People Power and Politics

1. People Power and Politics Whitlam and the World Year 10 Mr Scully

2. Questions for this lesson - • Describe Whitlam’s attitude to Australia’s relationships with the United States and Great Britain. • Explain why Australia did not have diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China until 1972. • What was significant about Whitlam’s decision on Papua New Guinea?

3. Background • Whitlam wanted Australia to have a foreign policy that was independent of Britain and the United States. His goal was to develop a foreign policy that expressed Australia’s unique interests - not those of Britain or the United States. He wanted to: • distance Australia from the military commitments of the Vietnam war era • overcome racist attitudes underlying our choice of allies • enhance Australia’s international reputation as a nation that valued tolerance and fought for justice.

4. Australia and the US • Whitlam maintained relationships with the United States government by allowing it to continue to operate military bases on Australian soil at Pine Gap, Nurrungar and North-West Cape, even though many within the Labor Party were opposed to this. In 1975, he sided with the United States in speaking against New Zealand’s proposal of a South Pacific nuclear-free zone. • The Whitlam government pursued a foreign policy relationship with the United States that was more independent than that of its predecessors and the United States government recognised that Australia had become more critical and questioning in its attitudes to US policy.

5. Whitlam and the CIA • The United States government and its Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also came to fear that there were security risks within the Whitlam government. In March 1973, Attorney-General Lionel Murphy authorised the Federal Police to raid the Canberra and Melbourne offices of ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) and • seize their files. He claimed the right to see files that he said were being kept from him. • This led the CIA to consider denying ASIO access to sensitive intelligence information from the United States. This caused great tensions for a number of years between Australia and the US.

6. Whitlam and China • When Mao Zedong’s Communist Party took control of mainland China in 1949, its former Guomindang government re-established itself on the island of Taiwan. In the midst of the Cold War, many nations followed the United States’ lead and continued to • recognise the Guomindang government in Taiwan as China’s official government. They refused to recognise the reality of China as a communist nation known as the People’s Republic of China. The United States provided military support to prevent Taiwan coming under communist control, and Taiwan continued to be the sole representative of China at the United Nations until 1971.

7. Gough Whitlam’s policy on China broke free of these Cold War attitudes and began a process of Australia’s wider engagement with Asia. He argued that it was misguided to see communist expansion as a similar threat to Nazi expansion under Hitler. He took the initiative to improve Australia’s relationship with China and also with other communist nations: East Germany, North Vietnam and North Korea. • Gough Whitlam visited the People’s Republic of China as Opposition leader in 1971 and promised its government that, if he won the federal elections the following year, Australia would establish diplomatic relations with China. This view was in marked contrast to that of the McMahon government, which refused to relinquish its ties with the Taiwanese government, arguing that Australia

8. Papua New Guinea • Britain gave Australia control of British New Guinea in 1906 and Australia renamed it the Territory of Papua. After World War I, Australia gained control of German New Guinea under a League of Nations mandate. Later, after World War II, the United Nations gave Australia trusteeship over the combined territories of Papua and New Guinea. • Gough Whitlam was conscious that Australia’s control of Papua New Guinea allowed it to continue the abuses associated with the former great powers’ exploitation of their colonies. Under the guise of paternalism, Australia had continued its trusteeship role within Papua New Guinea despite the United Nations’ commitment to gaining independence for colonies. Under Whitlam, the Australian government granted Papua New Guinea self-government in 1973 and independence in 1975.

9. Extension • Create a mind map summary to record what you think Whitlam wanted to achieve in foreign policy.