We were, he [Rippon] said, a selfish country. We contributed little to international aid. We cared nothing for Britain. ‘It would matter nothing to you if this country sank under the North Sea.’ We thought of our own interests, and nothing else … ‘You cannot,’ he proceeded, ‘continue to live on England’s back.’52
When McMahon heard of this from Downer and Anthony, he sent prime minister Heath a letter demanding the British go back and secure the transitional arrangements they had promised. There was little chance of this happening. Heath’s reply was to the point: the negotiations were done. Britain would enter the EEC on 1 January 1973. Australia would have to make its own way. Aware that Australia’s exports would be greatly damaged, Anthony pushed to have more trade commissioners overseas in order to find and develop emerging markets elsewhere.
Dealing with the Country Party was also fraught for McMahon because of the promises he had made to others. Nugget Coombs, writing in October to seek McMahon’s intervention on the inter-departmental committee that was supposed to be discussing Aboriginal land rights, told him that the Department of the Interior — headed by Country Party minister Ralph Hunt — was recommending a ‘continuation … of policies which have been followed in the Northern Territory for the last twenty years’. The department ‘opposed the Council’s proposals to lease for general purposes to Aboriginal communities “land with which they have association by tradition or long occupancy”; for the purchase of land for communities outside reserves; and for support for Aboriginal enterprises.’53 Coming after budget cuts, hostility from other departments, interference, and deliberate non-co-operation that had left him and his colleagues in the Council for Aboriginal Affairs immensely frustrated, Coombs was ready to make a big gesture. If McMahon did not intervene, Coombs intimated, he would resign.
McMahon’s response was to duck the issue: he wanted Coombs to join him on a planned trip to the United States and London in November, and he wanted him to assist McMahon with ‘special assignments’, including writing speeches about the future and Australian society.54 Hoping that he could still keep McMahon onside and involved in Aboriginal affairs, Coombs agreed, cautiously, but stated explicitly that he would not be a part of McMahon’s official party on his trip and that any work for him was dependent on decisions about Aborigines going ‘the right way’.55 It was no matter. McMahon subsequently told a press conference that Coombs would assist him ‘not in matters that involve him in the Arts and similar matters but as a kind of guiding philosopher’.56 Whether it arose from some hope of political mileage, as a statement of fact, or even as a mischievous way of preventing Coombs’s resignation, the statement caused many raised eyebrows. What kind of prime minister needed a ‘guiding philosopher’?57
Even as this was happening, Howson was attempting to deal with the haphazard lines of responsibility in his portfolio. Coombs’s licence — as chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Affairs and chairman of the Australian Arts Council, with a direct line to McMahon — and his advocacy for land rights for Aborigines grated on him, especially as he simultaneously sought to formulate a new arts policy. But he soon found that he had his own problems with McMahon.
In September, Howson announced that the film school Gorton had helped to initiate would be deferred for twelve months because of costs. That decision sparked a public intervention from Gorton, his first since leaving the ministry in August. Using Question Time as his stage, Gorton pointed out that the school was far cheaper than what Australians spent overseas for films each year. Howson, clearly aware that he was out on a limb and would be attracting press attention, told the House that it was being deferred in order to develop ‘a better series of proposals than the original proposal’.58 Within the week, Phillip Adams, an advertising executive who sat on the film school’s council, resigned from it while appearing on ABC current affairs programme This Day Tonight. He followed up with a public and memorable quip that Howson was ‘a pain in the arts’.59
The next day, Adams received a series of phone calls, each telling him that the prime minister would be calling in a successively shorter time frame. Finally, Adams heard McMahon’s ‘shrill, pipey’ voice coming over the line to apologise for the furore about the school, to bucket Howson, and to promise that the whole problem would be solved.60 Howson was none too impressed: ‘He seems to have forgotten that he authorised me to defer the school for twelve months and is now talking of accelerating a decision,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘… At the moment he can only see it as a row between Gorton and myself and is therefore trying at the moment to stifle criticism.’61 McMahon subsequently told the House that Howson would present a proposal for the school before the next budget.62 An argument with McMahon about it, Howson later noted in his diary, ‘could well happen’. As he complained late in October, the problems were:
Coombs trying to advise the PM, Coombs and Len Hewitt fighting each other, the PM being always apprehensive or sceptical of Len Hewitt’s advice, and Gorton wanting to fight us all. It is a time in which one can trust only one’s self and take every precaution to record everything that is said or written.63
The chaos that had seemingly beset Gorton at every turn was increasing for McMahon. There were constant problems, and McMahon seemed unable to rise to the challenge of meeting them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The Crumbling Pillars (IV)
1971
On 27 October 1971, McMahon left Australia for the United States and the United Kingdom. He was making the trip solely for political purposes. The visit to the US was almost entirely motivated by his wish to recover from the embarrassment over China; the leg to the UK, hastily arranged in mid-October,1 was designed to prevent the appearance that Australia and the UK were not close, and to increase McMahon’s stature by association with a successful conservative political leader in Ted Heath.2 As the British high commissioner in Australia, Morrice James, wrote privately to London, McMahon ‘wanted some of Mr Nixon’s and Mr Heath’s prestige to brush off onto himself’.3 The desire was acute and it was transparent. The visits to Washington and London were ‘first and foremost undertaken in search of credibility and reassurance,’ wrote James. ‘He [McMahon] was quite unabashed about this.’ At least it was entertaining: ‘The unconcealed gusto with which Mr McMahon plots his not-very-Machiavellian gambits is one of the engaging things about him.’4 Few observers thought that McMahon would be able to earn the esteem of his allies: Menzies wrote privately that McMahon would ‘provoke many unspoken questions in the minds of the people he meets’.5
For those accompanying McMahon, the trip was a succession of bewildering decisions, embarrassments, and mishaps. First was the considerable mirth that greeted the biographical notes McMahon’s staff distributed to the press, which described McMahon as a ‘soldier, barrister, economist, and Parliamentarian.’6 Then there were the accidents on the squash courts. Nugget Coombs, joining McMahon’s party partway through the trip, was roped into playing with the prime minister one morning, and was hit in the mouth by a forehand drive from McMahon’s racket. The injury left Coombs requiring stitches.7 ‘That’s no way to treat your guiding philosopher!’ he joked to the press; but if Coombs had any wish of returning the injury, Richard Woolcott, in the delegation as foreign affairs adviser, soon satisfied him. Roped into playing with McMahon in New York and London, Woolcott accidently hit the prime minister with his racquet on each occasion, the second time inflicting a cut above McMahon’s nose.8
The oddities continued. When Woolcott and two other diplomats arrived at McMahon’s New York hotel room to brief him one morning, they found the prime minister clouded by shaving soap and clad only in a towel. He did not get dressed: the three diplomats sat down in three chairs that had been positioned in the middle of the room while McMahon plonked himself onto a large lounge chair, wrapped in the towel, to listen. They had some serious matters to talk about — namely, the speech-cum-toast that McMahon would give at a dinner in his hon
our at the White House. Their recommendation was that McMahon should avoid the obsequious overtones of Holt’s ‘All the way’ comments. Instead, he should speak for fifteen minutes, at the most, on an independent foreign policy conducted within the framework of Australia’s alliance with the US. They provided him with a draft.
But then they were interrupted by Sonia, who entered the room to model the dresses she had brought from Australia to wear to dinner with Nixon. One was white, long-sleeved, began at her throat, and came down nearly to her ankles. It would have been elegant, modest, and otherwise wholly unremarkable had it not been for the splits, held together by diamante bands, that ran up from the waist and down the length of her arms. Though on first glance it seemed anything but demure, the presence of flesh-coloured organza meant that it revealed nothing inappropriate. Was it all right, she asked her husband. McMahon told her it was fine.9
The Americans were well aware that McMahon was seeking reassurance and a show. They went some way to giving him what he wanted and needed. They made sure there was an appropriate amount of pageantry and a good stretch of red carpet for him when he arrived in Washington. They arranged for him to stay at Blair House as a token of their appreciation, organised meetings with members of their cabinet, and planned a dinner in his honour.
But McMahon wanted more than this. In a meeting with the secretary of state, William Rogers, he told the Americans that the best thing Nixon could do for him was ‘to declare that [the] ANZUS treaty is as important as [the] day it was signed’. But Nixon, in his private talks with McMahon, would not do this, would not go quite so far. Moreover, McMahon seemed intent on handling everything himself. Bunting and Plimsoll, the ambassador, arranged with McMahon that they would join his meeting with Nixon after a brief discussion. But McMahon failed to make a signal, causing the meeting to continue without their presence. Afterward, when McMahon was leaving, Bunting grabbed Woolcott and told him to find out what had happened. As Woolcott recalled, McMahon’s account was sketchy. The talks had been useful. Nixon had ‘reaffirmed the validity of the ANZUS Treaty’. McMahon seemed attached to this point, thought it important, but Woolcott had a question: why had McMahon not made the signal for Plimsoll and Bunting to join the meeting? McMahon said he had forgotten. What happened after Kissinger joined Nixon, Woolcott asked. ‘It was good,’ said McMahon. ‘We had a real meeting of the minds.’10
On his return to Blair House, ebullient and happy, McMahon told reporters that while his talks with Nixon were private, he could say that ‘they could not have been put more frankly and in complete detail and I have no reservation whatsoever in saying that this is the kind of consultation we like and I doubt whether it could have been better’. He tried to wave away the US failure to inform Australia about China, and he sought to make as much hay as he could about ANZUS:
One point I can mention to you because I think that this is of great importance to Australians was that he did agree with me that the phrase could be used that the United States Government, from the president down, recognised, or were prepared to confirm the unqualified and unconditional assurances that had been given to us in the ANZUS Treaty were as relevant and valid today as they were at the time the Treaty was negotiated.11
He wanted, he said to the press, ‘to get the strongest affirmation’ about ANZUS and he had got that. (He had also secured an agreement for a secret ‘hot-line’ to be established between the White House and the Lodge; it was, however, used for only a year and mostly to exchange birthday greetings.)12
And then there was the dinner at the White House, a night marked by three memorable moments. The first was Sonia and her dress: ‘My god, I’ll have her at my side!’ Nixon exclaimed, when he saw her coming up the steps of the White House. ‘My photograph will be in papers all across the country.’13 Second was Nixon’s repeated query of how to pronounce McMahon’s name. Was it McMann? Mac-Mahon? Mic-Mann? The final highlight came when McMahon decided to imitate Nixon and speak off-the-cuff for his toast. For the Australians listening, what followed was a sustained embarrassment. From beginning to end, McMahon rambled, letting his sentences drift and becoming overladen with extravagances and asides. Trying to remember his Shakespeare, he became waylaid and stricken: ‘I take as my text a few familiar words. There comes a time in the life of a man in the flood of time that taken at the flood leads on to fortune …’ The American journalists listening in another room began to chuckle. Then McMahon began to talk of how he had sung Fascination to Sonia, in order to woo her. The American chorus of chuckles changed to ‘hoots of laughter’, recalled Alan Ramsey. The contingent of Australian journalists felt ashamed. ‘I wish I was Italian,’ one muttered.14
By the time McMahon arrived in London, the press was openly ridiculing him and the trip. Any chance of political gain was gone. McMahon was being lambasted for being ignorant of a request to train troops in Cambodia; for his criticism of Gorton and American senator and former vice-presidential candidate Edward Muskie; for his proud declaration that he liked the shape of his wife’s legs and the look of her face; that he had chosen her dress because two slits in a dress were better than one. He sounded small, silly. When he met Ted Heath on 9 November, he spent the greater part of the meeting telling Heath all about his time in the US. ‘Mr McMahon was clearly delighted with the treatment he had received in Washington, especially by the dinner and reception at the White House,’ Heath recorded. ‘He added that the president did inquire on five different occasions how to pronounce his name; this was counter-balanced, however, by the fact that “for the first time ever with a visiting Head of Government” the president said goodbye at the portico of the White House in front of the TV cameras.’15
McMahon did have several important points to talk about with the British. One was its entry to the EEC. Whether or not McMahon was tailoring his remarks for Heath or had changed his mind, he informed the British prime minister that he — McMahon — had told Australia that there had never been any undertaking from the British about safeguards for Australia in the EEC negotiations: ‘This was absolutely clear and everyone in Australia understood it,’ McMahon said. It was something of an about-face on his letter, but McMahon had already signalled that he would not traverse the criticisms Anthony had made: what was needed now was thought for the future.16
Therefore, in a subsequent meeting at which officials were present, McMahon told Heath of his belief that British–Australian consultations ‘had been neither as continuous nor as frank as was desirable in the mutual interests of both countries’. What was to be done? McMahon had a ready answer: official, regular bilateral talks. It was a point that Morrice James had alluded to and which McMahon ‘seemed keenly interested in’ developing, very likely to use as a symbol of his government’s close relationships abroad. Along with a proposal for another ‘hot-line’ between the leaders, nothing was to be resolved on the trip, but for months afterwards McMahon would continue to pursue it: ‘We would like to establish regular bilateral talks of the kind we now hold at official level with Japan, India, and the United States,’ he would write in December.17 Heath would rebuff the move within the month: ‘I doubt whether there is need for any new machinery for consultation “across the board”.’18
There was also the proposal to move responsibility for the running of Australia House — Australia’s high commission in London — from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to the Department of Foreign Affairs.19 This proposal had originated with Keith Waller, who had argued that the need to mark relations with Britain as something special — by retaining the prime minister’s personal control of policy for the UK — no longer existed.20 Britain’s turn to Europe, its disengagement from the Asia-Pacific, and the implications of its entry to the EEC meant that the handling of the Australia–UK relationship was best done by the Department of Foreign Affairs, in much the same way as relationships with the US and Japan were. The British saw no particular problem with the proposal, but McMahon would dit
her and prevaricate over it for the next year. It would exacerbate the anger of some and arouse despair in others. When hearing of a fresh round of McMahon’s reservations, Waller would storm out of meetings, such was his anger.21
Despite his warm treatment from the British, McMahon’s hopes that he might attract some gloss from the trip were dashed. The steady stream of dignitaries visiting London while he was there meant that journalists who accompanied him saw that his visit was not particularly special. In conjunction with the coverage from the US leg, their reportage was critical. It prompted Anthony to defend McMahon: he issued a statement saying that there had been ‘almost a deliberate campaign to denigrate and undermine’ the trip. Anthony was doing his duty. Even those sympathetic to McMahon had to admit that it had been a failure. When McMahon read Reid’s critical coverage in The Bulletin, he declared that the journalist was a ‘treacherous bastard’ and promised to complain to Packer.22 Reid, however, would not take the criticism. ‘Forget I’m a newspaperman,’ he said to McMahon. ‘I’m an Australian. When you stand up before an assembly such as you had at the White House — and that’s a very important forum — you are representing me and fourteen million other Australians. I can’t speak for the other fourteen million Australians but I should imagine that they expect you to come up with something better than an account, however romantic, of your own domestic affairs. I know I expect more.’23
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