or 30 years ago, and it is something which we are now doing with a much wider range of countries, but still more deeply with the Australians than any others. FITTON (Chair): Very much so. I can say from my present role that that is going on next week, ministers are going to Australia to look at aspects of society, relations between ministers and bureaucrats and so on. Would any of the others like to comment on that? LIDDELL: One of the things that I used to find quite startling was that you would wander into a state government office and hear British accents. There would be an exchange between departments that we did not even know about. It was so deep-rooted in the nature of the arrangements that we were almost superfluous to building that relationship. FITTON (Chair): You do not tend to hear Australian accents so much at this end, but we are hoping, certainly in the work we are doing, to try to get some Australian diplomats to come and work in this building. So we might hear them in the future. CARRICK: There are a few Australians who end up working over here. BARDER: One aspect of constitutional comparisons is the nature of the working federation. There is colossal ignorance in this country, sadly, about constitutional affairs, and constitutional theory is on the whole not taught in schools. A study of a working federation in Australia, based on the Westminster system by very similar people, that on the whole works very well, would be enormously beneficial here. I would love to see a Royal Commission on the future of the completion of devolution, with studies of how federations work, especially in Australia and the United States. Australia is really the closest comparison that we have. Our politicians on the whole regard this as a mad idea, but according to our leading constitutional experts we are already halfway into a federation, and yet there is very little discussion of the implications of that or where it is leading us to. The Scottish independence movement ought to focus our minds on this. We have a lot to learn from Australia.
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GOODLAD: I think it is fair to say that the Joint Committee of both Houses which was set up to consider the proposed Bill to reform the House of Lords did actually take evidence from the Australian Parliament by internet television. LIDDELL: Yes. GOODLAD: I think what Brian says is a very good idea. If there are to be further moves to democratise the House of Lords, I think we ought to have a Royal Commission sitting for many decades discussing this. PROFESSOR CARL BRIDGE: One observation and one correction to Sir Roger. Paul Keating wasn’t Pavarotti, he was Plácido Domingo.167 He made a speech at one stage when he was heir apparent to Hawke, who would not go, saying, ‘I am Plácido Domingo, I am always running second to that other chap’. That is who it was, so you need to get that right. The other thing about Keating was of course that he is a total hypocrite when criticising the French, because he kept his clocks. He did not destroy his collection of French clocks, which he should have done, really, with the French doing those dreadful things. CARRICK: On clocks, Paul Keating was a serious expert on French clocks, and on French silver and English furniture. I came reluctantly to the end of my time in Australia, having driven the Rolls Royce right the way round and written a book about it, which is out of print but available on Amazon for the princely sum of one penny. I was doing my farewell calls in Canberra, and I thought that I had such an interesting time with Paul Keating, whom I had grown to like personally, so I rang him and asked if I could come and pay a farewell call. He was still living in Canberra, which he hated. He loved Sydney, but he still lived in Canberra for the sake of his children, who were at Canberra Grammar School. He said, ‘Hell no, Rog, I’ll come call on you’. We fixed about half an hour in each other’s diaries, and he was late, he was late, he was late. He eventually walked up the drive, and said, ‘Bloody car broke down’. We sat down and talked, and then we crawled all over the English furniture in the residence, which of course is all cheap reproductions; the Treasury would not allow anything else. He told umpteen stories, with real authority, about English furniture, French clocks, French silver. There is one story of when he went to the Palace to call on his Queen and was asked to wait in the waiting room because there was some delay. He said, ‘Oh that’s alright, I’ll just check out the gear’, and he inspected the French clocks on the mantelshelf in some detail. BARDER: Just to add something on Keating, we had a visit from Michael Heseltine168 when he was President of the Board of Trade. It was very shortly after his heart attack, and he had been taking it very easy; this was his first major overseas engagement. He was coming to Australia to co-chair an investment and trade conference with Paul Keating. Heseltine was extremely suspicious of Paul Keating, regarding him as an Irish, anti-British lefty, who would be a very uncomfortable partner in co-chairing this conference. This conference was held in 167 168
Plácido Domingo, Spanish classical tenor singer. Michael Heseltine (Lord Heseltine), President of the Board of Trade, 1992-5.
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Melbourne, and everybody was staying in the same hotel. Mr Heseltine arrived, and I took him round to Paul Keating’s suite in the hotel. He was grumbling that he really did not want to meet this man, and within about three minutes of their meeting each other they were absolutely wrapped up in each other’s anecdotes, and comparing notes about politics and elections and how to win them and so on. I had great difficulty in dragging Heseltine away to preside over a reception that he was supposed to be holding for all the delegates to this conference. ‘No no, I want to continue to talk to the Prime Minister, he is very fascinating.’ And they were sitting next to each other at the conference dinner, and they finished up as if they’d been friends for years and years. Two tough pros. JANE, LADY BARDER: They drew diagrams of furniture. BARDER: That’s right. They were writing on the backs of the menus, comparing notes about designs of furniture. ALLAN: I was Nigel Lawson’s169 private secretary in the Treasury when Keating was Finance Minister, and they had a very strong relationship. They hit it off extremely well and used to go out of their way to have sessions together. CARRICK: By contrast, I had to take John Howard to call on Tony Blair in the Cabinet Room in No.10 very soon after Tony Blair became Prime Minister. Andrew Burns170 was there and two or three Australians on the other side, and that was it. It was a sticky meeting, and if you read John Howard’s extraordinary book called Lazarus Rising,171 I think it is, you will see a reference to that. It was a sticky meeting, partly, I thought, because Tony Blair was absolutely exhausted. He had just had his first experience of Brussels all-night meetings, and flown back that morning, straight into the meeting. It was also partly because they were weighing each other up. John Howard was determinedly polite, and Tony Blair was demonstrating that he was a new bright young Prime Minister. He had come in in May 1997 and this was early June, so it was very early on, but it was very essential for the relationship that those two got on. I talked to John Howard, and perhaps you talked to Tony Blair, and said, ‘You have really got to get on with this chap’. And John Howard said, ‘I know Roger’. They did get on well and became, I believe, friends. FITTON (Chair): It seems to be a theme that, often against expectations, people on both sides got on so well together. This is the last chance for questions, and we have time for one more question. PROFESSOR ROBERT HOLLAND: We have heard a lot about EU Ambassadors, and clearly European foreign policy did not thrive in the Pacific setting, but we have not heard much about the US Embassy in Canberra and connections over time with American colleagues. Did that other special relationship have residues within this Anglo-Australian setting? 169
Nigel Lawson (Lord Lawson of Blaby), Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sir Andrew Burns, Deputy Under Secretary of State, Non-Europe and Trade, FCO 1995-7. 171 John Howard, Lazarus Rising (2010). 170
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GOODLAD: In my day it certainly did, we used to have monthly meetings of the EU heads of mission. There were two French Ambassadors in my day, both of whom started talking French to the meeting, because that was what they were instructed to do. In each case the Chair had to take them aside in the coffee break and say, ‘The only person who can understand what you are saying is the British High Commissioner, will you please speak English?’. I used to have lunch monthly with the American Ambassador, we took it in turns to be the host. We talked, certainly every week if not quite every day, but we were very, very closely aligned during those years from 2000 to 2005. They were extremely security conscious whenever I went there. They knew the car perfectly well but they always insisted that the bonnet was raised and inspected. My driver, whom the next holder of the post inherited, always used to say, ‘Will you please check the oil?’, which they did not find at all funny. LIDDELL: That relationship continued with me as well. There was always a good personal relationship, and to some extent also with the Australians. We were the kids compared to big brother, and we occasionally had our gripes if things were causing problems, but it was very close, and with New Zealand and Canada as well. We had a good relationship. FITTON (Chair): Presumably the American Ambassador was a very senior appointment for the Americans. LIDDELL: It is usually a political appointment. ALLAN: When I was there it was not a political appointment, but I had a good relationship. This was in Genta Hawkins’172 day. GOODLAD: She was a diplomat, in my day the two were— LIDDELL: I started off with a chargé,173 and then a political appointment174 who was a close friend of George Bush.175 CARRICK: Genta Hawkins176 was a political appointee, and similarly we got on well. Except I saw nothing of him for six weeks, because he had both his knees replaced with plastic, or carbon fibre or whatever, at exactly the same time, and he was off duty for six weeks. Extraordinarily brave chap, I thought. FITTON (Chair): Thank you very much to all five speakers for a fascinating insight into life in the High Commission. I would like to repeat my thanks to the speakers and chairman in the first session, but we have already given them a round of applause. Could I now ask you to give a round of applause to our speakers this time? Thank you very much. 172
Genta Hawkins, American Ambassador to Australia, 1997-2000. Edward Gnehm, Jr, American Ambassador to Australia, 2000-1. 174 Tom Schieffer, American Ambassador to Australia, 2001-5. 175 George W. Bush, American President, 2001-9. 176 Edward Joseph Perkins, American Ambassador to Australia, 1993-6. 173
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Appendix I Old Canberra House and the British Connection by Jane Barder Old Canberra House, at the junction of Lennox Crossing and Balmain Crescent, Acton, deserves recognition in the history of Australia’s National Capital, and in the history of Australian-British relations. Originally commissioned and built as a residence for Col. David Miller, appointed Administrator of the Federal Capital Territory in August 1912, its life as The Residency was short: Col. Miller’s post was abolished in 1917. The house had another flowering from 1925 until 1929 during the lifetime of the Federal Capital Commission. Sir John Butters, the English-born Chief Commissioner, moved into the Residency and changed its name to Canberra House. When the Federal Capital Commission in its turn was dissolved, Sir John moved out and the house was once again unoccupied. In November 1932, Ernest Crutchley,177 the British Government’s first representative in Australia, rented Canberra House as a residence for himself and for future British High Commissioners. Sir Geoffrey Whiskard,178 who arrived in Canberra in March 1936 not only as the first British High Commissioner to Australia but also as the first head of any diplomatic mission to Australia, moved into Canberra House. Successive British High Commissioners lived there until 1953 when the present Deakin Residence was built. The origins of the house The Residency was designed by John Smith Murdoch,179 a Scot, educated at Forres Academy, who qualified as an architect in Edinburgh. He migrated to Australia in 1884, and worked in Queensland until 1904 when he transferred to the Commonwealth Department of Home Affairs and became a member of the board reviewing the entries for the design of Canberra, Australia’s new capital. Murdoch took advantage of the challenging architectural opportunities offered by the building of a new city in an empty landscape, and Canberra benefits to this day from his works. Many of the early landmark buildings are his: the Hotels Canberra and Kurrajong; the East and West administrative blocks; the Mt Stromlo complex. He designed the Cotter Pumping Station and the Powerhouse, necessary to make this modern capital an all-electric city. He also, even more memorably, designed Canberra’s other ‘powerhouse’, the Provisional Parliament. In recognition of his contributions he was appointed a CMG: he was among those invested by The Duke of York180 when he opened the Parliament building in May 1927. 177
Ernest Tristram Crutchley (1878-1940). Sir Geoffrey Whiskard (1886-1957), High Commissioner, 1936-41. 179 John Smith Murdoch (1862-1945). 180 HRH the Duke of York, later George VI (1895-1952). 178
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The Residency appeared in Acton as an augury of Canberra’s future. Over the years it has been much extended for the various different purposes which it has served, but it was from the start a very solid house, in contrast to its surroundings. In those early times Acton had become the hub of the planning of a new city. Architects, bureaucrats, engineers, labourers, surveyors, all found their homes in Acton while they made their contribution to Canberra. Some lived in the temporary wooden buildings such as the bachelors’ quarters, temporary in 1913, still used in 1993, and now a part of Canberra’s history; others lived in a tented encampment. CS Daley,181 Secretary of the Federal Capital Commission in the 1920s, writing in a Canberra Times article of 1 August 1964, described Col. David Miller and his wife living like pioneers in a tent, until The Residency was completed. HM Rolland,182 another of Canberra’s early architects, when he reminisced to the Canberra and District Historical Society in 1957 about his arrival in Canberra in 1912, remembered the Millers living rather more comfortably, ‘in 2 small rooms and several tents’. The Residency was already under construction when Rolland arrived in 1912, but it was he, as one of the supervising architects, who indented for the construction of a sewer for the house in 1913, and linoleum, blinds and fencing in 1914, suggesting that it was only then that the house became ready for occupation. Early occupants Unfortunately David Miller and his wife did not enjoy the Residency for very long. His skills as a public servant could not steer him through the difficulties of dealing with such mercurial characters as Walter Burley Griffin,183 whose dream city Canberra was, and King O’Malley,184 the Minister for Home Affairs during much of this time: nor could he satisfy those who regarded all expenditure on the Bush Capital as needless extravagance. Following a Royal Commission in late 1916, the position he had held as Administrator was abolished. The Federal government took possession of The Residency in February 1917 and tried to find tenants. The only obvious clients in Canberra at that time were senior officers of the newly created Military Academy at Duntroon. A Brigadier-General Foster was interested in a tenancy at a rent of 3 guineas a week, but unfortunately he had to go off to camp. By 1919 the Residency was being let off in 2 or 3 rooms with use of kitchen to various public servants at rents varying between 5 and 10 shillings a week. In November 1924, in another attempt to bring some structure into Canberra’s administration, the Federal Capital Commission was formed, its primary task at that time to see through to completion the building of the Parliament which had been started in 1923. Sir John Butters185 was appointed Chief Commissioner and moved into the Residency, which from then on was called Canberra House. Sir John resigned in 1929, the Federal Capital Commission was dissolved in 1930, and Canberra House was on the market again. There were few bidders. In those years of the depression, development in 181
C.S. Daley (1859-1947), Secretary of the Federal Capital Commission in 1924-30. H.M. Rolland (1882-1972). 183 Walter Burley Griffin (1876-1937), architect, landscape architect and designer of Canberra. 184 King O’Malley (1854-1953), Australian Minister for Home Affairs, 1910-3; 1915-6. 185 Sir John Henry Butters (1885-1969), Head, Federal Capital Commission, 1925-30. 182
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Canberra had come to a halt. The Duntroon Academy had been transferred to Sydney as a cost-cutting exercise. The only serious applicant was the RSL, which made an offer conditional on the grounds being reduced in size (because of maintenance costs) and on the grant of a liquor licence. Enter the British: Mr Crutchley At this time another possible tenant appeared in the shape of the British government. Following the agreement at the Imperial Conference of 1926 that Governors-General should represent the Crown instead of being agents of the British government, it became inevitable that the British government would need to appoint its own representatives to the Dominions. When the first Australian to become Governor-General, Sir Isaac Isaacs,186 was installed early in 1931, the decision could be delayed no longer. Accordingly, in May 1931, the British government announced that it would shortly be appointing a High Commissioner; pending this, Ernest Crutchley, at that time working in Melbourne as British government representative for migration, would be ‘Representative in the Commonwealth of Australia of His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom’, and would take up his duties in Canberra. Crutchley had been told of this appointment in January 1931 and instructed to go to Canberra to enquire about accommodation. Mr Scullin,187 the Prime Minister, was in Melbourne at the time but Crutchley decided not to bother him there. Instead, he booked himself on the same train to Canberra as the prime minister and broke the news of his appointment to him as they ‘paced the platform at Queanbeyan’. On the afternoon that he arrived in Canberra, Crutchley ‘saw some houses at Acton’ and by the next day was recording in his diary that he would probably suggest Canberra House as a residence. The commandant’s house at Duntroon was also available. Crutchley spent the next few years havering between that and Canberra House as the more suitable residence for the High Commissioner. He also considered the Duntroon Homestead, but that would have needed too much money spent on it and he rejected a suggestion that it should be pulled down and rebuilt: it had too many traditions which should be preserved. The fact that he did eventually decide on Canberra House was just as well because the Military Academy returned to Duntroon in 1937. Once Crutchley’s appointment was officially announced in May 1931, a speedy interim decision was needed because he had been given to understand that a substantive High Commissioner would be arriving in October 1931, the date he gave CS Daley in June 1931, when negotiating for the lease and passing on the views of the Dominions Office. As instructed, he said that: ‘The Secretary of State for the Dominions regards Canberra House as hardly sufficient for the purposes for which it is intended.’ The dining-room would need to be extended to seat 18; it would need 3, possibly 4 extra bedrooms; a study to be added; another downstairs lavatory; the garden to be renovated and facilities to be provided for garden parties. All this had to be completed by October 1931. In the event, British Treasury opposition to the creation of this new post at a time of financial crisis meant that Crutchley’s appointment as Representative lasted until Sir Geoffrey 186 187
Sir Isaac Isaacs (1855-1948), Governor-General of Australia, 1931-6. James Scullin (1876-1953), Australian Prime Minister, 1929-32.
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Whiskard was named as High Commissioner in August 1935. Mr and Mrs Crutchley were at last able to leave for home in September 1935. They had been living in Canberra House since 1932, but it was only on their departure that the required extensions seem to have been carried out, to the plans of EH Henderson,188 then the chief architect of the Department of the Interior. A posting to Canberra It has to be said that Ernest Crutchley did not welcome his appointment to Canberra, nor its extension. But in 1931 even the most patriotic of Australian public servants were unenthusiastic about a transfer to Canberra. A city of cold winters and dusty summers; few trees then to provide a sheltering micro-climate; a population of about 7,000 with few services—Canberra did not compare with Melbourne and its claims to be the second city of the British Empire. Nevertheless, having accepted his fate, Crutchley made the most of Canberra. He and Anne, his wife, arrived to start the job on 22 May 1931. As he recorded in his daily diary, Anne was charmed with her first glimpse of the countryside and the prospect of its becoming her home for 6 months (as it turned out, it was to be her home for nearly 5 years). They found congenial companions such as the Caseys, the Tillyards; they played bridge with them and others, sometimes having an evening of bridge at Government House with Lady Isaacs. Crutchley went for 10mile walks around Black Mountain. They waited for consignments of books from Angus and Robertson and letters from home. Meanwhile they turned Canberra House into an English home. The Sydney Morning Herald, on 15 August 1935, just as Crutchley’s departure was announced, published an article about Canberra House in its Women’s Supplement. Titled ‘The Glory of Trees’, it concentrated on the garden and, in particular, the trees. ‘They were planted long before he came to inhabit this lovely home; many of them in fact have been planted by quite famous hands, for it is part of the history of the place that the trees owe their beginnings to people who have been wrapped up in the history of the political development of the country.’ WM Hughes, The Prince of Wales, the Duke and Duchess of York and Lord and Lady Denman were listed among those who had planted trees. ‘Seen through the trees, the cream house is incredibly beautiful—it must have been a somewhat gaunt structure before they grew up and threw the protection of their beautiful forms about it … The lawn, emerald green, has been left with the full complement of twisted blue-green trunks and lacy tracery of eucalyptus gums, while here and there gleam the silver stems of birches, pink and white hawthorn bushes, jacaranda and an occasional cedar tree.’ By the terms of the lease, the upkeep of the gardens, apart from the kitchen gardens, was the responsibility of the Commonwealth government, so it was an Australian-designed English garden. According to the article, the house was furnished with Chippendale chairs and cabinets, flowery chintzes, a Chinese screen. Crutchley mentioned in a diary entry while he was home on leave in 1932 that he had gone to the Office of Works to choose things for Canberra House and presumably some of this furniture was the result. Some of it is still in the Deakin Residence in 1993.
188
E.H. Henderson (1886-1939), Chief Architect for the Department of the Interior, Australia, 1926-36.
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Exeunt the Crutchleys, enter Mr Hankinson In September 1935 the Crutchleys were paying their farewells to Canberra and Australia, many of them recorded in the Canberra Times. On 4 September, Mrs Crutchley was entertained by her bridge friends at the Hotel Canberra and presented with a cigarette box. Lady Isaacs, wife of the Governor-General, was unable to attend because she was in mourning for Queen Astrid of Belgium.189 Two days later they attended a Cabinet luncheon in their honour. On 14 September, the Victoria League held a farewell party for them at the Gungahlin home of the Watsons. (The Gungahlin homestead later housed Australia’s first diplomatic academy, and is now owned by the CSIRO.) Lady Garran, the President of the League, reportedly wore a ‘black satin frock with black furtrimmed wrap and a black velvet hat.’ Mrs Crutchley wore ‘blue green tweeds.’ (At least one of the two ladies would seem to have been inappropriately dressed.) Their final farewell was a dinner that evening at Government House. They returned to London and a home in Shortlands, Kent. Crutchley took up a final public service appointment as Chief Public Relations Officer for the Post Office. The last, touching, entry in his diary, given by his surviving family to the National Library, Canberra, and a great source of material about Canberra in the 1930s, is for 28 September, 1940. As well as the first bombing of London, it seems that at this time there was also a plague of stinging cobwebs falling from the sky. Crutchley noted this, as he had noted so many daily events, and related it to an entry in Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne. White had noted a similar affliction—of cobwebs, not bombs—on 21 September 1741. Walter Hankinson was sent from the Dominions Office to take charge of the High Commission until the arrival of Whiskard. He had had a similar short posting in Canberra when Crutchley had gone on leave in late 1931: during this further posting he announced his engagement to Miss Sheila Watson of the Gungahlin homestead already mentioned, an engagement acknowledged by the Dominions Office with an extra month’s leave. They married at St John’s Church in 1936. Hankinson returned to Canberra as Deputy High Commissioner in 1943 and, after a career which subsequently included being the first British High Commissioner to Ceylon and Ambassador to Ireland, he retired to Deakin until his death in 1984. The first High Commissioner: Sir Geoffrey Whiskard Hankinson’s tenure in 1935-36 involved him in running the High Commission and supervising works at Canberra House, but he also had to help to arrange the reception of the first High Commissioner. The arrival of a British High Commissioner in 1993 is a routine diplomatic event. He is one of 70 or more Heads of Mission accredited to Australia who are received with the diplomatic courtesies prevailing throughout the world. The arrival of Sir Geoffrey Whiskard was a first. There were no other diplomatic representatives in Australia. Britain had a trade commissioner in Sydney and some foreign countries had consuls in Sydney or Melbourne. Australia had a High Commissioner in London, an External Affairs officer in London and trade representatives in the United States and Europe. Apart from this, Australian foreign affairs were conducted through British Empire channels. Australian ministers, including the prime minister, paid frequent 189
Queen Astrid of Belgium (1905-35).
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visits to London. There was puzzlement and some hostility both in Canberra and in London about the role of a British government representative in Canberra. Nevertheless, the appointment had been welcomed as a mark of increasing Australian involvement in international affairs and the immediate problem was how to receive and place this strange functionary. Crutchley had to some extent established the role. He had been accorded a place in the table of precedence just below the Chief Justice. His relations with the prime minister for all of his time, Joseph Lyons,190 were friendly—and it was the Prime Minister’s Department that conducted relations with the United Kingdom, as indeed it did until 1972. His diplomatic bag to London was carried with the Australian bag to Australia House, London. He had already established the pattern, followed by successive High Commissioners, of touring the States, accepting speaking engagements, attempting to express British views and policies. He had found much curiosity about the meaning of his appointment, and the State Governors were somewhat suspicious because they also saw themselves as to some extent representing the British government. A full-blown High Commissioner seemed to be something else again. His reception became the matter of Cabinet discussion. He was due to arrive in Fremantle on 3 March 1936, Sydney on 12 March and Canberra on Friday 13 March. An early plan had him met in Fremantle by the District Naval Officer, and then by a federal minister in Sydney. The Prime Minister’s Department, however, decided that on first arrival he should be met by a senior senator and a telegram was sent in the name of Mr Lyons to PJ Lynch,191 the West Australian President of the Senate, asking him to meet Whiskard. Lynch replied that he would be glad to meet the High Commissioner although meeting him ‘leaves me bare time to arrive in Canberra on tenth’. In Sydney Whiskard was met by a federal minister and called on the Governor before travelling on to Canberra. Suitable arrangements for his reception in the capital were the subject of much discussion. A plan which found favour for some while was for a dinner for 46 people on Monday 16 March, followed by the première performance of Mutiny on the Bounty at Canberra’s only cinema, the Capitol at Manuka. Hankinson went so far as to draw up a seating plan for the dinner. But at a Cabinet meeting on 25 February the plans were changed. They decided that they would instead have a lunch on 13 March at Parliament House. The idea of a dinner was ruled out because few ministers would be in Canberra on a Monday evening. For the same reasons they decided not to include ladies. A separate function would be held for the ladies later. The Canberra Times reported Sir Geoffrey’s imminent arrival on 10 March. It noted that he would be accompanied by an Official Secretary, Percival Liesching,192 who would live in Dial House, Red Hill (a house built for the Tillyards and still standing on the corner of Moresby Street and Arthur Circle. Percival Liesching went on to become Head of the Commonwealth Relations Office). Sir Geoffrey himself would move into ‘the newly renovated Canberra House’. The next problem for the Australian government to sort out in welcoming its first diplomat was the question of his car. He had ordered a Humber Pullman to 190
Joseph Lyons (1879-1939), Prime Minister, 1932-9. P.J. Lynch (1867-1944), President of the Australian Senate, 1932-8. 192 Sir Percival Liesching (1895-1973), Permanent Under-Secretary, Commonwealth Relations Office, 1949-55. 191
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be delivered from the UK. Mr W.E. Rootes (later Lord Rootes)193 himself wrote to Mr C.E. Blayney, the Rootes representative in Sydney, asking him to make sure that Sir Geoffrey had transport until his car arrived, and Mr Blayney wrote to the Prime Minister’s department asking whether the Commonwealth government would provide transport. The answer was ‘not necessarily’. So Mr Blayney had to deal with this. Once the car arrived Sir Geoffrey asked for distinctive number plates and suggested ‘HC-UK’ in white letters on a royal blue background. This was accepted and the Commonwealth sent letters to all the State premiers asking that this identification should be notified to all police, traffic and main road authorities. New South Wales replied that Sir Geoffrey Whiskard’s car would be allowed free travel across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and any other toll roads. (It would be nice to think that his distinctive licence plates were the forerunners of today’s diplomatic car licence plates, but in the 1970s these were white on red, not white on blue.) Having sorted all this out, Sir Geoffrey embarked on the kind of travel programme around Australia instituted by Crutchley and followed by most of his successors. The British move on Canberra House remained home to the British until 1953. But Acton had always been destined eventually to house a university and when the Australian National University was incorporated by Act of Parliament in 1946, the time had clearly come for the British to look for a new site. Canberra was a much bigger city than it had been in 1931: Canada had set up a High Commission in December 1939 and the United States a Legation in 1940. Other countries had followed and by 1951 there were 15 diplomatic missions in Canberra. Some were already building in the new diplomatic area and the United States had built its handsome chancery and residence as early as 1941. The United Kingdom government identified its 4.5acre residence site in Deakin and a chancery site in Commonwealth Avenue, starting both buildings in 1951. Sir Stephen Holmes,194 the then High Commissioner, moved to Deakin on 24 October 1953. He had hesitated to ask whether the name ‘Canberra House’ could be transferred to the new Residence. On the one hand, it had been associated with the British High Commission since its first days in Australia; on the other hand, it was a name with historic associations for Canberrans and all Australians. There was therefore much discussion between London and the High Commission about possible new names. When approached, though, neither the Department of the Interior nor the University authorities saw any objection to the transfer and so the new Deakin Residence became Canberra House. It was a mistaken idea. Many Canberrans resented the use of the name for the British Residence and when, in 1975, an office block was built on Marcus Clarke Street and called Canberra House, Sir Morrice James, High Commissioner at the time, was very glad to have the excuse at last to change the name. The Residence is now called Westminster House (although on post-1988 Canberra maps given out by the Canberra Tourist Bureau it is still shown as Canberra House!). Once the British had moved out, the old Residency was once again up for rent. An article in the Canberra Times of 3 June 1954 related that the university 193 194
William Rootes (Lord Rootes, 1894-1964), motor car manufacturer. Sir Stephen Holmes (1896-1980), High Commissioner, 1952-6.
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would in due course require the building, but not immediately. In July, having considered applications to turn it into a boarding house or an Art Gallery, the council of the University decided to negotiate with the newly formed Commonwealth Club as a possible tenant. It was in fact the Commonwealth Club which occupied it until it was taken over by the university in 1961. Subsequent additions to the building relate to its occupancy by the Club and to its later use as a staff centre by the university. It is still a fine building, on a lovely site—a reminder of many phases of Canberra’s past: the pioneers of the national capital; the doldrum days when development ceased and the house became a seedy lodging house; the new optimism of the 1920s when Parliament was built and the Butters family lived in the house; the empty days of the depression; 20 years as a diplomatic residence, forerunner of Canberra’s role as a diplomatic capital; the meeting-place of a new Australian Establishment, no longer confined to the old capitals of Sydney and Melbourne; and finally taking its place in the academic life of the national capital. The ‘glory of trees’ which surrounds it is perhaps a little overgrown now, but they still protect it from the acquisitive gaze. The Old Canberra House has surely earned a continuing role in the life of Australia’s capital. Jane Barder Canberra 17 April 1993 Sources: National Archives of Australia for files on The Residency, negotiations with Crutchley, arrival of Whiskard; Rolland’s speech. National Library of Australia for Crutchley’s diaries, newspaper micro-films. Fitzgerald, A. Canberra in Two Centuries—A Pictorial History (1987). Gillespie, L. Canberra 1820-1913 (1990). Gibbney, J. Canberra 1913-1953 (1988). Garnett, R. The Heritage of the Australian Capital Territory (1992). Wigmore, L. The Long View: A History of Canberra, Australia’s National Capital (1963).
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Appendix II Early British Diplomatic Representation in Australia by Jane Barder The office of British High Commissioner in Canberra has its origins in May 1931. Ernest Tristram Crutchley was appointed Representative in Australia of His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom, pending the appointment of a British High Commissioner to Australia. Mr Crutchley, in negotiating the lease of a residence for the High Commissioner, confidently predicted that he would arrive in October 1931. In the event it was not until August 1935 that the Secretary of State for the Dominions was able to write to Mr Lyons, the Australian Prime Minister, telling him that Sir Geoffrey Whiskard, whom he had met while in London for the Silver Jubilee celebrations, had been appointed. The Secretary of State apologised for the long delay which, he said, had been caused by ‘the financial crisis’. Sir Geoffrey finally arrived in Canberra on 13 March 1936. To those who experienced the post-war process of British decolonisation, when the Proclamation of Independence and the midnight raising of a new flag had been followed immediately by the establishment of diplomatic relations and the exchange of High Commissioners, the 35-year gap between the celebrations of the birth of the Commonwealth of Australia and the arrival of a British High Commissioner may seem inexplicable. Empire politicians, officials, lawyers, the Monarchy itself, had grappled with many constitutional problems between 1867, when Canada became the first self-governing Dominion of the British Empire, and 1939 when the four Overseas Dominions voluntarily went to war in alliance with Britain. (The Irish Free State, or Eire as it was by then called, a reluctant Dominion, remained neutral.) The evolution of the relationship between these freely associated States had been a gradual process, responding to their own internal developments and the pressures of the outside world. The early hopes of some for a vast Confederation, never acceptable to Canada, South Africa or, above all, the Irish Free State, and certainly not welcomed by any British government, had soon been dashed. Issues were argued at a series of Colonial and then Imperial Conferences and ad hoc arrangements devised during the First World War, subsequent peace conferences and Ministerial visits to London; all these contributed to a changing relationship. The great Imperial Conference of 1926 was a watershed and its recommendations were later embodied in the Statute of Westminster, passed by the British Parliament in 1931 with little opposition, but not ratified by Australia until 1942. It was this Statute which gave legislative freedom to Dominion Parliaments, although both Australia and Canada demanded restrictions on the powers of their Federal Parliaments in order to protect the rights of Australian States and Canadian Provinces. The 1926 Conference declared equality of status between Great Britain and the Dominions and recognised their autonomy in the sphere of foreign affairs 75
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and treaty obligations. It also stated that Governors-General were representatives of the Crown and not the agents of the British government. Consequently the use of the Governor-General as an official channel of communication was no longer constitutional. The recognition of equality in the field of foreign affairs to some extent merely confirmed a position which had already been tacitly accepted. Canada, the Irish Free State and South Africa had already taken first steps into independent diplomacy. The Dominions had separate representation at the League of Nations. Britain in signing the Locarno Treaty in 1925 had secured specific provision that this did not commit the Dominions, unless they independently approved the treaty. None of them did. It is interesting that on the day when Sir Geoffrey arrived in Canberra, Mr Lyons was assuring an anxious Australian Parliament that, despite the crisis of the Rhineland occupation, no Dominion Government was bound by the Locarno Treaty. Purists could argue that all these advances towards independence in world affairs were merely exercises of the plenipotentiary powers of the Crown, but the Crown was proving adaptable to the changing needs of Empire. In practice, if not in theory, the right of the Dominions to pursue an independent foreign policy was limited only by their own perception of their needs and the amount of resources they were prepared to devote to foreign affairs. It was the statement by the 1926 Conference of the position of GovernorsGeneral which ultimately obliged the British government to send its own representatives to the Dominions. By this time all the Dominions had their own representatives in London. As early as 1879 Canada had recognised its need to have a Canadian government representative in London. As described by Keith Hancock, the great Australian historian of the British Empire, Canada therefore proposed the appointment of a ‘quasi-diplomatic representative to the Court of St James’. The British government replied that diplomatic status was hardly appropriate to the position of Canada as an integral part of the Empire. Nevertheless Canada’s will prevailed. Sir Alexander Galt195 took up his position in 1880 and Canada’s suggested title of High Commissioner was accepted and also set a precedent for future Commonwealth representatives. Australian representation in Britain With this example the way was open for Australia to appoint a High Commissioner to London once it achieved Dominion status. But it was only in 1910 that it did so. Other administrative concerns took priority in setting up the new Commonwealth of Australia. It was the experience of Alfred Deakin,196 when he visited London as Prime Minister for the 1907 Imperial Conference, which provided the necessary impetus to establish the post. Denied representation at this conference, the State Premiers instructed their Agents-General not to provide the prime minister with any assistance. Following Mr Deakin’s return to Australia, a Bill was passed authorising the establishment of a High Commission. W.G. McMinn tells this story in his 1989 biography of George Reid. Sir George Reid,197 a former Premier of New South Wales and an ex195
Sir Alexander Galt (1817-93), Canadian High Commissioner to UK, 1880-3. Alfred Deakin (1856-1919), Australian Prime Minister, 1903-4, 1905-8, 1909-10. 197 Sir George Reid (1845-1918), Premier of New South Wales, 1894-9; Australian Prime Minister, 1904-5; High Commissioner to London, 1910-6. 196
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Prime Minister of Australia, was the first incumbent and the driving force in the building of Australia House. His appointment set a precedent in the nature of appointments to this post and thus in the degree of influence it carried. Sir George was succeeded by a long line of former prime ministers, many of them out of tune with the party in power in Canberra. He himself, when in 1916 he eventually and reluctantly relinquished his position as High Commissioner, moved on with effortless ease to an uncontested election as a Unionist MP in the British House of Commons. He was still a sitting MP when he died in September 1918. His career was but one example of the frontierless Empire which seemed to make diplomatic relations superfluous. Australian ministers and politicians throughout the early years of the Commonwealth were not seeking an independent foreign policy or separate Australian representation. Their thrust was to ensure that Australia was fully informed and consulted about British policy. Their experience in the First World War, when Empire troops fought together, when Dominion prime ministers were included in the Imperial War Cabinet, and when W.M. Hughes had gained right of direct access to the British prime minister, made them feel that they were on the inside track. Their confidence was shaken by the Chanak Crisis of 1922. Lloyd George198 regarded Turkey’s occupation of Anatolia as a threat to peace. In September 1922, in midnight telegrams, he invited the Dominions to send troops. Canada replied that it needed more information. New Zealand offered a contingent within one hour of the receipt of the telegram and within a few days 12,000 out of just over 1 million New Zealanders had volunteered. Australia agreed only a little less promptly than New Zealand. However W.M. Hughes199 sent a private telegram to Lloyd George—one Welsh-born Prime Minister addressing another in a different part of the Empire: ‘If the Empire is only another name for Britain, and the Dominions are to be told that things are done after they have been done … it is perfectly clear that all talk about Dominions having a real share in deciding foreign policy is empty air.’ Both Welsh Prime Ministers lost office soon after this. Stanley Bruce,200 who succeeded William Hughes as Prime Minister, commissioned Alan Leeper,201 an Australian-born member of the British Foreign Office, to advise on the organisation of the embryo Department of External Affairs. As a result of this, Richard Casey202 in 1924 took up a position as External Affairs Liaison Officer in London. Stanley Bruce wrote to Joseph Cook,203 Australian High Commissioner and another ex-Prime Minister, telling him that Mr Casey would ‘supervise and accelerate the flow of information between the Foreign Office and the Australian Government.’ He would not be responsible to the High Commissioner; he would communicate directly with the Prime Minister in Melbourne. R.G. Casey’s letters to Stanley Bruce, 1924-1929, edited and published by the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1980, provide a wealth of information about this period. 198
David Lloyd George (1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, 1863-1945), Prime Minister, 1916-22. W.M. Hughes (1862-1952), Australian Prime Minister, 1915-23. 200 Stanley Bruce (1st Viscount Bruce of Melbourne; 1883-1967), Australian Prime Minister, 19239. 201 A.W.A. Leeper (1887-1935), First Secretary, Vienna, 1924-8; counsellor, Foreign Office, 1933. 202 Richard Casey (Lord Casey, 1890-1976), Governor-General of Australia, 1965-9. 203 Sir Joseph Cook (1860-1947), Australian Prime Minister, 1913-4; High Commissioner to the UK, 1921-7. 199
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Richard Casey was a third generation Australian, impeccably connected, Cambridge-educated, and with a good war record, when he arrived in London to liaise with the British government. He was perhaps fortunate that Maurice Hankey204 the Secretary of the Cabinet, had an Australian background (his father had been an Australian sheep farmer until he emigrated with his family to England): he was soon established in a room in the Cabinet Office with wide access to Cabinet and Foreign Office documents and freedom to pass on their contents to his prime minister. It was a well-established role that he left when he returned to Australia in 1931. Stanley Bruce himself became High Commissioner in 1933. He was an ex-Prime Minister who was not prepared to be merely a representational figurehead and manager of Australia House. The Liaison Officer for most of this time, Alfred Stirling,205 worked to Bruce. Was Australian access in London enough? Bruce wrote in later years: ‘From the time Casey went to London as my Liaison Officer until I ceased to be High Commissioner in 1945, Australia was inevitably better informed on international affairs and had more influence on the UK government and its policy than all the rest of the Empire put together.’ Casey, on the other hand, in a diary entry of July 1940 quoted by WJ Hudson in his biography, wrote: ‘Looking back on the 1937 Imperial Conference—how far removed from reality were its discussions … We were given no picture of the mighty efforts Germany was making—no stress was laid on any possible danger … As late as 1939 … how we were misinformed and fooled.’ Such depressed thoughts in those dark days were perhaps inevitable. However, the positions of Casey and Bruce and frequent and lengthy Australian ministerial visits to London had at the time served what seemed to be Australia’s best interests. These were perceived as being a means of securing for Australia an informed voice in Britain’s foreign policy, and this they had achieved. Given such concentration on an Australian presence in London, it is hardly surprising that there was little enthusiasm, on either side, for British representation in Canberra. British representation in Australia: who whom? The British establishment was bemused by the constitutional difficulties of the King appointing a representative of himself in one of his Dominions. Indeed, to this day British Ambassadors (to foreign countries) represent the British Crown but British High Commissioners (to Commonwealth countries) represent the British Government. High Commissioners to the Commonwealth republics take credentials signed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary. When a British High Commissioner is appointed to one of the Queen’s other Realms, such as Australia, the diplomatic formalities consist of a letter of introduction from the British Prime Minister to his counterpart in the receiving state. Thus the Queen still does not appoint representatives of herself, to herself. Leo Amery,206 who became the first Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs when the Dominions Office was established in June 1925, was an enthusiast for the Dominions developing free and equal relationships between 204
Maurice Hankey (Lord Hankey, 1877-1963), Cabinet Secretary, 1916-38. Alfred Stirling (1902-1981), London Liaison Office, 1937-45. 206 Leo Amery (1873-1955), Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, 1925-9. 205
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themselves and with Britain. From this standpoint he recognised the need for Britain to have its own representatives in the Dominions. (It was obvious even before the 1926 Conference that increasingly Governors-General had to represent the Crown rather than the government in the United Kingdom.) Mr Amery and his tiny department, however, had little influence in Whitehall. The Foreign Office essentially saw no need for British government representation in the Dominions. They felt competent to conduct foreign policy on behalf of the Empire: an exchange of representatives might suggest relations with the Dominions comparable to those with foreign powers. The Treasury was invariably hostile to anything which would cost money. It had kept the new Dominions Office on a tight financial rein from the time of its creation and was unwilling to finance any overseas expansion. Indeed as noted by Lord Garner207 (in turn servant, head and, ultimately, historian of the Dominions Office), the Foreign Office and Treasury in alliance considered that by appointing British representatives, the government would be taking on a financial burden which should have been assumed by the Dominion governments themselves appointing representatives to London. Even after a government decision had been taken to appoint a representative to Australia, the Treasury managed to delay its implementation from May 1931 until August 1935. Whitehall thus found it difficult to come to terms with the requirements of a constantly changing Empire relationship. Nevertheless it tried, punctiliously, to meet all these new demands. The Governors-General of the Dominions, at that time all from Britain, were accordingly consulted about the implications of the 1926 Imperial Conference. Those in Canada and South Africa, responding to the circumstances of their own responsibilities, urged the appointment of United Kingdom representatives. Lord Stonehaven,208 Governor-General of Australia, and his counterpart in New Zealand209 opposed the idea. Lord Stonehaven, quoted by Garner, feared that the appointment of a High Commissioner would weaken the position of a Governor-General and might, at some stage, obviate the need for a Governor-General if some future Australian government were to decide that the ‘representation of Britain’ could be confined to a High Commissioner paid by the British taxpayer rather than a Governor-General maintained by the Australian government. Australians were similarly ambivalent about this question. Stanley Bruce and Richard Casey were those most immediately concerned when the subject was under discussion. Both blew hot and cold. Casey, whose appointment in London in 1924 was the forerunner of the eventual Australian diplomatic service, suggested as early as 1925 that a British Liaison Officer, his counterpart, should be posted in Canberra. At that time Bruce, as Prime Minister, was (as he said) ‘dubious about a British Government agent loose in Melbourne … there are already the Governor-General and 6 State Governors.’ The fact that Bruce and Casey modified their views repeatedly both before and after the 1926 Conference is hardly surprising. The compromises and ground-breaking solutions arrived at by colleagues in the British Empire and Commonwealth, over the continents and over the years, were audaciously informal in terms of normal diplomatic relations. 207
Lord Garner of Chiddingly (Sir Joseph Saville Garner, 1908-83). 1st Viscount Stonehaven (JL Baird, 1874-1941), Governor-General of Australia, 1925-31. 209 General Sir Charles Fergusson (1865-1951), Governor-General of New Zealand, 1924-30. 208
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Goodwill and desire to succeed meant that Commonwealth relations were able to buck the rules and set new guidelines infinitely capable of new interpretation. Once again, however, Canada was setting the pace. Having established the right of Dominions to appoint High Commissioners to London, Canada then fought throughout the years of change to ensure that the London High Commissioners were not absorbed into a powerless rubber stamp of British Empire diplomacy. If the focus of Empire diplomacy were in London this was a real possibility and very attractive to the Foreign Office which could thereby keep the Empire in line behind its policies. The British government had hoped to achieve a Council of High Commissioners from the 1926 Imperial Conference. Instead, however, Mackenzie King,210 Canada’s long-serving Prime Minister, suggested British representation in Canada. A representative of stature would of course at the same time stress Canada’s independence from Britain and give notice to Canada’s powerful neighbour, the USA, that Canada had other, equally powerful friends. The resistance of Whitehall, detailed above, was finally overruled by the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin.211 He was persuaded by Mackenzie King’s arguments when he visited Canada for its sixtieth birthday celebrations. Sir William Clark212 was appointed High Commissioner in Ottawa in 1928 and the way was open for similar appointments in other dominions. Stanley Bruce had not been a supporter of Mackenzie King’s views at the 1926 Conference. As late as March 1928 he expressed the view to Casey that he saw separate diplomatic representation by the Dominions as a mistake and bound to lead to a ‘hopeless mess’. A factor which must have been present in Australian thinking on this subject and which affected relations with the first British representatives in Canberra was that a policy of direct access in London could be fettered by a shifting of the access to Canberra. Nevertheless when Amery visited Australia on an Empire tour in 1927 Bruce, and indeed Stonehaven, had come to accept the idea at least of a liaison officer, although with no great urgency. When, however, a Labor government, with Mr Scullin as Prime Minister, came to power in 1929 there was a change of attitude on the Australian side and the appointment of Sir Isaac Isaacs as the first Australian Governor-General in early 1931 concentrated the minds of the British government on the need to have its own representative in Australia. Britain’s First Man in Canberra In fact there was already a British government representative in Australia, overseeing the implementation of the migration agreement between the 2 countries which had been signed in 1925. Migration had been a matter of great importance to both countries but in the years of the depression the numbers had declined drastically. William Banks Amery,213 appointed in 1925, had been replaced in 1928 by Ernest Crutchley. When therefore in May 1931 the British Government at last announced its intention to appoint a High Commissioner to Australia, Mr Crutchley was at the same time appointed to set up the High Commission. Migration work became just one of the functions of the new office. 210
Mackenzie King (1874-50), Canadian Prime Minister, 1935-48. Stanley Baldwin (1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, 1867-47), Prime Minister, 1923-4; 1924-9; 1935-7. 212 Sir William Clark (1876-1952), High Commissioner to Canada, 1928-34. 213 William Banks Amery (1883-1951). 211
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Crutchley, having been informed of his new role in January 1931 and having been instructed to go to Canberra to seek accommodation, decided to book himself on the same train from Melbourne to Canberra as Mr Scullin who had been speaking in Melbourne. Crutchley broke the news to him as they ‘paced the platform at Queanbeyan’. Scullin apparently was disappointed that there was not to be a fullblown High Commissioner but was pleasant enough about Crutchley’s interim appointment. …and the first British High Commissioner In August 1935, Sir Geoffrey Whiskard was named as High Commissioner and Mr Crutchley left Australia after 7 years. During that time he had laid the foundations for this first diplomatic mission in Canberra. Britain had had a trade commissioner in Sydney, as in the other Dominions, and some foreign countries had consuls in Sydney or Melbourne, but until 1939 when Canada appointed a High Commissioner and 1940 when the US appointed a Minister, the British High Commissioner was the only head of a diplomatic mission in Australia. Mr Crutchley had acquired a residence—built in 1913 as ‘The Residency’ to be the home of the first Administrator of the Federal Capital Territory—but less grandly named ‘Canberra House’ by the time Mr Crutchley leased it. He had also been accorded a position in Commonwealth precedence just below that of the Chief Justice. This contrasted with the position in Canada of Sir William Clark, who found himself way below the position of the 5 representatives of foreign powers. Mr Crutchley’s main channel of communication with the Australian government was through the Prime Minister’s Department. As he said: ‘The Department of External Affairs confines itself to foreign countries. Correspondence with the Government of the United Kingdom is carried on by the Prime Minister’s Department.’ He had regular meetings with the Prime Minister. Like all High Commissioners following him, he was in demand as a speaker throughout the country and found great curiosity about the meaning of his appointment. He noted that the State Governors were suspicious of his activities since they too represented the British government. Mr Lyons, the Australian Prime Minister, paid tribute to Mr Crutchley when he left and to the ‘spirit of co-operation which had been a very marked feature of Mr Crutchley’s tenure of this new and important development in the system of communication and consultation between the British and Commonwealth Governments.’ Crutchley went on to be chief public relations officer of the British Post Office, the department in which he had started his career. Sir Geoffrey Whiskard at the time of his appointment was one of the 3 Assistant Under-Secretaries in the Dominions Office. His Civil Service career had started in the Home Office; he had seen service in Dublin in the troubled years of 1920-1922; he had returned to the Dominions division of the Colonial Office and been a founder-member of the new Dominions Office. Australian newspapers welcomed his appointment as ‘a fitting recognition of the increasing importance of Australia’s place in the counsels of the Empire.’ Mr Lyons in a speech of welcome saw in this appointment ‘the recognition by Britain of the need for greater co-operation between all parts of the Empire … Never before had it been so necessary for the Empire to speak with one voice. It was the greatest single force for peace in the world today.’ 81
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The hopes expressed in this speech, however, ignored the difficulties of establishing a new position when its function was so little understood, and when its limits were so ill-defined. None of the first High Commissioners made the kind of impact which could have been expected in a country so committed to close relations with Britain. Lord Garner, commenting on this in 1978, attributes some blame to the strains of British-Australian war-time relationships and the isolated life of Canberra in those days. He writes, presumably from personal knowledge, in uncomplimentary terms of Whiskard’s personality. He pays tribute to his incisive mind but refers to his indolence and snobbishness. He quotes the report of another senior official: ‘when home in 1938 he was rather suffering from a swollen head.’ Sir Geoffrey himself in a report to the Dominions Office in 1941 is quoted thus: ‘There really is very little work for the HC to do here … It’s the rarest thing in the world for me to go to the Office in the afternoon … The idleness has really been a heavy burden.’ This, as Lord Garner says: ‘in the middle of the Greek campaign’ (when Australian and New Zealand casualties were at a high point). As an example of Whiskard’s lack of judgement, Garner quotes his 1940 assessment of the Australian prime minister: ‘Menzies has no more backbone than a jelly-fish. It is regrettably true that Menzies would not last a day if there were any visible alternative, but there is none.’ Garner contrasts Whiskard’s aloofness with the popular Crutchley’s geniality. This unusual indictment of a colleague, deceased for 20 years, has to be seen also as an indictment of the office which appointed him. If his colleagues, rightly or wrongly, regarded him as aloof, snobbish and indolent, it is hardly surprising that Sir Geoffrey was unable to form the kind of relationships in Australia which might have mollified the strains that inevitably developed during the war. In the discussions about the need for British High Commissioners, the Foreign Office had always argued that if the posts were to be established, then they should be filled by diplomats. The Dominions Office, on the other hand, argued that the needs of Dominion diplomacy were different from those of normal Foreign Office posts and required a different approach. Throughout its 40 years’ existence as a separate Department of State, the Dominions Office (after 1947 the Commonwealth Relations Office) always held that view. It believed that neither the striped pants of diplomats nor the bush shorts of colonial servants were welcome in the Dominions. It is arguable that British diplomats in the 1920s, most of them used to service in the capitals of Europe, might have had some difficulty of adjustment to the quaint society of the then very British Dominions. However, in those early days, the civil servants of the Dominions Office, and their wives, had often had no experience at all of life outside the United Kingdom. In later years the Commonwealth Relations Office was similarly scornful of the idea that either Colonial Office officials or ex-members of the Colonial Service could have anything useful to contribute to Commonwealth diplomacy. Because of an assumption that ‘colonial attitudes’ would be unwelcome in newly independent states, in many cases they lost the invaluable training and experience which exColonial Servants could have brought to a Commonwealth Service. The first British High Commissioner posted to Canada, Sir William Clark, was not a Foreign Office diplomat. The Dominions Office had already won that battle. But he had had diplomatic experience. He had been Secretary of a special 82
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mission negotiating a treaty with China; he had been an acting member of the Foreign Service; and, since 1917, had been Comptroller-General of the Department of Overseas Trade. The first High Commissioner to South Africa, Sir Herbert Stanley,214 had previously been a Colonial Governor in Northern Rhodesia and Ceylon. Both of these men seem to have been more successful than Sir Geoffrey Whiskard, although both had the kind of background which the CRO opposed all its life. Sir Geoffrey was the first official of the Dominions Office to be appointed to a post of this kind. At the same time, the Dominions Office itself was having to learn the skills of running representatives overseas, and establish its position in Whitehall as a serious department. Both the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office had centuries of experience behind them and functions which were more easily definable than those of this new office. Throughout the troubled 1930s and the Second World War, the Dominions Office was hampered by its lack of standing in Whitehall. The London High Commissioners had daily meetings with the Dominions Secretary during the war but Attlee was the only one of the wartime Secretaries of State (from 1942 to 1943) who was also a member of the War Cabinet. Australia of course was not satisfied with this arrangement. The Curtin215 government in January 1942 asked for a representative with the ‘right to be heard in the War Cabinet and in the formulation and direction of policy’. Although Churchill was hostile to this suggestion it was eventually agreed and Bruce, the Australian High Commissioner, was a member of the War Cabinet until 1944. It was not always a happy arrangement but at least Australians established the point that the focus of their relations with Britain was in the heart of Whitehall and in Westminster, not in the Dominions Office and certainly not solely with the British High Commission in Canberra. None of this made life easy for Whiskard or for his immediate successor, Sir Ronald Cross.216 Exit the diplomat, enter the politicians In 1941 Sir Geoffrey returned to England to take up a position as permanent secretary of the new Ministry of Works and Public Buildings. Later he became head of yet another new Ministry—that of Town and Country Planning. Against his advice, he was succeeded in Australia by a politician. Sir Ronald Cross, an old Etonian born in 1896, had been Unionist MP for a Lancashire constituency since 1931. Since 1935 he had been successively Government Whip, Minister for Economic Warfare and Minister of Shipping. Sir Geoffrey had said that a senior UK civil servant carried ‘terrific guns’—quite heavy enough for anything likely to be needed in Australia. This may be another example of Sir Geoffrey’s lack of judgement: but this particular political appointment, one of a number made by Churchill to diplomatic posts, was not a success. Sir Ronald was not seen as a heavyweight appointed as a tribute to Australia. He was regarded in both Britain and Australia as an out-of-favour politician sent to the colonies. ‘Chips’ Channon,217 minor politician and diarist, noted at the time: ‘An unknown Mr 214
Sir Herbert Stanley (1872-1955), Governor of Northern Rhodesia 1924-7; Governor of Ceylon, 1928-31; High Commissioner to South Africa, 1931-5; Governor of Southern Rhodesia, 1935-42. 215 John Curtin (1885-1945), Australian Prime Minister, 1941-5. 216 Sir Ronald Cross (1896-1968), High Commissioner to Australia, 1941-5. 217 Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon (1897-1958). His diaries were edited by Robert Rhodes James, Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon (1967).
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Leathers218 is created a Peer—made Privy Councillor and becomes Minister. Poor Ronnie Cross is to go to Australia as High Commissioner. I told Rab [Butler]219 that one day he would be sent to the Falklands.’ Cross had been a supporter of Chamberlain220 and appeasement. Alfred Stirling, Australian liaison officer, recorded a conversation with Hankey, ennobled by Chamberlain, given a seat in the War Cabinet, but side-lined by Churchill: he mused sadly that ‘all the Chamberlain men had been sent to posts far away from England’, and listed Cross among them. The extent of Cross’s relationship with Churchill may be illustrated by an anecdote from the wartime diaries of Churchill’s private secretary, John Colville. Churchill invited Cross to lunch at Number 10. While he was there, Churchill, in a hoarse whisper, asked Colville, ‘What is the name of the Minister for Shipping?’ ‘Cross.’ ‘Oh, well, what’s his Christian name?’ According to Colville, Cross was appointed to Australia because Churchill needed his portfolio for Lord Leathers. The fact that Ronald Cross had become High Commissioner in Australia would probably have gone unremarked in Britain but for the fact that he retained his seat in the House of Commons throughout his time in Canberra. The holding of an office of profit under the Crown and long absence from the House would normally have required him to resign his seat. However he was not alone in this position. Malcolm MacDonald,221 an MP and Minister of Health, similarly unwelcome in a Churchill cabinet, had been appointed High Commissioner to Canada and, of course, there were Members of Parliament in the armed forces. To provide constitutional cover for this a Disqualification Bill was introduced in the House. This had to be renewed annually. These renewal debates were the occasions for criticism of all these diplomatic appointments, not least that of Cross. Manny Shinwell222 in 1944 demanded to know: ‘What is the emergency which makes it necessary to retain the services of Sir Ronald Cross as High Commissioner? Surely Sir Ronald Cross does not possess any special qualifications? It is probably the absence of these qualifications that induced the Government to send him to Australia.’ Another MP protested that in the old days a Minister got the sack. ‘Today they are promoted or sent to another part of the Empire.’ Cross’s party agent remained loyal to him but town councils in his constituency instructed their clerks to write to Mr Churchill protesting about the absence of their MP. All this was reported with some glee by Australian newspapers and did not make it any easier for Sir Ronald to do a difficult job. It was unfortunate for him that Menzies, whom he had known previously, lost power soon after his arrival and within a few months he was having to deal with a Labor Government, not his natural allies and angry at what they regarded as British betrayal of Australia in the conduct of the war. Sir Geoffrey Whiskard’s surviving speeches, portraying a Mrs Miniver-kind223 of account of Britain at war and exhorting Australians to practise economies in support of the war effort, even 218
F.J. Leathers (1st Viscount Leathers, 1883-1965), Minister of War Transport, 1941-5. R.A. ‘Rab’ Butler (Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, 1902-82). 220 Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940), Prime Minister, 1937-9. 221 Malcolm MacDonald (1901-81), Minister of Health, 1940-1; High Commissioner to Canada, 1941-6. 222 Emanuel ‘Manny’ Shinwell (Lord Shinwell, 1884-1986), Labour MP between 1922 and 1970. 223 Based on the 1940 novel by Jan Struther, Mrs Miniver (1942) was an American film, starring Greer Garson in the lead role as a British housewife at the start of World War II. 219
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if these homilies were acceptable at the time, would certainly not have gone down well after the fall of Singapore. Shortly before his departure, Sir Geoffrey was criticised by the Australian press for a speech which seemed to make unfavourable comparisons between British and Australian social service provisions. His explanation to Fadden, the acting Prime Minister,224 that he had been quoted out of context was accepted. An attack on Cross by the Australian publication Truth went thus: What exactly your position as the British High Commissioner in Australia entails we do not profess to know, but at least we are pretty certain that Australian governments and the Australian people do not want your economic advice. The Australian press, reflecting Australian opinion at the time, was not prepared to accept anything which smacked of lectures from a British High Commissioner. Sir Ronald Cross was in possibly as difficult a position as any head of mission could be. He represented a government whose policies were of vital concern to the friendly country where he was serving, but at a time of great tension between the two countries. He himself had little personal standing in either country, and neither did his office. While his opposite number, the Australian High Commissioner in London, had a seat in the British War Cabinet, he complained that he was not privy to communications between Churchill and Curtin and that Australian officials were not showing him secret telegrams. He suggested to Lord Cranborne,225 Dominions Secretary, that, in return for Bruce’s226 seat in the War Cabinet, a demand should be made that he, Cross, should have a place in Australian war councils. Cross also suggested that ‘when the Commonwealth Government was failing adequately to repudiate an anti-UK press’, the UK should use financial and economic pressure to express its displeasure. Cranborne recommended strongly against acceptance of this advice from an undiplomatic but understandably frustrated politician. In 1944, Sir Ronald in a report to his Secretary of State quoted by Lord Garner, summed up, in telling terms, the difficulties of his position. I had arrived in the country as a friend of the reigning (Conservative) Prime Minister … The wicket had indeed been favourable. Within a few months I found myself associated with a suspicious Labour Prime Minister, a Tory label tied round my neck, and the representative of a country almost universally condemned by the populace … To make matters worse my office lacked functions that would demand frequent official contacts and were at times without information of negotiations being carried on by the Australian High Commissioner in London. Thus we were not only strangers in the country, but also conscious of some isolation from the dealings between our own Government and that of the Commonwealth. Sir Ronald’s Australian experiences were rewarded eventually with a happy ending. He returned to Britain to contest the 1945 election but, not surprisingly, he was not one of the few Tory MPs to survive that Labour landslide. He did get back into the House for the Parliament of 1950/51. Thereafter, in 1951, 224
Sir Arthur William Fadden (1894-1973), Australian Prime Minister, 1941. The Viscount Cranborne (5th Marquess of Salisbury, 1983-1972), Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, 1940-2. 226 st 1 Viscount Bruce of Melbourne, Australian High Commissioner, 1933-45. 225
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he became Governor of Tasmania, and held this office until 1958. There was no immediate successor to Sir Ronald. Walter Hankinson, Deputy High Commissioner since November 1943, took over as Acting High Commissioner227 when Cross left to face the electorate and held this position until Mr Ted Williams228 arrived as High Commissioner in June 1946. Hankinson, who, like Whiskard, had been in the Dominions Office since its beginning, had much experience of Australia. He had first arrived in 1931 to relieve E.T. Crutchley when he went on home leave and, later, filled the gap between the departure of Crutchley in September 1935 and the arrival of Whiskard in March 1936. He benefited from these tours by meeting and marrying his wife, a Miss Sheila Watson of Gunghalin. (The announcement of his engagement in March 1936 was rewarded by the Dominions Office with a month’s extra leave and also acknowledged by a lunch at Government House.) Following a distinguished career as the first High Commissioner to Ceylon and Ambassador to Ireland, he retired to Canberra where he lived until he died in 1984. In seeing in his new boss, he was dealing with a very different man in very different circumstances from those in which he had worked with Sir Ronald. Ted Williams (knighted after he left Canberra) was in many ways a mirror image of Ronald Cross. Born in Wales in 1916, the son of a miner, he himself had gone down the mines at the age of 12. He had added to his own self-education by attendance at the London Labour College, held posts as a Miners’ Agent and a Colliery Secretary, with spells back underground when employment was difficult. In 1931, like Sir Ronald, but representing a different party, he had been elected to the House of Commons as a Labour MP and remained MP for Ogmore until 1946. He had held various junior ministerial posts during the war-time coalition government and became Minister of Information in the Labour Government of 1945. This Ministry, created in the emergency of war, was dissolved when he left it to become High Commissioner—a role for which his main qualification seems to have been goodwill. The Sydney Morning Herald correspondent in London, commenting on the announcement in February 1946 of his appointment, described him as ‘one of the most modest and best-liked Socialist members’. He was said to be ‘little known in British politics because of a genuine dislike of the limelight.’ Williams himself, interviewed at the time, said that he expected to get on well in Australia because ‘The straightest and whitest man I ever knew was an Australian’. He went on to describe how he and his wife entertained servicemen at their home during the war and had been particularly fond of this Flying Officer Bell, later killed at Alamein. Mr Williams also stressed his interest in bowls and a youthful enthusiasm for boxing and football as factors in his optimism for success in Australia. The great factor in his favour however was the relationship between the two governments. The tensions which had inevitably developed when Britain and Australia were each holding a front line during the war had subsided. While Dr Evatt229 was guiding Australia for the first time into a fully independent foreign policy this policy was still firmly rooted in alliance with Britain. As Evatt himself said in a New York speech on 20 June 1946 (coincidentally the day that Williams 227
Sir Walter Hankinson (1894-1984), Deputy and Acting High Commissioner to Australia from 1943-7. 228 Ted Williams (1890-1963), High Commissioner to Australia, 1946-52. 229 H.V. Evatt (1894-1965), Australian Minister for External Affairs, 1941-9.
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arrived in Sydney), ‘While our destiny will always be interwoven with that of Great Britain … and while, therefore, we cannot contract out of Europe, our fate and destiny are necessarily dependent on the future of the Pacific and upon maintenance of the interest and leadership of the United States.’ A policy of relations among equals made for a more normal diplomatic relationship. Above all, however, Williams, as a political appointment to this diplomatic role, unlike Cross, was dealing for most of his time with his political allies. Ben Chifley,230 ALP Prime Minister until December 1949, became a friend. L.F. Crisp, Chifley’s biographer, tells a story of the London Prime Ministers’ conference in 1946. Ernest Bevin,231 finding himself with Chifley and Fraser232 of New Zealand, asked: ‘When does the executive of the Empire Labour Party wish to resume?’ Ernest Bevin as a trade unionist had in fact visited Australia in 1938 to take part in a conference on Empire affairs organised by the Australian Institute of International Affairs. Personal relations therefore started off on a good footing and Chifley did not waver in his ultimate friendship for Britain. As he himself said, quoted by Crisp, ‘We have great respect for our American friends, but we simply say: “We are part of the British Empire and we are prepared to help the United Kingdom”.’ It was not of course just sentiment. Australia in those days depended heavily on Britain as a primary market, just as Britain, especially in the post-war days when she was helping to feed a starving Europe as well as her own population, needed Australia’s produce. Chifley expressed it thus: ‘The economic survival of Britain and the economies of the countries of Europe is just as important to us as if our own economy were in danger. We have to sell wool, wheat, butter and meat. We have a direct national interest in seeing that Britain does survive economically.’ Williams as High Commissioner was by no means in the forefront of Australian diplomacy. That was still being carried on by the prime minister and other ministers on visits to London and also now by Evatt on long absences at the United Nations and other multilateral conferences. But relations were friendly. Williams became a New South Wales JP in 1950; in 1951 his term was extended for a year; and when he eventually returned to Wales in May 1952 he named his house in Glamorgan ‘Canberra’—a sign of happy memories. In post-retirement he was a member of the National Industrial Disputes Tribunal until it was disbanded in 1959. The CRO strikes back However, that there were still difficulties in being British High Commissioner emerged in press reporting about the appointment of Williams’s successor. On 22 February 1952 the Melbourne Herald, and other papers in Australia and Britain, published the Commonwealth Relations Office announcement of the appointment of Sir Alexander Clutterbuck233 to succeed Ted Williams. On 14 March, the Herald followed this up with a considered article. It pointed out that Sir Alexander Clutterbuck was coming from being High Commissioner in Canada. The Herald said that ‘By ordinary precedence within the British Commonwealth Canberra ranks after Ottawa in seniority’. Therefore the appointment of Sir Alexander, ‘regarded as the star of Whitehall’s Commonwealth Relations Office’, was 230
Ben Chifley (1885-1951), Australian Prime Minister, 1945-51. Ernest Bevin (1881-1951), Foreign Secretary, 1945-51. 232 Peter Fraser (1884-1950), New Zealand Prime Minister, 1940-9. 233 Sir Alexander Clutterbuck (1898-1976), High Commissioner to Canada, 1946-52. 231
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evidence of the growing importance of British representation in Australia. It went on to say that this appointment came at a delicate time. The fact could not be concealed that there was a surface rift between Canberra and Whitehall concerning Australia’s imports and food exports. The recent finance ministers’ conference in London had shown a sharp divergence between the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Butler, and Sir Arthur Fadden (not this time from opposing political parties). There had been a big tussle about the price Britain should pay for Australian food, and disappointment in Britain that Australian food production was not growing more rapidly. It was pointed out as well that there had been adverse reaction in Britain to the suggestion of Sir Douglas Copland,234 at that time Vice-Chancellor of the ANU and later Australian High Commissioner to Canada, that Australia should seek closer links with the North American economy. The starry talents of Sir Alexander Clutterbuck unfortunately were not brought to bear on this rift. On 19 June the Commonwealth Relations Office made a further announcement. Sir Alexander Clutterbuck, ‘as the result of an administrative re-shuffle’, would be going to India as High Commissioner. Sir Stephen Holmes, at that time a Deputy Under-Secretary of State at the CRO, would take up the appointment in Australia. He was a career Commonwealth Relations officer who had served in Canada, as Dominions Office representative in Washington, and for 5 years at the Board of Trade. As the first career officer since Whiskard, he arrived in a very different Canberra from that of 1936. The population had grown to about 21,000. There were 15 diplomatic missions with a total of 67 staff; of that total 19 were the staff of the British High Commission. The United States had already built its large, handsome chancery and residence and plans were afoot for other buildings in the new diplomatic area. The United Kingdom itself was busily building its own chancery and residence and the furniture for this residence was carried on the same ship that brought Sir Stephen and his family to Australia. As a professional himself, he was working in an environment that was more conducive to normal diplomatic relations than the one his predecessors had encountered. Australia was still a powerful force in the British Commonwealth with its ever growing membership of independent nations, but it had also established itself on the international stage as a nation with its own policies and with its own diplomacy, both multilateral and bilateral. Its diplomats served in Australian Embassies overseas and it was accustomed to dealing with foreign diplomats in Canberra. The position of the British High Commissioner was still somewhat off-beat. Until 1972 Australia House in London remained responsible to the Prime Minister’s Department, not to the Department of External Affairs, and Australian ministers still conducted many of their negotiations with Britain, in person, in London. RG Casey, now Foreign Minister, still apparently hankered after the access he had enjoyed in London in the 1920s, and in 1951, when visiting London, complained to Sir William Strang,235 the head of the Foreign Office, that Keith Waller,236 External Affairs officer at Australia House, was not seeing Foreign Office papers in the way he, Casey, had done when the 234
Sir Douglas Copland (1894-1971), Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University, 1948-53; Australian High Commissioner to Canada, 1953-7. 235 Sir William Strang (Lord Strang, 1893-1978), Permanent Under-Secretary of State, Foreign Office, 1949-53. 236 Sir Keith Waller (1914-1992).
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rubric for circulation, according to Casey, was KCC—King, Cabinet, Casey. Sir William promised to remedy this. In a role reversal of Sir Ronald Cross’s unhappy position in the 1940s, Sir Thomas White, Australian High Commissioner in 1953, complained that the British High Commission in Canberra was seeing papers from London before he saw them. These were, however, pinpricks compared with earlier difficulties. The role was better understood in Australia and the position of Sir Robert Menzies as Commonwealth elder statesman, growing in the 1950s, gave added significance in Britain to Australia’s place in the world. It now became Sir Stephen’s task to ‘make a mild fuss’ with Casey that he did not mention the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth enough in his speeches. As Casey recorded in his diary in February 1956, they ‘had it out’ and Casey told him that the boot was on the other foot: people in the United Kingdom did not show any interest in Australia. They agreed that neither should take the other for granted. This discussion between Holmes and Casey, 20 years after the arrival of the first British High Commissioner, illustrates some of the changes which had occurred during that time. Sir Stephen, to make his mild fuss, called on the Australian foreign minister, although as British High Commissioner he still had access to the prime minister. Richard Casey was infinitely experienced in the ways of the old Empire diplomacy: indeed he had been a colonial Governor. But he was at the same time a modern foreign minister, equally experienced in postwar diplomacy and having himself run a busy and important mission in Washington. Sir Geoffrey Whiskard had had no such interlocutor in Canberra. Holmes was dealing with a government which no longer regarded relations with Britain as the sole purpose of foreign policy. He had reported the Queen’s unveiling of the Australian-American War Memorial during her 1954 visit in rather grudging terms. It ‘represented an undesirable transfer of admiration from Britain to the US’. This report to the Commonwealth Relations Office occasioned unfavourable comment in the Australian press when it was published in 1984 under the 30-year rule, and it does perhaps show that the CRO was at that time unable to accept that Australian friendship with Britain did not have to be exclusive of alliances with other powers. 1956: Lord Carrington takes over: the start of the modern era In October 1956, however, Sir Stephen was succeeded by Lord Carrington and Britain was coping with the Suez Crisis. Sir Robert Menzies’s position as a Commonwealth elder statesman and as a respected figure on the world stage proved that Britain as well as Australia could benefit from Australia’s independence. Lord Carrington, aristocrat by birth, politician by trade, diplomat by instinct, had the kind of background which might have fitted him to be Governor-General in earlier days. As it was, he became the first really notable British High Commissioner. Apart from the personal qualities which he and his family brought to the role, he also had a sense, not always shared with all Australians, of Australia’s place in the world. His own words in his 1988 memoirs best express this: For the British there was, in Australia, still a strong feeling based on tradition and sentiment …; but it was no longer a feeling also based, simply and naturally, on self-interest or the realities of power … And some people … thought Australian foreign policy should be redirected 89
The History, Role and Functions of the British High Commission in Canberra
to some extent away from the British and Western connection … They believe—and I agree with them—that Australia was part of its own geographic region and that it should spend more attention on cultivating relationships with the nations of South-East Asia and the Pacific area than on burnishing some sort of post-imperial or neoEuropean reflection. This, then, more or less, has been the guiding philosophy of British High Commission activities since Lord Carrington’s time. The shared experiences of the past are valuable to the extent that they provide a solid foundation for an alliance of equals in the future. British High Commissioners enjoy serving in a country where they feel so much at home, but they know that they have to work with their Australian colleagues to maintain the relationship. Neither can take the other for granted. Jane Barder Canberra March 1993 Sources consulted: Carrington, Lord. Reflect on Things Past (1988). Casey, R.G. and Millar, T.B. Australian Foreign Minister: the Diaries of R.G. Casey, 1951–60 (1972). Colville, J. The Fringes of Power (1985). Crisp, L.F. Ben Chifley: A Biography (1960). Garner, J. The Commonwealth Office (1975). Hancock, W.K. (Sir Keith). Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs 1918-1939 (1937; reprinted 1964). Hudson, W.J. Casey (1986). Hydson, W. and North, J (eds). My Dear PM: R.G. Casey’s Letters to S.M. Bruce, 1924-1929 (1980). McMinn, W.G. George Reid (1989). Menzies, R. Afternoon Light: Some Memories of Men and Events (1967). Stirling, A. Lord Bruce: The London Years (1974). National Archives of Australian, Canberra: Crutchley’s negotiations for residence, arrival of Whiskard, press reports on Ronald Cross. National Library of Australia, Canberra: newspaper microfiches and Crutchley diaries. Australian and British editions of Who’s Who and Who Was Who.
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