Tiberius with a Telephone

by Patrick Mullins

  In the view of officials within the Department of Foreign Affairs, this description was perfectly apt. To many of them, he had been a meandering disaster as minister. Their assessments, to be expressed in oral histories and memoirs, were unvarnished by diplomatic niceties. Their opinions were harsh.

  Plimsoll had been blunt. McMahon was one of the weakest foreign ministers he had worked with.2 Jim McIntyre, who had worked with McMahon for only a few months, was simply scathing. ‘Bill McMahon,’ he said later, ‘… I’m afraid, brought me no joy. I have to say quite frankly that, in my view, Bill McMahon is really just a rather vain and silly little man, not notable for integrity or truthfulness, I would say … He was really out of his depth in foreign affairs.’3 Philip Flood, who would years later become secretary of the department, made a similar assessment. He found McMahon an uninspiring minister, thought him difficult to respect, and believed that McMahon enjoyed the apppearance of credibility only by the hard work and graft of others.

  Equally offensive was McMahon’s proclivity to preen himself, to meddle, and to manipulate. ‘He also spent an inordinate amount of time cultivating journalists,’ Flood wrote later. ‘His tenure as minister seemed to be one continuous press conference.’4 Certainly, there were moves, like his attempts to pursue a new policy with Japan, where McMahon seemed to chase a headline more than follow-through.5 Others in the department were dismissive. McMahon was the stupidest foreign minister Australia had ever had, said one; he was ambitious and unscrupulous, said another; one more said that McMahon was the least effective, least interested, and least intelligent foreign minister he had ever served under.6

  Waller was torn. He thought McMahon had an unusual memory: notoriously fallible with names, but astoundingly good with ‘unlikely’ bits of information. McMahon was a hard worker, if somewhat illogical in his methods: ‘He dealt with it entirely as the spirit moved him.’ McMahon’s tenacity in cabinet was without equal, but he could be utterly unpredictable sometimes, to the point that the department had a special writing pad printed to record conversations with him. ‘As soon as the telephone rang and [you realised] Billy was on it,’ Waller recalled, ‘you grabbed your pad and started writing furiously in the hope that you could make some sense out of what he was saying. I got through a pad every couple of days.’ McMahon had perceived Plimsoll’s failings, Waller noted, and he was useful with the entertaining that accompanied diplomatic life. McMahon was indiscreet, often did not know as much about a subject as he thought he did, and was ‘desperately afraid of the DLP’. In sum, according to Waller, McMahon was 85 to 90 per cent good.7

  McMahon hardly viewed his period as foreign minister in the same way as his critics. To judge by the length of the draft he compiled on it, it seemed that he accorded it much value. At some 18,700 words, the chapter on his time in that position was the longest of any in the manuscript that Bowman worked on — longer, even, than the chapter on McMahon’s time as prime minister.

  Some of it was misplaced material. McMahon had included lengthy digressions into his experience as minister for the navy and air, apparently arguing that this had given him an apprenticeship that was integral to his success in the foreign ministry. It left Bowman unconvinced. ‘This really doesn’t belong here,’ he scrawled in his notes, and made plans to cut it.

  But there was justification for writing at such length about his time as minister for foreign affairs. Despite the abbreviated time he had spent in the portfolio, McMahon had some worthy achievements to highlight: cabinet’s acceptance of the proposal to join the OECD; the signing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; the better tenor of regional relationships following the Djakarta Treaty;8 the broadened relationship with Japan; the expansion of Australia’s aid programme; and the name change of the department, and the reorganisation that Waller and Shann, with his support, had driven.9 None of these was insignificant. What they showed was that, as Kim Jones later noted, McMahon’s initial antipathy to the portfolio had dissipated and he had become interested in it, even enjoyed it. The role gave McMahon ‘a world stage to tread’, Jones believed. Moreover, his status as a high-ranking, long-serving minister gave him great clout within the government. ‘McMahon was very experienced in getting what he wanted,’ Jones said later. ‘He was relentless in cabinet, and he could win issues for the department. He won often, even though he had no background in foreign affairs.’ That lack of background made those successes all the more notable. ‘I believe he did make a substantive contribution on some issues.’10

  Journalists who were normally critical could see this, too. Bruce Juddery, who had written closely about McMahon in his time at the department, was positive, if careful to note the important support role played by the department during McMahon’s time. ‘The main result of the McMahon years as Minister for Foreign Affairs … was a rapid growth in the Department’s influence, and the use of that influence particularly to demonstrate to the Government and the country that the world had changed.’11

  There were inevitably failures: on Vietnam, McMahon had been able to do little, despite the clear and unambiguous evidence that the US was withdrawing and that Australian public opinion was virulently turning against it. On Cambodia, he had failed, along with many others, to find a workable solution to the turmoil and fighting going on there. And on China — an issue of extreme importance, to his embarrassment — he had failed in every sense of the word.

  Even beyond a tally of successes and failures, McMahon’s discussion of his time as minister for foreign affairs was important because it had a direct bearing on how he had conducted and, indeed, controlled, foreign policy while prime minister: his voice had certainly spoken louder than his two foreign ministers.12 As Alan Renouf had remarked, Australian prime ministers tended to assume that they were particularly skilled in the field of foreign relations, and approached it with confidence. ‘Menzies, Holt, Gorton, and McMahon so assumed,’ wrote Renouf, ‘each wrongly.’13 McMahon was unlikely to agree. And he was not without grounds for argument: had he not voiced prescient concerns about Menzies’ involvement in the Suez crisis in 1956? Had he not also identified the lack of an American strategy in Vietnam, when the first commitment of Australian troops was considered in 1965?14 An explanation of what he had confronted as minister for foreign affairs; what he had tried to do and why; where he had failed and succeeded; what he had learned — all these were integral to the understanding McMahon was seeking to find by writing his book.

  But again, as with so much else, the task seemed beyond him. When Bowman read this long, disjointed chapter, he found it disconcerting to read. The overview of foreign affairs that opened the chapter was poor. The effort to discuss Vietnam was ‘no good’. The passages on the Djakarta conference were particularly bad: ‘Doubtful if any of this is worth using,’ Bowman wrote. A section on Japan was potentially salvageable, but even here there were ‘obscure’ passages that were just ‘incomprehensible.’ The only highlight, it seemed, was the 6,000-word section that McMahon had devoted to discussing China:

  OK in parts. Note confusion between PRC and ROC. Good outline of cabinet submission of 9/2/71 on recognition of China (PRC). Q: When did Whitlam make his trip?? — and McM his ill-timed criticism?15

  How to pull the chapter together? How to explain and understand all that had happened?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  A Natural Development

  1971

  McEwen’s retirement necessitated another trip to Government House for John Gorton. He watched Paul Hasluck swear in the four Country Party ministers — Doug Anthony, Ian Sinclair, Peter Nixon, and Ralph Hunt — to their new portfolios. Anthony, the new leader of the Country Party, stepped into McEwen’s shoes as deputy prime minister and minister for trade and industry; Sinclair took over as minister for primary industry; Nixon was sworn in as minister for shipping and transport; and Hunt became minister for the interior. It was a decisive shift in the leadership of the Country Party, fro
m a generation that had witnessed Depression and then war to one that had known mostly peace and prosperity. It was, in its own way, comparable to the Liberal Party’s transition from Menzies to Holt six years before.1

  As in that case, the Country Party’s new leader was well prepared for his new responsibilities. Still only in his early forties, Anthony had had thirteen years’ experience in Parliament, and could count, thanks to his father — who had served as member for Richmond until 1957 and been postmaster-general from 1949 to 1957 — a lifetime’s immersion in politics. Blonde, bluff, and plain speaking, Anthony shared McEwen’s toughness, pride in the strength of Australia’s rural areas, and, just as crucially, his independence.

  That independence had led him to differ from McEwen in several respects: Anthony had not supported the creation of the Industry Development Corporation and, while he shared McEwen’s dislike of McMahon, had not agreed with the decision to rescind the veto. Despite this, Anthony knew there was no question it could be brought back. ‘I had no thought about reinstating a veto against McMahon,’ he said later. ‘I was a very new leader, and that sort of action would only lead to destabilisation and disaster.’2

  But Anthony also knew that these could occur without his intervening: should the anti-Gorton forces move to spark a confrontation, Gorton could very well find himself facing a second challenge. And there were tests ahead that would help to bring on such a challenge.

  One such test was a special conference of the state premiers. Called in the wake of the national wage case, which had resulted in a 6 per cent rise in the basic wage, the state premiers had come to Canberra in that first week of February crying poor. Led by the redoubtable Henry Bolte and Bob Askin, they argued that their states would incur substantial budgetary deficits without some form of Commonwealth assistance. Again, they insisted that the states be allowed to re-enter the income tax field. Gorton refused to offer any kind of leeway or money, instead urging the state premiers to cut expenditure, just as the Commonwealth had done. None of the premiers departed Canberra happy.

  A little mollified by Gorton’s agreement to provide funds for flood relief, Askin, facing an election in less than two weeks’ time, was notably angered by the refusal of help. It was a ‘very disappointing’ conference, he said publicly, and insisted that in April he would return to argue again for the introduction of a state-levied income tax. ‘This is the only permanent answer, and we will always be in this position if something like a growth tax is not introduced,’ he said.3 The Sydney Morning Herald was hardly restrained: ‘Mr Askin is entitled to feel that he has been badly, almost unforgiveably, let down by the federal parliamentary leader of his own party, and even by the party itself,’ it editorialised shortly afterward.4

  Sir David Brand, the Liberal Party premier of Western Australia, was more reserved in his response, unwilling to draw too much attention in light of his own election, due for late February. When McMahon spoke to Howson the next day, he could easily see the politics at play. ‘He feels that this could well lead to our losing the state election in Western Australia,’ Howson recorded, ‘though probably not in New South Wales.’5 As it happened, McMahon was proved right: in Western Australia, Labor turned out the twelve-year-old Liberal-Country Party government and, in New South Wales, Askin managed to eke out a victory that owed nothing to Gorton and everything to Askin’s own ingenuity and hard campaigning.

  Barely a few days later, there was another test, another opportunity. Gorton’s fights with the Australian Medical Association had been going on for a year, ever since he had unveiled his plan to reform the health care system. Again, McMahon was calling Howson with the inside story: ‘Bill says Gorton is likely to antagonise the doctors, the business community, and the Premiers. My own feeling is that it would be good for him to antagonise as many people as possible, as the quicker we can precipitate these matters the better.’6

  There was still the issue of China to consider. On 4 February — the day before the swearing-in of the new Country Party ministers — McMahon wrote to Gorton to broach the issue of Australia’s relationship with the PRC. He pointed out that policy towards the country was now adversely affecting Australia’s trading position. With a record harvest and anger over Freeth’s comments about the morality of trading with communists, the PRC had decided not to renew a contract with the Australian Wheat Board for the import of some two million tonnes of Australian wheat. That decision, of some harm to Australian exporters, underlined McMahon’s letter. ‘As you know, the great bulk of our exports [to the PRC] consists of wheat and wool, which, though of only marginal significance to the Chinese economy, are a valuable source of foreign exchange to us,’ he wrote, adding that that market could grow or diminish should Australia not be wary. Noting, too, that Australia and the United States were now the only countries that had a policy of treating the PRC differently from other communist countries, and thus refrained from exporting a range of materials, McMahon argued that Australia’s policy was ‘highly anomalous and may be imposing unnecessary hardships on Australian exporters for little purpose’. Looking towards the future, McMahon wrote that he saw a need to be flexible and responsive to change, but that — crucially, for him — trade policy had to be ‘subsidiary to our actions in the domestic and international political sphere with regard to China’.

  No action on the economic problems, McMahon finished, should ‘anticipate our consideration of the whole problem’ of China.7 Five days after this letter, he circulated a long, detailed cabinet submission calling for a review of Australia’s policy.

  Emphasising that the PRC was soon likely to win admission to the UN, and that Australian policy could be thrown into disarray by the ROC being excluded from the world body, McMahon argued that there was also an economic consideration to the problem. While Australia’s trade with the PRC had been previously unrelated to the question of diplomatic relations, recent events suggested that the PRC was ready to exploit the leverage that better trading opportunities might give it. ‘Our immediate concern is therefore basically twofold,’ he wrote. Australia should consider

  whether and at what pace we should introduce changes of substance in our policy toward the PRC, including the timing of recognition, and at the same time, whether and how to contribute to the continued existence of Taiwan as a separate entity, so long as it desires, and its right to remain a member of the United Nations.

  He recommended that Australia begin consultations with the US, Japan, the ROC, and New Zealand in order to inform Australian decisions better; that the government make it known publicly that it had an interest in normalising bilateral relations with the PRC; and that ministers should, henceforth, refrain from ‘hostile references to the PRC’ and ‘excessively warm or laudatory references to the ROC’.8

  These recommendations were but a stopgap. McMahon was still not moving to broaden Australia’s relationship with China beyond trade. Nor was he moving to countenance change beyond the lead of the United States. Diplomatic recognition was not in the offing. It was a failure of the department that McMahon headed — a department that was without China specialists to enhance its understanding and knowledge.9 It was a failure of McMahon’s, personally and politically — one that arose from a fear of change and a fear of the DLP, which on 17 February had reaffirmed its blanket opposition to any recognition of the PRC.10 And when cabinet considered the submission on 23 February, McMahon’s colleagues came to share in that failure.

  McEwen’s absence was sorely felt that day. Early in the 1960s, he had overseen the growth of Australia’s trading relationship with the PRC, as it bought ever-increasing amounts of Australia’s wheat exports — from the one-half of Australia’s wheat exports that the PRC purchased in 1962–63, to the one-third of Australia’s total wheat production it was purchasing by 1969–70. Moreover, as minister for trade and industry, McEwen had overcome significant internal opposition and the risk of arousing public opprobrium to negotiate a trade treaty
with Japan in the 1950s. While there is little to suggest his own position on China was any different from McMahon’s or Gorton’s in 1971, McEwen had both the stature and the vision to perceive what might have been possible.11 The delay that McMahon had urged in December — his comment that cabinet could not consider policy on China before February — had the effect of removing the possibility that McEwen might move the discussion beyond the myopic and fearful eyes with which McMahon saw matters.

  Cabinet accepted McMahon’s submission. It acknowledged that the PRC would soon likely enter the UN and take the permanent seat assigned to China on the Security Council. It accepted that this would call for a reappraisal of Australia’s policy on China. But, as had been the case for so long, cabinet agreed that Australian policy had to follow the United States’.12

  ‘A new power struggle has developed inside Federal Cabinet’, wrote Maxwell Newton, late in February. According to him, McMahon was ‘up and fighting again’.13

  He was writing only days after McMahon had conspicuously thrust himself into the political limelight. When Whitlam attempted to bring a no-confidence motion against the government — for its ‘failure to report to the House on the details and purposes of its monetary, fiscal, constitutional, and industrial policies for curbing inflation’14 — one might have expected treasurer Les Bury to reply. The economy was, after all, his turf. But it was McMahon who responded to the Labor leader’s half-hour speech. With Gorton looking on, McMahon spoke for an equal amount of time about the government’s measures to fight the resurgence of inflation.15

  To Newton, the context of the remarks was key to understanding them. ‘Mr McMahon is taking no risks with his political position at the present time,’ he wrote. McMahon’s decision to detail the government’s anti-inflation policy was all to do with politics: ‘He wants to be seen to be a leader in that policy.’16