No comment by McMahon

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32665, 22 July 1971, Page 15

No comment by McMahon

<N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

SYDNEY, July 21.

The Australian Prime Minister (Mr McMahon) has declined to comment on allegations by the former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer in Britain, Mr Roy Jenkins, that Australia refused to help Britain during her 1968 economic crisis.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said last night that Mr McMahon had not seen

the full text of Mr Jenkins’s remarks, made at a private meeting of the British Parliamentary Labour Party, and had no comment to make. Mr Jenkins had accused the Australian Government

of reacting “brutally” to

> pleas for help during Britt ain’s crisis. i He alleged that Australia

had threatened to switch her sterling reserves to dollars or gold if Britain took action to stop capita] outflow' to Australia, and he described the Australian Government of the day as “the roughest, toughest, most self-interes-ted government” he had known. Mr Jenkins was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time of the crisis, Mr McMahon was then Australia’s Federal Treasurer. Most Australian newspapers gave Mr Jenkins’s speech front-page treatment today, but there was little comment editorially. Paul Gardiner, writing in the “Australian Financial Review,” however, said that while allowing for a certain amount of hyperbole, Mr Jenkins’s accusations were quite astonishing. “The disclosure by Mr Jenkins adds considerably to an understanding of the fact that relations between the two governments have deteriorated,” he wrote.