Comrade Ambassador by Stephen FitzGerald

Author:Stephen FitzGerald
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780522868692
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing

Chapter 10

Introducing Malcolm Fraser

THE DAY AFTER Malcolm Fraser wins the 15 December election I phone Whitlam. After we’ve discussed what’s happened I ask him what he thinks I should do and he says, ‘Comrade, you must stand by your station.’ In that emphatic way. He says if I want go back to the ANU this should not be precipitate, as I was appointed to ‘look after’ the relationship and must continue to do so. It feels like we’ve arrived at a disheartening end to what we’ve been doing together on and off since 1967. I ask him to come on a visit to China. When he says, ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that before June,’ I know he’s okay. I tell him that if he can confirm it, I’ll stay at least until then. Our friendship feels even closer. I’ll stay, as he’s advised.

Before the election, Richard Farmer has phoned to say he’d run into Andrew Peacock on the campaign trail and en passant asked him what they’d do with me if they won. Peacock, Shadow Foreign Minister, told him to tell me that both Malcolm Fraser and he want me to stay. I’d asked John Mant, Whitlam’s Principal Private Secretary, to let Whitlam know I’d had this unsolicited offer because in the angry and hostile politics of the day I didn’t want it thought I’d been courting the Opposition behind Whitlam’s back.

Foreign Minister Qiao suddenly accepts a dinner invitation I’d offered some weeks before and the date is fixed for 23 December. I cable Canberra for an urgent briefing on the new government’s foreign policy and they reply that they expect strengthened relations with the United States, support for a stronger US presence in the Pacific, less emphasis on non-alignment and relations with the Third World, but possibly some priority for China. Fraser wants to visit China, and Japan, on his first overseas trip in June. The dinner with Qiao, who’s brought along Chinese Ambassador to Australia Wang Guoquan, is actually to celebrate the third anniversary of our relations, but in his toast Qiao turns it to the next three years and calls on us to maintain the pace of development we’ve established in the first three. They’ve picked up from Fraser’s public statements in Australia his criticism of the USSR’s expansionist ambitions in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. It’s music to their ears. Mr Fraser’s view is ‘realistic,’ says Qiao. ‘Hard-headed,’ says Wang. It’s clear there’ll be no problem getting relations with the new government on track. Qiao invites Fraser to visit China before I even raise it.

Qiao also asks whether I’ll be staying on or going back to Canberra and I say I’ve been thinking about when I should go back to the university. He urges, ‘Stay on indefinitely, and take China as your university.’

We have the outlines of Fraser’s foreign policy, but I have no feel for how the new government actually understands things. We haven’t seen much of Liberal leaders in Beijing apart from Snedden.

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