Aust, disputes ‘dead letter’ treaty

Press, 1 May 1989, Page 1

Aust, disputes ‘dead letter’ treaty

NZPA syaney The Australian Minister of Defence, Mr Beazley, has disputed the New Zealand Prime Minister’s assertion that the A.N.Z.U.S. Treaty is a “dead letter,” and says it is still relevant to the Australia-New Zealand bilateral relationship. Mr Beazley said on Channel 10’s “Face To Face” programme yesterday that one of the clauses of the A-N-Z.U.S. Treaty was that the treaty continued in place indefinitely.

“Of course, what has to happen on the basis of that clause is that the various parties to it put flesh on the bones,” he said.

“Now whilst there are at least two parties putting flesh on the bones, then of course the treaty is not a dead letter. “Then in that sense what Mr Lange has said recently, as a foreshadowed New . Zealand Government position, doesn’t make a great deal of difference.”

Mr Beazley said that the treaty was one of the bases

through which Australia cooperated with New Zealand. Another base of the relationship was the Anzac Pact signed in 1944, but that had some unsatisfactory features to it, he said. “So there is continuing relevance for the bilateral Aus-tralia-New Zealand relationship in the fact of the existence of the A.N.Z.U.S. documents,” he said.

He said the Hawke Government would never use the A.N.Z.U.S. Treaty as a bargaining chip in Australia’s clash

with the United States over its trade policies. This came after an exchange between the Australian Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, and the United States Vice-President, Mr Quayle, last week, with Mr Quayle refusing to acknowledge that United States agricultural protectionism was hurting Australian farmers. The Minister of Defence repeated the long-standing Government view that trade and Defence issues were “played on separate Chessboards.”