‘Anzac connection’ under review

Press, 4 June 1984, Page 12

‘Anzac connection’ under review

By

STUART McMILLAN

The conference called “The Anzac Connection,” run last month by the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre of the Australian National University, must have seemed something of a gamble to those who planned it. Turning Australian minds to consider New Zealand is something of a Herculean task at the best of times. Possibly this is because Australians like to deal in global issues and the consideration of New Zealand concerns makes Australians feel bogged down in pettiness. Even in defence matters, where there is a similarity in outlook between the defence establishments, Australians like to dwell on the A.N.Z.U.S. relationship. This gives them a licence to think about Australia’s relationship with the United States and to consider such issues as whether Australia can rely on the United States for all of Australia’s regional issues. New Zealand remains somewhat on the periphery. In the leaked document of the Strategic Basis of Australian Defence Policy, New Zealand rates a brief mention which includes the comment that New Zealand “has still developed no policy for national defence and tends to look to its A.N.Z.U.S. relationship with the United States as its primarysource of defence guidance.” But any dismal conclusion about attendance to be drawn from these attitudes proved to be wrong. “The Anzac Connection” proved to be the second biggest conference that the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre has held. More than 150 attended. The biggest conference which the centre has held was concerned with “The Defence of Australia” — a subject to which the Australian defence establishment devotes enormous attention. Why Australian interest was stirred this time is not altogether clear. Perhaps the description in the New Zealand White Paper on Defence (the 1983 Defence Review) of Australia and New Zealand forming “a single strategic entity” helped. If that is so, it would be the articulation of the thought, the use of the phrase, more than the notion itself. New Zealand and Australia have long treated one another as a “single strategic entity.” If the phrase was the reason, the compilers of the Defence Review will be forever comforted by Alexander Pope’s lines: “True wit is nature to advantage dressed What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.” The Australian Minister of Defence, Mr Gordon Scholes, who

opened the conference, endorsed the idea of New Zealand and Australia being a “single strategic entity.” He commented on the shared traditions, the similar outlooks, and a number of other aspects always talked about when resemblances between New Zealand and Australia are sought. He also observed that the two countries were self-sufficient in food and a number of the other natural resources required for national development. That was a less usual comment. Both New Zealand and Australia have relied so much on being world traders that the idea of having a measure of selfsufficiency together, and linking this to the single strategic entity notion, had a certain freshness. Having acknowledged the theme of the conference, however, Mr Scholes commented that the interests of the two countries were not identical and this gave him the excuse to dwell on that subject beloved of the Australian defence establishment — the defence of Australia. In reply to a question at the end of the address, Mr Scholes returned to the conference theme. The questioner had asked: “Is there any sense in which Australia regards New Zealand as strategically important to Australia in the way that New Zealand regards Australia as strategically important to New Zealand?” The point of the question was that it was easy for New Zealand to regard as important the great land mass of Australia lying across New Zealand’s access to the Middle East, or to much of Asia, and it was of prime concern to New Zealand that Australia was in friendly hands, but that as far as Australia was concerned, New Zealand did not lie across Australia’s path to anywhere. Mr Scholes’ reply included the view that Australia would consider it a matter of great concern if New Zealand were in the hands of a hostile power. The New Zealand Secretary of Defence, Mr Denis McLean, presented one of the broadest-ranging papers at the conference. He reviewed not only the history of defence co-operation between New Zealand and Australia, including the Gallipoli experience, the First and Second World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam. He touched on peace-keeping such as is being conducted in the Sinai at the moment and other co-operation. He spoke of the different emphases which caused Australia to withdraw its troops from the Middle East while New Zealand left its troops there after a request from Winston Churchill, during

World War 11. He touched on themes of the sense of “apartness” of New Zealand, but found himself persuaded by ideas of collective security and raised doubts about whether any New Zealand Government would abandon its defence alliances. Almost at the end of his paper, x Mr McLean concluded: “Where careful negotiation and detailed planning has been necessary to put in place the processes enshrined in the closer economic relationship, defence relationships have been maintained and developed almost as a matter of course. The question now is whether we wish to go further — for example in a joint approach to force development and even to command. Then we

shall surely have gone beyond the Anzac connection to an Anzac partnership.” The question about wishing to go further resurfaced a number of times at the conference. Various suggestions were made about why there was not more co-operation. The impression was hard to avoid that when someone had to prepare a lecture on the subject, he or she would rake over familiar ground, discover the 1944 agreement which the Australians call the Anzac Pact and New Zealand calls the Canberra Pact and, once the immediate need was passed, the ground would remain undisturbed again for a long time. The other New Zealander who presented a paper to the confer-

ence was Dr D. J. Barnes, assistant secretary for science and electronic data processing in the Ministry of Defence. In the discussion after his paper both New Zealand and Australian scientists lamented that they did not cooperate more and pledged themselves to do better. The head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Dr Des Ball, who summed up the conference, expressed the hope that the discussion that had begun at the conference would be continued. Yet, in spite of the obvious good will, it seems likely that unless there is a political drive to help the consultation and co-operation along, it will be a vain hope.