Tiberius with a Telephone

by Patrick Mullins

  While upset, McMahon soon recovered his equanimity and by the end of the month was telling the governor-general that his ministry was ‘working together very well’.69 Cabinet business was ‘now proceeding more smoothly than ever before, and there was no back log of delayed submissions’.70 Certainly, there had been a lot of work done: among other things, cabinet had resolved that Australia would join the OECD; had approved the site for the new National Gallery and a scheme to provide $30m per year for rural reconstruction; and progress on self-government for Papua New Guinea was accelerating.71 Moreover, McMahon was also now ready to rename the Department of the Vice-President of the Executive Council to which Hasluck had objected. It would now be the Department of Environment, Aborigines and the Arts, and its minister would be Peter Howson.72 The appointment was a reward for an ally and vindication for Howson, who McMahon believed had been treated unfairly during the VIP affair. ‘You ought to read the file,’ McMahon told Hasluck. ‘It’s a shocker. Other people should have taken the blame.’73

  But Howson’s was very much a chance appointment. McMahon had been vacillating for a month over whether to bring him off the backbench at all. ‘Had a quick talk with Bill McMahon this evening,’ Howson wrote on 29 April. ‘He tells me now that he doesn’t think that he will make me the twenty-seventh Minister.’ A week later, McMahon rang to offer Howson a ministry, only to rescind the offer the next day.74 On 23 May, McMahon rang to offer a ministry once more, but delayed announcing it until the following week.75 Finally, on 27 May, McMahon announced it. But, as Howson recorded:

  Unfortunately he forgot to tell me to which portfolio, and … we never got around to that particular part of the subject … I got back to Kensington Road just in time to hear the 4 o’clock news, at the same time as Peter Lawler rang to tell me of my appointment. Not only have I got Environment, Aboriginals and the Arts [sic] but also twelve other important departments or committees. It’s certainly going to keep me busy.76

  Rumour abounded of Howson’s displeasure at his new portfolio; according to a popular story, when he found out the precise details he snarled that ‘the little bastard gave me trees, boongs, and poofters’. Whatever the truth of his initial reaction, by the following week, Howson was writing that McMahon ‘had been wise’ in giving him this ‘wonderful opportunity’.77 No doubt Howson was aware of the irony when he discovered that his new permanent head was none other than Lenox Hewitt.

  Howson’s appointment came at a precipitous time in Aboriginal affairs. On 27 April, Justice Richard Blackburn had ruled that the Yolngu people, living in Yirrkala land in the Gove Peninsula, in the Northern Territory, had no right to prevent mining by the North Australian Bauxite and Alumina Company (Nabalco) on their traditional lands. Their claim — that they held a ‘communal native title’ to the land that the court should recognise — was rejected. Blackburn found that native title was not part of Australian law and that, if it had existed, any native-title rights had been extinguished. But while Blackburn made clear that he was interpreting the law as it stood, his judgment made an implicit plea that there were grounds for the government to change the law:

  I am very clearly of the opinion, upon the evidence, that the social rules and customs of the plaintiffs cannot possibly be dismissed as lying on the other side of an unbridgeable gulf. The evidence shows a subtle and elaborate system highly adapted to the country in which the people led their lives, which provided a stable order of society and was remarkably free from the vagaries of personal whim or influence. If ever a system could be called ‘a government of laws, and not of men’, it is that shown in the evidence before me.78

  The ruling caused an outcry, and thrust land rights for Aborigines onto the political agenda, a point confirmed when representatives of the Yolngu plaintiffs petitioned McMahon on the matter,79 and by Blackburn’s decision to write a confidential memorandum to cabinet urging that a system of Aboriginal land rights be created. To Nugget Coombs, now chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Affairs (CAA), these circumstances and McMahon’s succession to the prime ministership seemed an opportunity for real progress, especially after the frustrations he had experienced under Gorton. ‘While McMahon knew as little about Aborigines as Gorton he was a kindly and humane person and I had found him open-minded and easy to work with,’ Coombs wrote later. ‘I was aware that he would welcome help from me in a personal way and I believed that a deal could be done.’80 Flattery was not beneath Coombs: within two hours of McMahon’s becoming prime minister, the chairman of the CAA was in his office, offering ‘a vision of a historical role for himself in Aboriginal affairs and the Arts’. How did McMahon react? ‘Mr McMahon,’ said Barrie Dexter, executive member of the CAA, ‘was sympathetic and attracted, and asked Dr Coombs to commit his thoughts to paper.’81

  McMahon’s subsequent decision to remove responsibility for Aboriginal affairs from Billy Wentworth was not a blow, in Coombs’s eyes, since Wentworth seemed to have little power within the ministry. But moving responsibility for Aboriginal affairs out of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and into its own department was a disappointment, since it distanced the prime minister from the issue.82 Trying to salvage the situation, Coombs managed to strike a deal with McMahon: in exchange for agreeing to act in ‘a kind of advisory role’ and partnering the prime minister in games of squash, Coombs would have a direct line of responsibility to McMahon, should he require it. ‘Without some new source of political initiative we were unlikely to fare better with the new Ministry, especially if Aboriginal Affairs was to be entrusted to some junior minister,’ Coombs wrote later. ‘Only the authority of the Prime Minister could achieve a significant change of direction.’83

  An address to a conference of state ministers responsible for Aboriginal affairs on 23 April — before the Blackburn decision — had augured well. Using a draft prepared by Coombs, Wentworth read a statement in McMahon’s name that declared that the goals of the McMahon government’s policy were to encourage and assist the preservation and development of Aboriginal culture, language, traditions, and arts, ‘so that they can become living elements in the diverse culture of the Australian society’. The statement dismissed the words ‘assimilation’ and ‘integration’ as inappropriate descriptors of government policy, and promised to consider appropriate policy for Aborigines and the land, economic development, and erasing discrimination against Aborigines from the statute books.84

  But the ruling on the Gove Peninsula case was a test for how these words would be translated into practice. To the public criticism of the judgment, McMahon asked Coombs and the Council for Aboriginal Affairs to draft measures that would address the land-rights issues. It was a heady list that the council recommended exploring:

  […] policies designed to give Aborigines protection for the use and benefit of reserve lands for ceremonial, religious, recreational and productive purposes; to establish a Land Fund to acquire land for Aboriginal groups outside reserves; to enable Aborigines to participate profitably in mining ventures[;] to be compensated for disturbance of their traditional way of life; and to provide grants-in-aid for Aboriginal commercial enterprises.85

  The scope of those measures soon brought up tensions with the Country Party, the bureaucracy in the Department of the Interior (now responsible for administration of the Northern Territory), and the states. Cabinet ministers were sceptical of the CAA and suspicious that it had an agenda; as Snedden was to say in August of one of its papers, ‘It is got together by people with strong views for Aborigines, but are not in normal character of [the] p[ublic] s[ervice].’86 When the measures were referred to an inter-departmental committee for comment, it became clear that any action on them would be hard-pressed to succeed without McMahon’s personal intervention.

  Equally unexpected matters also reared up. In the three years preceding McMahon’s succession, the opprobrium directed towards South Africa’s apartheid regime had begun to be targeted at its sporting teams. But,
attracted by the prospect of crowds and exciting cricket, and undeterred by the possibility that similar protests might occur in Australia, the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket (ACB) invited South Africa to send its cricket team to Australia for a tour in October 1971.87 Another tour, by the South African rugby union team, was scheduled to precede the cricket tour in June and July.

  Sir Donald Bradman, the chair of the ACB, had approached Gorton to learn his attitude to the invitation. Gorton told him that his government had no wish to prevent a South African cricketing tour taking place. When Bradman reapproached the government after McMahon took office, the assurance was repeated. McMahon had good reason to go along with it: a Gallup poll taken in March 1971 found that almost 85 per cent of Australians thought the South African cricketers and rugby players should come. Moreover, the tours enjoyed the support of most of McMahon’s party: Menzies had suggested that the English, in cancelling the 1970 tour, had bowed ‘to the threats of a noisy minority’ and denied people ‘their lawful right to go and see a match, whoever is playing’.88 Why would McMahon get involved or cause a fuss?

  It was in this context that when the South African government decided that there would be no blacks selected in its teams, McMahon wrote to South African prime minister, B.J. ‘John’ Vorster, to register his disappointment, but nothing else. As he told the House on the same day, ‘We believe that sport should be left to the sporting associations themselves.’89 His view was that apartheid was a matter for the South Africans — not him and not Australia. As he told Bunting privately:

  This is a question internal to South Africa and for the people there, including the sporting people, to settle. The teams are doing what they can. It may be that the people are not in favour of Government policy in this respect. We believe that the policy in respect of the teams is unfortunate, but it is nevertheless a South African matter, and not our matter.90

  A cabinet decision affirmed the stance: ‘Sporting exchanges between countries should be conducted with as little political interference as possible.’91 Fears from South African authorities that the tour might embarrass the government were waved away with notes that McMahon had expressed his attitude publicly.92

  However fervently McMahon might wish otherwise, sports were entwined with politics. The protest campaign in England that had led to cancellation of the South African tour in 1970 proved it. Additional proof of the growing abhorrence of apartheid was evident in the UN’s decision to deem 1971 the International Year for Action to Combat Racism and Race Discrimination. Nonetheless, McMahon was not willing to change his mind, even when the UN secretariat unit on apartheid circulated a paper pointing out that Australia had never expressed concern about or opposition to apartheid’s practice at an international sporting level.93 Nor was McMahon willing to allow measures that might compromise the government’s position: he reiterated his abhorrence of apartheid, but Australia would abstain from voting on a UN resolution that condemned its application in sport.94

  As the June rugby tour and the October cricket tour approached, the popular and political pressure for overcoming McMahon’s position began to grow. Unions imposed so-called black bans on the South African teams, swearing they would not supply services to them.95 On 13 May, the ACTU, led by Bob Hawke, pressured South Africa for a ‘non-discriminatory’ selection policy in its touring sporting teams and threatened to ‘withhold their services from any activities directly associated with these proposed tours’.96 Hawke, who had won the ACTU presidency on a platform that argued unions should be involved in social-justice issues as well as industrial ones, subsequently asked McMahon to cancel the rugby tour. ‘Should these representations prove unsuccessful,’ the ACTU executive decided, ‘we advise our affiliated unions to take whatever action is necessary as an act of conscience on their part to withhold their services from any activities directly associated with these proposed tours.’97 It was enough to prompt the president of Australian Rugby Union (ARU), Charles Blunt, to seek a meeting with McMahon to discuss ways of overcoming the boycott. But the message from the ARU was consistent: while it was determined to press ahead with the tour, it would reconsider it if the government advised otherwise.98

  By late June, McMahon was saying that the government had made its decisions. ‘We are not going to be beaten here,’ he told Bunting.99 He came through for Blunt with an announcement that the government would make RAAF transport available to move the Springboks around Australia, should it be required.100 It was a decision made against the advice of the public service, but McMahon had now seen that there was political mileage to be made from intervening.101 The rugby tour, McMahon said, should not be ‘prevented or prejudiced by some groups within the trade union movement’.102 The Labor Party’s support for cancelling the tour gave McMahon licence to link the ALP with the protesters, whom he called a ‘force hell bent on tyranny’.103 However attractive it might have seemed tactically, the decision was plainly a strategic mistake. It had the effect of aligning McMahon and the government entirely with South Africa, as Whitlam pointed out,104 while simultaneously undercutting his earlier statements that sport should not mix with politics. As Hawke asked, ‘How more completely can you bring politics into sport?’105 It also led to the easy quip that the RAAF should be known as the ‘Royal Apartheid Air Force’.106

  The protest campaign was well prepared, particularly in the eastern states. In Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide, activists harassed the South African team and interrupted matches, provoking violent clashes with police and fans. Premiers across the country were loud in their criticism: Henry Bolte said the campaign was the work of ‘louts and larrikins’,107 and in Queensland, on 14 July, premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen declared a state of emergency to crack down on protests. That action gave the campaign against the tour another facet to attract followers — the importance of civil liberties. It also became linked with Aboriginal rights when activists decided to connect the protests against apartheid with awareness of racial discrimination endured by Aboriginals in Australia.

  The tenor of the protest campaign, its successes and failures, as well as the language used by McMahon and the state premiers, led some to wonder whether it had been deliberately orchestrated as a lead-in to an election. As journalist David Solomon wrote on 6 July, the tour had ‘turned into just the kind of riotous clash between demonstrators and police that a proponent of a law-and-order election would dream about — or try to bring about’. Publicly, McMahon speculated about calling an election, musing that he could win an additional five seats in a campaign framed around the question of who governed Australia; privately, he was circumspect.108

  It was not to be. The highly visible protests, the harsh treatment meted out by police, Bjelke-Petersen’s over-zealous reaction, and McMahon’s provision of RAAF aircraft — not used, in the end — combined to diminish support for further South African tours, and weakened the government’s standing in the polls. Press criticism almost certainly played a role, with Age journalist Bruce Grant writing that McMahon, by pursuing ‘shrewd politics’ and ‘bad government’, had opted to divide Australians rather than unite them.109

  And there was the cricket tour to consider. In August, with the South African rugby team safely departed from Australia, Bradman approached McMahon again seeking advice and views.110 After fobbing off the cricketing great, McMahon took the matter to cabinet. Demonstrations on the scale of those during the rugby tour would be near ruinous in a Test match: the length of games and style of play would be easily disrupted by protesters. If the tour went ahead, the Commonwealth would almost certainly have to intervene. Was the cabinet willing to do that?

  McMahon was of the opinion that the government gained ‘politically’ from the tour. ‘Are we to allow [a] small anarchist mob to run the community?’ he asked.111 But while his ministers were sympathetic to this point, they thought the government could not go through another furore. Anthony put this forthrightly. ‘Don’t want a repetit
ion of [the] rugby [tour]. Did well with public, but public doesn’t want a repetition.’112 Don Chipp thought pragmatism was paramount: ‘It is the practicality [of the tour],’ he said.113 Plainly, the easiest option would be to recommend to Bradman that the tour be cancelled. But to reverse a position in this way would have been an embarrassment for McMahon. Therefore, cabinet opted to remain neutral, and leave the Board of Control, already split on the question, to judge for itself.114

  Bradman was not much impressed by cabinet’s decision to make no decision. He had spoken with all those who would have to stand by him, should a tour go ahead. He had attended the rugby test match between the Wallabies and Springboks in Sydney. ‘The ground was protected by barbed-wire barricades, and the police were ready for things such as smoke bombs and flares,’ Bradman said later. ‘But the barricades didn’t stop the protesters. They invaded the arena.’115 It was no good. The conditions were impossible. Bradman persuaded the Board of Control to cancel the tour.116

  When the decision was announced, McMahon made shows of sympathy and invoked the ‘great majority’ who doubtless wished the tour to proceed. Whitlam was derisory: ‘Well played,’ he said.117

  There would be no more tours until South Africa chose its sporting teams on a non-racial basis.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The Crumbling Pillars (II)

  1971

  Then there was Vietnam. Again, pursuing a strategy to quieten conflict and solve political problems, McMahon continued efforts to withdraw from the intractable conflict. In March, Gorton went to Saigon for meetings with South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu and the commander of American forces, General Creighton Adams, to discuss a withdrawal of Australian troops that had been approved by cabinet while Gorton was prime minister. On 30 March, McMahon was able to announce that Australia’s forces would be reduced to 6,000 men within the next four to six months. He tried to dress the announcement up in terms that suggested Australian troops had made a difference. ‘It is undeniable that there has been satisfactory progress towards the objective of establishing the circumstances in which South Vietnam can determine its own future,’ he told the House.