Australians assess Melbourne meeting

Press, 31 October 1981, Page 14

Australians assess Melbourne meeting

By

STUART McMILLAN

The Australian Government, including the Prime Minister (Mr Fraser) considers that the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Melbourne was a success, according to a senior Australian Foreign Affairs official who was recently in New Zealand.

The conclusion drawn by the Australian Government about C.H.O.G.M. is of more than passing interest to New Zealand because I learned, in very clear terms indeed during a visit to Australia in February, that If the Springbok tour disrupted the Melbourne meeting or the Brisbane Commonwealth Games next year, there was no way in which the movement towards closer economic relations between New Zealand and Australia would remain unaffected.

After Melbourne it is clear that the Springbok tour did not cause any disruption sufficient for the meeting to be considered a failure. A discussion on the C.E.R., as the exercise has become known, was held between Mr Fraser and the New Zealand Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) before C.H.O.G.M. Another meeting was held during the meeting involving Mr Doug Anthony, the Australian Minister of Trade and Resources.

If there are no boycotts of the Brisbane Games, caused by New Zealand having the Springbok tour, then New Zealand will have weathered that aspect of relations between New Zealand and Australia as it affects the C.E.R. Time may just intervene. The Brisbane Games are not until September and there is some confidence that the two Prime Ministers will sign a new agreement in March or April of next year. If Labour wins the election, it may require a little more time to examine some aspects of the new agreement, but Labour has generally kept itself informed on the progress and regards the C.E.R. favourably.

The senior Australian Foreign Affairs official said that there was a general atti-

tude among the black African countries that they were not seeking to make an issue out of the tour. The leaders in setting this mood were Tanzania, Kenya, and Nigeria. These three were important in different ways. Tanzania is led by President Julius Nyerere, regarded by many as the most venerable of the Commonwealth leaders. Nigeria is important because of its wealth and power throughout Africa and Kenya because it remains largely a capitalist State and because it is the present chairman of the Organisation of African Unity. The senior Foreign Affairs official said that that those who attended the Melbourne meeting expressed their thanks to Mr Fraser and the official discerned a determination among African leaders that they would not do anything, if they could possibly avoid it, to harm Australia’s interests over the Brisbane Games. That should suit Australia's interests in two ways. One is the elimination of any direct effect on the Games, including the possibility of an African boycott. The other is because of Australia’s relationship with black Africa. Australia has had a clear policy of improving its relationship with black Africa for some years. On the relationship with New Zealand, the official said that Australia had not made representations directly to New Zealand on the Springbok tour. It had, on the other hand, sent letters of protest both to Britain and the United States on South African matches there. It was part of the particular care with which Australia treated its relationship with New Zealand. The reasons why Australia regards Africa as so important are complex. A background paper issued by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs some time ago gives some of Australia’s thinking on the subject. One of the first points that it makes is that Australia acknowledges the importance

of African representation in a number of world forums. Although the paper does not spell out the matter which was of particular significance to Australia some years ago, the official did. Not to put too fine a point on it, the strongest argument for the Australians at that time was over the decolonisation of Papua New Guinea. Australia wanted African votes in the United Nations on the way it was handling the issue.

Humanitarianism for Africa’s many problems, not unmixed with a desire to get rid, forever, of the “White Australia” policy label, is among other motives. Australia has always been aware of itself as a large wealthy continent which could be the envy of others and there is a deliberate and calculated policy to be seen as sharing its wealth through aid and general expressions of concern. The strategic importance of Africa is also one of the compelling motives in Australia’s enhanced interest in Africa. Asked about whether the pursuit of this policy towards Africa was simply- the personal aim of Mr Fraser and a few others, the official argued that a majority in the Government accepted it. On the point of whether the Government was' leaving the population behind on the issue, the official agreed that racist attitudes were to be found at a social level in some parts of the Australian population, but said that the point about South Africa's apartheid system was that it was enshrined in the law.

This Australian official, like officials, everywhere, is not in the business of commenting directly on the performance of other countries’ leaders (or on his own Prime Minister if it comes to that) so that in gathering the following impressions of the Melbourne meeting I had to rely on other sources and observers. The main conclusion most came to was that there was an acknowledgement that New Zealand had had a traumatic

experience over the Springbok tour and that there was no intention of subjecting New Zealand to attacks. Mr Muldoon was given his say on the subject and President Nyerere replied in a measured way. Unfortunately, because he had a press briefing. Mr Muldoon was not there for the relevant part of Mr Nyerere’s speech. Melbourne Declaration was in fact written not by an official but by Mr Owen Harries, a special adviser to Mr Fraser

and Australia’s new Ambassador to U.N.E.S.C.O. The comment at the National Press Club about the Melbourne Declaration being full of “pious platitudes” was not taken unduly seriously. The The comment that really upset people was about the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, Mr Robert Mugabe.

For his own case, however, Mr Muldoon was considered to have made a tactical error. Because the African countries

were prepared to accept that the tour had taken place and that another tour was unlikely, they seemed ready to let all talk of boycotts wither away. But Mr Muldoon kept raising the issue and by doing so in the final letter when he was no longer even at the meeting, he brought it to the forefront again. By the Saturday night, he had all he wanted. By the next Wednesday it was no longer as certain. And that was all his own doing.