Tiberius with a Telephone

by Patrick Mullins

  As his staff in Westfield Towers continued the work on that story, McMahon remained obsessed by the diaries and by Howson. After comparing the Howson diaries with the theory of Holt’s defection to China, McMahon returned to his office. The former prime minister, Bowman recorded immediately afterward, was glued to the radio, waiting for the broadcast of Howson’s speech to the Press Club.16

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Survival Mode

  1972

  In November 1971, Menzies had emerged from retirement to speak at a Liberal Party fundraiser. Referring to the turmoil of the year, he had cautioned the party against concentrating on personalities; then, referring to the narrowed polls and the certainty of an election in 1972, the aged statesman went on to say:

  We have been here a long time, and we can be there much longer. But only if we can recapture that first, fine, careless rapture: if we can get back to that feeling that the whole world is in front of us, and that we have a continent to save, to lead, to inspire.1

  By January 1972, McMahon knew that if the Coalition was to retain any chance of holding office, the turmoil of the previous year could not be repeated. There would have to be leadership.2 There would have to be some consistency. There needed, too, to be innovation, fresh ideas. ‘He was in survival mode,’ recalled Ian Grigg, McMahon’s principal private secretary at this time. ‘He knew that the government had been in office for twenty-three years. He knew that the polls were not favourable for him. He knew that the electorate was probably due for a change.’3 Polling bore this out. McMahon had finished 1971 with a 37 per cent approval rating, marginally above that of Gough Whitlam.4 Beyond the small solace of that small advantage was a clear imperative that it be extended. The government’s standing had to be retrieved.

  As the new year began, McMahon sought to initiate the recovery with a flurry of decisions designed to make it appear that the government had control of the agenda. McMahon announced moves to reorganise the command and organisational structure of the army; announced that pensions would be paid overseas; announced a minor cabinet reshuffle following the retirement of Ceb Barnes; commended his government’s efforts in the release of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who would become the president of Bangladesh; announced that archival records from World War II would be released; and lauded US president Richard Nixon’s proposals for peace in Vietnam.5 With the last of Australia’s combat troops having arrived home on 8 December, McMahon was not shy about hinting that withdrawal of the Australian Army Assistance Group, engaged in training South Vietnamese and Cambodian troops, could soon follow and that Australia’s involvement in Vietnam would be ended once and for all.

  But his efforts to regain control were hampered by the economy. Excessive wage increases in the latter half of 1971 had accompanied rapid price rises; now, in the new year, figures showed that unemployment had jumped to above 120,000, or 1.6 per cent. By the standards of the time, when long-term unemployment averaged 1.4 per cent, the rise in unemployment was abrupt and worrying, no matter how much McMahon tried to downplay it. Shortly after that, figures released for the December quarter showed a 2.3 per cent rise in the consumer price index, the highest jump recorded since the 1950s. This ‘really bad news’ left McMahon spooked and the object of considerable criticism from the state premiers, who continued to complain about budget deficits and a parsimonious Commonwealth.6 He knew that he could ill-afford headlines that tarnished the government’s reputation as a competent economic manager. Thus, when he heard of the consumer price index figures, he panicked. ‘McMahon rang me where I was holidaying near Palm Beach,’ Snedden recalled, ‘screaming about how terrible the figures were.’7

  McMahon’s worry led him to turn on Snedden and the Treasury. Throughout January, he complained that Treasury did not pay attention to what mattered; in February, he told Paul Hasluck that he thought Snedden was ‘hopelessly at sea’ as treasurer and that he distrusted Sir Frederick Wheeler, who had been appointed secretary to the Treasury at McMahon’s insistence.8 Already ‘greatly concerned’ that there could be further bad economic news in the future, McMahon had decided that the economy was a matter for ‘political decision’.9 He told Hasluck that he was considering holding the election in November, ‘before the figures for the seasonal decline in employment could be published.’10

  By early February, McMahon was spreading word among the press that he was taking personal responsibility for the economy, in the belief that public knowledge that the ‘best treasurer in Australia’s history’ was at the helm would help to restore confidence. ‘In my view [he] is taking wrong attitude,’ Alan Reid sighed, when he heard this. ‘[He] is not seeking to find out what would be best for the economy. [He] is seeking to find out what would have the best and most effective electoral impact.’ Nonetheless, McMahon persisted with it: a week later, he was suggesting ‘to various pressmen, facetiously but with underlying seriousness, that the line they should take was “the old master is back”.’11

  Soon he had substance to accompany the line. Measures that he claimed were all because of him were announced at a meeting of the state premiers on 14 February.12 McMahon called for wage restraint, and announced almost $86m in increased spending, including an increase in the funds available for Commonwealth grants, so as to alleviate rural unemployment; an increase in the unemployment benefit; and restoration of an investment allowance for the manufacturing industry that had been suspended the year before.13

  The measures might well have helped economically and satisfied the premiers, but in publicity terms they foundered. Sceptical journalists exposed the pantomime of Commonwealth–state conferences. ‘The premiers come to Canberra on Sunday night, breathing fire and brimstone,’ Richard Carleton said to McMahon, in an interview for This Day Tonight, after the conference. ‘They come and meet you in the cordiality of the cabinet room, and it’s all over. The Commonwealth makes a concession … They will be back in June, and apparently the same thing will be played out again.’ Is this all just a charade? Carleton wanted to know. Was there ever going to be a solution to the problems of Commonwealth–state relations? McMahon’s response — that he had outsourced the question to a group of experts at the ANU (the Centre for Research on Federal Financial Relations) — was not particularly satisfying.14

  The day after the conference concluded, the good news about the extra assistance was wiped away by BHP’s announcement that it would raise prices on steel by 5.3 per cent. That news threw the government onto the back foot, as demands that it do something came up against the difficulties of doing so.15 The matter was made worse by the fact that BHP’s share price had risen by 45c, to $12.20, after restoration of the investment allowance, and the government’s admission that it had known about the likely price increase for some time. As the ALP was to ask when Parliament resumed, should the government have restored the allowance, knowing it would benefit a company about to raise its prices?16 McMahon had sent a letter to BHP’s chairman on 23 December advising that the government would be concerned by any price rise, and Snedden had reiterated that message on 26 January. But the government seemed shocked by the news anyway.

  Reid was beggared by the lack of preparation: ‘If McM[ahon] knew about the price rises a fortnight previously then he was in a position to evolve how to deal with it … He’s got me baffled.’17 Privately, McMahon considered intervening and pressuring BHP to reduce its prices. ‘He said there has to be leadership,’ wrote Bunting, after a late-night telephone call from the prime minister. ‘The Government must do something — that means it is up to him.’18 By the next day, however, McMahon was backing off on grounds that he had been ‘pre-empted’ by a speech from Snedden.19

  The signs of troubled economic waters, and McMahon’s conduct, caused the concerns that were rife among his colleagues to deepen further. The Liberal Party was ‘in deep disarray and was just disintegrating,’ Snedden believed.20 By the time Parliament resumed on 22 February, almost everyone on the government ben
ches was glum. Bert Kelly approached Parliament House with apprehension. ‘There is a feeling of imminent decay about the place,’ he recorded.21 MPs were worried, caucusing about their prospects in an election. Bill Aston, the Speaker, was especially concerned. As he told colleagues, he had sold his millinery business in order to concentrate on holding his marginal seat of Phillip. ‘I have to try to stay in politics,’ he said. ‘But I’m being placed in a situation that I have no chance.’22

  Matters did not improve. Amid talk of introducing controls over prices and wages, mooted as solutions to the economic turmoil, McMahon told the House of Representatives that price fixations should not ‘be made a political football’. As he continued with talk of the welfare of the Australian people, a Labor MP beggared by the statement interjected: ‘What is politics about?’ McMahon replied without hesitation or a trace of irony: ‘Politics is about trying to get into office!’23 His allies were left cringing.

  Frustration among steadfast supporters was growing. McMahon was putting people offside, causing them to question him. In January, he had ‘spoken in strong terms’ to Bunting about the failings of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.24 The secretary was ‘hurt, and angry’, claimed Alan Reid. ‘With rare indiscretion [he] claims that Bill only half listens to advice. Speaks to too many. Is most influenced by the person with whom he spoke last, particularly if that person flatters McM[ahon].’25 Don Dobie, a McMahon supporter and assistant minister assisting the prime minister, warned McMahon that he was ‘in for trouble’ if his image did not improve.26 Howson was also despairing:

  Bill McMahon is not an easy Prime Minister with whom to work. How often one would like to be firm and tell him what one thinks, but then one has to remember that we put him there, that he’s got to be supported. Half the time one spends trying to help him get over his own foibles and weakness of character. He is not good at building up a team spirit; he doesn’t really know how to delegate; he likes to feel that he’s doing everything himself.

  ‘These,’ Howson went on, ‘are some of the problems that have caused me so much trouble over the last few weeks.’27 But Howson’s trouble with McMahon stemmed from his interventions in policy as much as his character.

  Jolted by Nugget Coombs’s threat to resign from the Council of Aboriginal Affairs, McMahon had taken an interest in the land-rights issues that had been successfully bottled up in the cabinet committee to which they had been referred. Late in September 1971, McMahon made clear to Howson and Ralph Hunt, the minister for the interior, his support for applications from Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory for leases on consolidated lands, provided they could satisfy criteria related to their association with the land, their proposed use of it, and the effect of a lease on the interests of other Aborigines.28 Had it been enacted, this would have been a step forward, an acknowledgement that traditional associations with the land should be a basis for land-rights claims.

  But McMahon was not constant in his views,29 and his interference frustrated Howson, who knew that the dominant view of those who sat alongside him on the committee was diametrically different. While Billy Wentworth thought any decision that did not mention traditional associations would be ‘meaningless’, Malcolm Fraser was ‘disturbed’ and ‘concerned’ by it, and Hunt was ‘very reluctant’ to include it as a criterion.30 Howson told McMahon, but the prime minister was unswayed: ‘He’s firmly convinced that this is an election winner and that we’re just a lot of reactionary Ministers who can’t see the problem as clearly as he can.’31 When the cabinet committee met in December to make a decision, without McMahon present, it stripped out any acknowledgement of an association with the land. No minister attending the meeting was prepared to acknowledge this as a criterion.32

  The measures left for McMahon to announce in a statement that he would make in January were small, and their formulation was fraught. McMahon abandoned a draft statement hammered out in December and asked Coombs to write him another; then he had Coombs rewrite it with Keith Sinclair; then he had Sinclair ‘put it all together’.33 The task was complicated by vacillation over its content and the need to consult with the state governments. Already disappointed by the committee’s December decision, the Council for Aboriginal Affairs (CAA) was further troubled by the decision to release the statement on 26 January. ‘We tried, without success,’ recalled Barrie Dexter, of the CAA, ‘to dissuade [McMahon], since we felt that a statement of new policies as niggardly as those now adopted by the government was hardly appropriate on Australia Day — the anniversary of the dispossession of the Aboriginals.’34 Howson, McMahon, and his office seemed oblivious to this concern.

  McMahon’s statement outlined five objectives for the government’s policies in Aboriginal affairs. The first was to assist Aboriginal Australians to have ‘equal access to the rights and opportunities’ that Australian society provided, while simultaneously encouraging the preservation and development of Aboriginal culture, languages, traditions, and arts, ‘so that these can become living elements in the diverse culture of the Australian society’. Second, while acknowledging that assimilation and identification with Australian society was now a matter of choice, the government rejected any ‘concept of separate development’ as ‘utterly alien’. Third, the government believed involvement of Aboriginal Australians in housing, education, and employment was a necessity for the objectives to be reached. Fourth, the strategy of overcoming problems faced by Aboriginal Australians required collaboration with the state governments, greater economic independence for Aboriginal Australians, and elimination of provisions in the law that discriminated against Aboriginal Australians. Fifth, special ‘temporary and transitional’ measures would be necessary to overcome problems faced by people of Aboriginal descent. The objectives were laudable, clear, coherent, with a progressive bent. But the crucial sections on land rights — the sections on which attention would be focused — were yet to come.

  The government had decided to create a new form of lease in the Northern Territory, McMahon announced, to be called ‘general purpose’ leases, that would endure for fifty years and be granted if applicants could satisfy two criteria: an intention and ability to make economic and social use of the land, and use that would not conflict with another Aboriginal group or community. ‘We decided to create this new form of lease,’ McMahon said:

  […] rather than attempt simply to translate the Aboriginal affinity with the land into some form of legal right under the Australian system, such as that claimed before the decision of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory, because we concluded that to do so would introduce a new probably confusing component, the implications of which could not clearly be foreseen and which could lead to uncertainty and possible challenge in relation to land titles elsewhere in Australia which are at present unquestioned and secure.35

  In effect, the government refused to change the law because it did not know what the consequences of those changes might be. It was a timorous argument, turgidly expressed. The refusal to acknowledge an association with the land as a basis for land-rights claims was an egregious hole in the statement, and guaranteed to win no support from any quarter. Equally outrageous was McMahon’s statement that, in spite of opposition from the Yirrkala people, it was in the ‘national interest’ for the Nabalco mineral exploration and mining to continue.

  The statement was heavily criticised. As the Canberra Times editorialised, McMahon had missed an opportunity to ‘right a great wrong’ in how Australia had treated Aborigines. While commending the objectives that would now guide government policy, the editorial bluntly called out McMahon’s failure on the land-rights issue: ‘It is probable that the government found it politically unfeasible’ to introduce uniform land-rights laws, it argued.36 An editorial in The Australian was ominous: ‘To choose that day [26 January] as the occasion to announce a Government decision on the intensely felt issue of Aboriginal Land Rights is to invite the full judgment of his
torical perspective on the decision … What is missing is the guts of a historic act.’37

  The statement incensed Aboriginal activists around the country, but it was younger activists who decided that an immediate and strong response was warranted.38 After debating several ways of doing so, a few Sydney-based activists, some affiliated with the Redfern-based Black Power group, settled on giving that response outside Parliament House. ‘Billy McMahon works in Canberra, down there,’ they reasoned. ‘We’ve got to go to Canberra’.39 Four activists — Michael Anderson, Billy Craigie, Tony Coorey, and Bert Williams — left Sydney in a car that night, borrowing a beach umbrella and materials for placards on the way. At 1.30am on 27 January, they erected the umbrella on the lawns outside Parliament House. They used a shoelace to string up a sign reading ‘Aboriginal Embassy’. And they sat beneath the umbrella and sign with placards in their hands. Expecting to be promptly arrested, the four were surprised when police informed them that there was no legislation under which they could be removed. The four were thus still present on the lawns when the sun rose. That vital reprieve gave time for more protesters to join them, and allowed reporters to record Aboriginal Australia’s response to McMahon’s statement.

  McMahon’s reaction to the embassy was delayed. Initially, he thought all was well. He told Howson that he had ‘solved’ the Aboriginal statement, and, preoccupied with the economy, he made no response for several days.40 That lag, and the inability for police or the government to find grounds to remove the embassy, meant that it gained valuable publicity and support. The National Council of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Women was holding a conference at the ANU, and a contingent came to the embassy to offer their support. On 28 January, they issued a demand for McMahon, Howson, and the cabinet to resign. From a group that could hardly be attacked as radical, the statement was devastating about McMahon: the council was ‘disappointed’ at the ‘token gestures’ he had made on land rights, and ‘disgusted’ by his ‘incompetent, uninterested, and unsympathetic handling of what should be treated as an important portfolio’.41 Howson, for his part, responded in kind, telling one newspaper that he saw ‘a disturbing undertone in the use of the term Aboriginal Embassy’ that ‘cut across the government’s expressed objection to separate development and was kindred to apartheid’.42 Over the days that followed, the embassy attracted more and more support, making McMahon’s failure to address the issue conspicuous.