Tiberius with a Telephone

by Patrick Mullins

  But this long period of mutual protection came to an end on 4 June. For years, The Daily Telegraph had been a loss-making newspaper, unable to compete against The Sydney Morning Herald and its dominance in the classified markets. For a long time, the ACP-owned Australian Women’s Weekly had effectively subsidised the paper, a state of affairs that caused no small deal of angst for Sir Frank’s sons, Clyde and Kerry, who were well aware of the windfall that could come their way by selling the Telegraph. In the aftermath of a printers’ strike in May, their argument that the paper should be sold began to gain force with their father, who was ageing and sick with lumbago. Finally, Sir Frank gave way, and Rupert Murdoch, who was looking to consolidate his position in Sydney’s newspaper business, made an offer. On 31 May, Murdoch and Kerry Packer agreed on the ‘broad outlines’ of a deal; by 3 June, Murdoch had agreed to pay $15m for The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph mastheads.

  Well aware of Murdoch’s derisory regard for McMahon — a regard not improved at an earlier meeting in 1971 — and given his own support for his old friend and prime minister, Sir Frank invited McMahon and Sonia to come up the road to his home, Cairnton, to meet with Murdoch, and have a drink. According to McMahon, the meaning of the sale was immediately apparent. ‘Well,’ he said to Packer, once he had heard the news, ‘that just about ends our prospects in New South Wales’.49 Nonetheless, Packer bade McMahon and Murdoch shake hands. As they did so, Murdoch told McMahon that he would correct any errors and, outside of the editorials, be fair. It did not assuage McMahon’s misgivings. Neither he nor Sonia departed Packer’s residence consoled by the meeting. ‘Bill knew that was disaster as far as the election was concerned,’ Sonia said later.50

  The McMahons were right. Labor Party figures greeted the news of the sale with unalloyed joy. The sale of the Telegraph meant that the ALP would no longer have to contend with an unabashed enemy in New South Wales. It removed ‘a constant threat’ whereby every story about the ALP was presented in the ‘most unfavourable light possible’. In an election year, this was an unexpected boon for Labor, and a blow to the government.51

  DEFENCE and foreign policy had long been reliable electoral strengths for the government. Australia’s military involvement in Vietnam had been electoral gold during Harold Holt’s 1966 campaign, and it was the emphasis on Australia’s security that had retrieved John Gorton’s standing at the tail end of the 1969 campaign. McMahon had certainly made efforts to emphasise foreign relations throughout 1971, but after the embarrassments of the US rapprochement with China and his disastrous visits to the US and UK, it seemed there was little traction to be had. Thus he turned his attention to defence, attempting to establish it as an issue on which the government could campaign.

  This first surfaced on 28 March, when defence minister David Fairbairn tabled the Australian Defence Review. A project initiated before McMahon became prime minister, the Review was originally intended as — and, until the last moment, was — a white paper that would set out the government’s future defence policy. The government viewed it as an opportunity to draw discussions of Australia’s defence away from the Vietnam conflict and to emphasise its strength and expertise in Australia’s security.

  But the secretary of the Department of Defence, Sir Arthur Tange, saw the paper somewhat differently: as he was to write, it was an opportunity to ‘present new ideas and a more realistic view of what we [Australia] needed to do for ourselves’.52 Thus, under Tange’s supervision, the paper emphasised ‘self-reliance’ as a guiding strategic concept, and pointedly discussed Australia’s capabilities and interests, framing these as considerations in any decision about Australia’s defence policy. The paper stated that the fundamental objectives of such a policy were the ‘independence and security of Australia’. In so stating, as Tange’s biographer was to point out, the paper elevated independence to the same status as security and, by eschewing mention of any alliance, established a new direction for Australian strategic thinking.53 These were significant departures from the orthodoxy.

  After it was finalised, McMahon decided that it could not be published as a white paper. Rather, it should be given a lower status — that of a departmental review. It is highly likely that the new ideas Tange had worked to include were to blame for the downgrading of the paper. McMahon had no appetite to embrace them, particularly in an election year.54 Certainly, he made his feelings clear when he left the House midway through Fairbairn’s statement, which in and of itself appeared to downgrade the review further.55 This was, perhaps, a mistake: the paper’s emphasis on a policy that would become known in shorthand as the ‘defence of Australia’ would dominate official strategic thinking for the next thirty years.56 Had the government seized this opportunity, it might well have shaped that thinking and forced debate onto the future of Australia’s defence, instead of allowing the debate to centre on the ignominious past of Australia’s involvement in Vietnam, which received fresh attention when a series of successful North Vietnamese offensives caused fears that the South Vietnamese government would be overrun. Calls from the DLP to re-commit troops to the conflict were loud, but McMahon and Fairbairn would stand firm on refusing to do so, even as the US responded with massive bombing raids and a naval blockade.

  Another opportunity to highlight defence came in June. Two days after The Daily Telegraph was sold, McMahon left Australia for Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia. As with his visits to Washington and the UK, the ten-day trip was mostly for the sake of optics, for showing that the government could manage Australia’s defence and foreign relations better than the ALP, which had undertaken to withdraw the Australian troops stationed in Singapore under the Five Power Defence Arrangements. The political dimension was never particularly disguised. Journalists drew attention to it repeatedly: ‘Mr McMahon hopes to gain domestic political kudos for his test at the polls in November or December,’ wrote one reporter.57

  Given the continuing commitment to the arrangments, there was some logic to these hopes. But even before McMahon’s departure there were signs that realising those hopes would require more finesse than McMahon had thus far demonstrated. Malaysian moves towards a ‘neutralist’ foreign policy, based on regional co-operation and the ASEAN community, meant that it had no wish to draw attention to the Five Power Defence Arrangements, though it would work to support them. Singapore’s aversion to being used for a domestic political campaign — to the point that Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, had cancelled a proposed visit to Australia that year58 — made it sensitive to any discussion of the arrangements. McMahon had a difficult task should he wish to return with a statesman-like glow: to show off the achievement of the arrangments without being seen to do so.

  The trip started reasonably well. McMahon made a gift of sixteen superseded Sabre fighter planes to the Indonesian air force, held talks with Indonesian president General Suharto, talked of economic opportunity, and lauded Australia’s closer relationship with Indonesia. He managed to avoid contentious discussions on the sea border, and he announced a three-year, $75m defence and civil-aid programme, the costs of which were to be borne by Australia.59

  And yet, inevitably, there were gaffes. Shortly before he left Indonesia, speaking in a television interview with the ABC, McMahon appeared to downplay the importance of the Five Power arrangements. Explaining why there was no need for a similar defence arrangement with Indonesia, McMahon said that the arrangements were based on historical realities, and related only to the obligation to consult. ‘You wouldn’t like that with the Indonesians as well?’ asked his interviewer. ‘No,’ McMahon said, ‘there’s no necessity for it. Nor do I think that there was any real necessity to have a Five Power Defence Arrangement so far as the UK, New Zealand, Singapore, [and] Malaysia are concerned. But it’s there, and it’s only an obligation to consult.’60

  The pressmen accompanying McMahon leaped on the admission, arguing that it directly contradicted the rationale for Australia’s contr
ibution to the ANZUK forces stationed in Malaysia and Singapore. News of the statement shocked Fairbairn, who had spent weeks touting the arrangements and criticising Labor for its promise to withdraw the Australian infantry battalion that was stationed in Singapore under the arrangements. Initially, Fairbairn questioned the accuracy of the transcript; then he offered an anguished explanation for McMahon’s statement: ‘I believe that what Mr McMahon was saying was that because the five powers are so friendly, close together in every way, there was not the real necessity to have things in writing as well as to have the understanding.’61 McMahon’s protests — that he had only repeated what the arrangements actually said — did not convince anyone. He knew it. Aware of the damage being done, McMahon issued a statement making clear that the government considered the arrangements to be of great importance and that his comments had related only to an Australian–Indonesian context. Flying into Singapore shortly afterwards, he then had to explain himself to an unimpressed Lee Kuan Yew.

  By the time McMahon arrived in Malaysia, any possibility that he could avoid drawing attention to the arrangements was gone. Bob Bowker, a diplomat in Australia’s mission in Kuala Lumpur who was assigned to look after McMahon during his stay, found that McMahon was frustrated and incensed by the press coverage of his mistakes. Bringing the prime minister his newspapers and orange juice in the mornings was a memorable experience for the young diplomat. ‘I would sit on the bed beside him,’ Bowker recalled, ‘as he told me what a bunch of bastards the press were.’62

  Worse was still to come. While McMahon met the Malaysian prime minister, Tun Razak, the deputy secretary of the Malaysian Foreign Office told the party of Australian journalists that the Malaysian government would not be concerned if Australia withdrew its troops from the Five Power forces stationed in Singapore. Then McMahon emerged from his meeting to declare how much Malaysia appreciated the arrangements. To the press, the contradiction was renewed: the discrepancy was gaping; the problem was obvious. ‘With a normal prime minister, with reasonable relations with the media, this could have been managed,’ Bowker said later. ‘But with McMahon, the press drew the conclusion that McMahon was seeking to mislead the public about Malaysia’s support for the Five Power Defence Arrangements.’

  When McMahon found out about the briefing, he was furious. He telephoned Tun Razak to complain, and Razak was persuaded to issue a clarifying statement that welcomed the presence of Australian military forces in the area. In the meantime, however, the press had questioned McMahon about the matter, provoking a strong reaction. ‘McMahon did what McMahon did best,’ Bowker recalled. ‘He panicked.’

  McMahon sent foreign affairs adviser Richard Woolcott and press secretary Jonathan Gaul to the ABC office in Kuala Lumpur to ensure that the statement from the Malaysian government was transmitted to Australia. It was an attempt to pre-empt news of the first briefing, and in their efforts to do so the two allegedly ordered a trainee Malaysian journalist to telephone the ABC’s Sydney newsroom with the statement. The Sydney office refused to kill the initial story, allegedly prompting Gaul himself to telephone and read the new statement through the phone.63 But it was no use. ‘The ABC felt that we were trying to put the prime minister in a better light than he was meant to be,’ Woolcott said later. Noting that it was his job to make McMahon look good, Woolcott felt the action went too far. ‘As a public servant,’ he reflected later, ‘I should not have done so.’64 Gaul had no regrets for the incident: ‘My first loyalty was to McMahon.’65 The damage was done. The next day, news of Woolcott’s and Gaul’s actions were in the newspapers, and the ABC’s manager in Asia had made a complaint about interference, intrusion, and improper use of ABC equipment.66

  ‘It was a complete catastrophe, an utter debacle,’ Bowker recalled.67 The headlines that eventuated were worse than scathing: they lampooned McMahon. The chance of some gain in stature was gone. ‘Mr McMahon’s journey to South-East Asia has become an excursion into blunderland,’ argued one journalist.68 ‘Today Kuala Lumpur is full of red faces; they are all Australian and the reddest is Mr McMahon’s,’ wrote another.69 Labor was joyful, happy to take its shots. ‘The whole purpose of Mr McMahon’s visit overseas was to use foreign affairs again as a domestic issue,’ Labor MP Bill Morrison charged. ‘This has now blown up in his face — and rightly so.’ Even the DLP piled on: ‘This is the second occasion on which an Australian Prime Minister has gone to Malaysia and confusing statements have harmed our image among Asian people.’70

  McMahon continued to press his point of view in spite of the headlines. ‘There are no differences whatsoever between Australia and Malaysia, or between Australia and Singapore, under these arrangements,’ he said, in a nationally broadcast statement.71 But it was no use. His hopes of highlighting defence and foreign relations, and using them to his benefit, had been extinguished.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  The Unequal Struggle

  1984

  McMahon was in hospital and then at home for two-and-a-half weeks, but his absence from the office meant neither less work for his staff, nor less frustration. McMahon was telephoning Cawthorn with demands that she had no idea how to meet, and complaining about his operation. From his desk, Bowman could hear Cawthorn crying, ‘Oh, he’s an impossible man. Impossible, impossible. Why don’t I just go home?’1

  The staff inevitably gossiped. When talking about why McMahon was in hospital, Bowman said that he had never noticed McMahon’s left ear — ‘i.e. the rear-side door of the VW’. Cawthorn was surprised he had been able to miss it. The ear was horrid, she told him. It smelt and would drip on McMahon’s shirts. Apparently, McMahon blamed his doctor for scraping it, but Cawthorn had her own conclusions: ‘I bet he went out in the sun with it.’2

  ‘WM says it is bloody awful being confined as he is,’ Bowman wrote in his diary the next day, after speaking with McMahon on the phone. Bowman had sent him another draft of the prologue, but McMahon seemed little interested in discussing it. He much preferred to tell him about the flowers filling his rooms. There was a bunch from Bob Hawke, he told Bowman, and Hawke had even telephoned! McMahon was buoyed by the attention. He was especially delighted that Hawke had recalled his remarks on radio, praising him. ‘Hawke thanked him for his public support recently,’ wrote Bowman. ‘Hawke [also] remarked on [Liberal Party president] John Valder’s much-publicised remark that it would need a miracle for the Lib-CP to gain government, and said, “That should be worth 10% to us, shouldn’t it?”’

  Of course, McMahon’s staff thought little of it. When Bowman recounted this conversation to her, Cawthorn was scathing. ‘Come on!’ she said. ‘Hawke didn’t call him — he called Hawke.’3

  The work on the autobiography continued. McMahon was still intent on working, even from his bed. His efforts were not much good. ‘George pretty disgusted with material WM is giving him and talks of finishing up soon,’ Bowman noted, on 28 March. Five days later, it was the same: ‘George continues to be overwhelmed by flow of rubbish from WM.’

  Campbell was pessimistic about the book and about McMahon. On the same day that Bowman had the third chapter sent out to McMahon, Campbell came in to tell him about the British writer Leonard Woolf and his long-in-the-works autobiography and ‘history of our own times’. The successive volumes had taken longer and longer to write, Campbell said, and the attempt to catch up to the present day had eluded him: ‘By 1906 reached 1902, by 1912 reached 1907, by 1914 … etc.,’ Bowman noted.

  After saying all this, Campbell put it bluntly: ‘He gave up the unequal struggle.’

  The parallel with McMahon was impossible to ignore. Bowman, surveying the edits and corrections that McMahon had made to the latest draft, was despairing. ‘He has entirely ignored my comments about ephemera …’4

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Dither and Irresolution

  1972

  Over and over again, there were problems. Some were of the government’s own
making. Others were bad luck. All, however, added up to a sense that the McMahon government was inept, bungling, lurching.

  Late in March, Sir William Owen, a justice of the High Court, died unexpectedly. Rumours about who would be appointed to his seat were galvanised by speculation that the foreign minister, Nigel Bowen, was a candidate. But there were compelling reasons to not appoint Bowen: McMahon relied heavily on him, had appointed him to many cabinet committees, and summoned him repeatedly for meetings and counsel. Nor could the government afford a by-election, particularly in a seat that, as Maximilian Walsh was to say, was ‘ripe picking’ for Labor.1 Nonetheless, McMahon allowed the speculation to go on for some months. When he finally appointed Justice Anthony Mason, a judge of the Court of Appeal in New South Wales, to the seat on 24 July, it gave the appearance that the government had been too scared to appoint Bowen.

  In June, with its usual antipathy towards international criticism, the French government decided it would proceed with a series of nuclear weapons testing in French Polynesia. Protests about the tests had been continuous since they had begun in the Pacific in 1966, but the latest round came at an especially inopportune time for the Australian government. When a virulent press reaction to the news began to swell, the government’s ability to respond was hampered by the absence of so many ministers from Australia. McMahon was on his trip through Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia; Nigel Bowen was abroad; and Peter Howson was in Stockholm for a UN conference on the environment.

  According to Howson, the advice from officials accompanying him was to treat the tests in a low-key manner. But outrage from the New Zealand government would prevent that from being a viable course. In addition to renewing its calls for the tests to be postponed, the New Zealand government had decided to make use of its presence at the UN conference to criticise the French. Howson was asked by his New Zealand counterpart to support that criticism, and then to co-sponsor a resolution on the tests. His reluctance to support New Zealand without an explicit directive from Canberra caused reporters to speculate about the existence of a rift between the Australian and New Zealand governments. What followed bore out that speculation: in the series of mooted amendments and votes on resolutions between 9 and 13 June, Australia and New Zealand repeatedly ended up on different sides.