The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 13

new century 1969 CABINET PAPERS THE AGE SATURDAY I JANUARY 2000 $li oft- IS Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon, 15 people died in bushfires near Geelong, the winds of the Cold War whistled all the way to Antarctica and protesters rioted against the Vietnam War. It was 1969. John Gorton was Prime Minister and got into hot water for squiring a 19-year-old woman to a party at the US embassy. The Age of Aquarius arrived in Australia in the form of the musical Hair. The maddest share-market rush for a single Australian stock pushed the price of Poseidon to a mighty $185 for a single share making waiters and cab drivers paper millionaires.

The HMAS Melbourne sliced in two its second destroyer. This time, 73 Americans lost their lives when the aircraft carrier collided with the USS Frank E. Evans in the South China Sea. Rain Lover won its second Melbourne Cup. TONY WRIGHT Gorton gave nod to Vietnam exit planned nuciear power piant Icy Cold War Australia in 1969 was worried that it would lose its foothold in Antarctica to the USSR and quickly blocked efforts by the superpower to set up a weather-data processing centre on Australian-claimed territory.

Australia decided to offer its Mawson base as a centre for meteorological data processing, despite there being "no real justification" for it, according to the Cabinet papers. Fears were expressed that the USSR would set up a network to communicate with ships and aircraft over a large part of the hemisphere. Migrant rights Only a "do-gooder" could support giving non-European migrants the same right to become Australian citizens as Europeans, the Prime Minister's secretary, Cyrus Hewitt, wrote in 1969. It was three years since the first "well-qualified" non-European migrants were allowed to settle permanently. The then Immigration Minister, Mr Billy Snedden, said non-Europeans should be given the same rights as Europeans.

Protest crackdown Australia was poised for an unprecedented crackdown on civil liberties to quell civilian unrest during the Vietnam conflict, but the plans were shelved in the face of a forthcoming election. The wary Gorton Cabinet opted instead to issue a threat during the 1969 election campaign to deal "firmly with instances of violent assembly" rather than present the law for public debate. The proposals included making it an offence to gather within "200 feet" of a consulate, put up banners attacking the Government of another country and to shout slogans that would bring "the government of that country or its policies into People could be arrested for staying at a demonstration for more than 10 minutes after being ordered to leave by police. JANINE MACDONALD "However much the US professes to rest its approach to withdrawals on developments mentioned (the level of enemy activity; progress of the Paris peace talks; abilities of the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces, and the safety of allied troops) we cannot be certain that the timing of tranches and their dimensions will be determined by objective assessments on these scores," says a briefing paper to Cabinet dated 5 December 1969. Although Australia was clearly second-guessing President Nixon, the briefing paper none the less says it would be "unwise to give the impression that any decision we might take on our own withdrawal would be conditional upon the existence of a systematic long-term American plan that foreclosed an independent Australian Meanwhile, a secret cable from the Australian Embassy in Washington to Canberra which was also presented to Cabinet says the President planned to announce a reduction of 40,000 troops before Christmas.

Cabinet resolved that the Prime Minister, Mr John Gorton, should write to President Nixon to urge the US to make provision for Australian withdrawals, while conveying "Australia's appreciation and understanding of the efforts which the United States had made and was making in In another foreign policy development revealed in the 1969 Cabinet papers, the Defence Minister, Mr Allen Fairhall, informed his fellow ministers of a US proposal for the establishment near Woomera of a joint space communications centre. By PAUL DALEY FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT CANBERRA At the height of the Vietnam War in late 1969, the Gorton Government started planning the withdrawal of Australian troops from the conflict amid the realisation thai the United States President, Mr Richard Nixon, wanted "to get out of the war due to domestic political pressures. Top-secret Cabinet papers released today by the National Archives of Australia show how tentative the Australian Cabinet was about confronting President Nixon over plans to withdraw US troops from the war. But the papers also show that Australia faced a dilemma: it wanted its troops to follow the Americans out but feared that if Australian troops pulled out in great numbers it would force the Americans into further withdrawals. Cabinet agreed that any large-scale, rapid US withdrawal could possibly endanger Australian security.

The papers also indicate that while Australia was a willing participant in the war to bring the so-called program of "Vietnam-isation" to the divided South-East Asian country, the Nixon administration was more than willing to leave Australia in the dark over its withdrawal plans. By BRENDAN NICHOLSON CANBERRA The Gorton Government gave Commonwealth approval for construction of a nuclear power station at Jervis Bay on the New South Wales south coast as a pilot project for more reactors to be built by the states. It could also have produced material to be used in Australian nuclear weapons. The Cabinet papers reveal that the then Prime Minister, Mr lohn Gorton, saw development of a $131.3 million, 500-megawatt nuclear power station on Commonwealth land as an opportunity for self-sufficiency as long as it used Australian uranium. Approval was given subject to the agreement of the NSW Government.

Cabinet considered building the station in the Canberra area but rejected that in favor of Jervis Bay. A historian, Mr Ian Hancock, said the project might well have proceeded but Cabinet later became concerned that the Federal Government would be seen to undermine the states' roles as suppliers of electricity. The main concern was not civilian safety, he said. As well, the then Treasurer, Mr William McMahon, pointed out that the Commonwealth stood to lose about $100 million on the project. When the Minister for National Development, Mr David Fairbairn, argued that Australia was one of the few industrialised nations without nuclear power, Mr McMahon said there was a good reason for that nuclear power could not compete with Australia's abundant supplies of cheap coal with which to generate electricity.

And when Mr Fairbairn argued that the project had long-term defence implications, Mr McMahon said the cost of developing nuclear weapons would dwarf that of building the power station and should be considered separately. Mr Fairbairn's submission said: "A factor to be considered in siting assessment is the need to dispose of radioactive waste that might arise as the result of an accident. "Such accidents are highly improbable. Their effects are small and controllable but adverse public reactions must be anticipated should radioactivity enter a stream leading to catchment areas for potable water." Concerns were also raised that once the power station began feeding electricity into the NSW grid, everyone might want one. tn HOLMESGLEN INSTITUTE OF TAFE SIRICCO AUSTRALIA ON COLLINS, SHOP 508, LEVEL 5, 260 COLLINS ST.

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