50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH CHINA

This is the text of remarks made by Nicholas Whitlam at the Reception given by HE Ambassador Xiao Qian on 9 December 2022 at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Canberra.

Among the many initiatives and reforms that my father quickly introduced on being elected PM in December 1972, one with the most enduring importance was the establishment of diplomatic relations with China.  It was something he had been publicly advocating for nearly twenty years.  Once he was in power, it took him just nineteen days to make it happen.

I was living in London at the time, a serious young banker working for JP Morgan, and I was interested in what would become of the Sydney branch of the Bank of China.  The bank had been granted a rare foreign banking licence during World War II.  The Chinese Government changed hands on 1 October 1949, and the conservative Menzies government was elected on 10 December of that year.  Somehow the rebel authorities in Taipei gained control of the Bank of China’s Sydney branch – and so it stayed for the next twenty-three years, as the Australian Government continued the bizarre fiction that the Chinese government was based in Taiwan.

But Australia’s own Liberation on 2 December 1972 did not return the branch to its rightful owners.  The branch quickly stopped trading and closed.  Ownership of its Sydney premises were transferred to the former branch manager.  All this  resulted in the revocation of the bank’s licence - as the authorities in Taipei must have anticipated, and hoped for.   And so the legitimate Bank of China did not return to Australia until Treasurer Keating re-opened the country to foreign banks in the mid-1980s.

We all have our stories on how China has changed our lives. This personal anecdote is barely a footnote to the fundamental changes that came in the relationship between our two countries in the years since 1972. 

Back in 1971, when my father famously led the ALP delegation to China as Leader of the Opposition, there were two items on their agenda: discussing the possibility of establishing diplomatic relations – and wheat sales.

No-one talks about wheat sales now! 

(Wheat represented about 90% of our exports to China in 1972, which then totalled the grand sum of about $100 million.) 

I need hardly set out how the trade between our two countries has flourished in the last fifty years.  No doubt others will do that today.  Suffice it to say that - for some time - China has been far and away Australia’s most important trading partner.   

Of equal importance are the cultural and educational ties that have developed over the last fifty years.:

·      Mandarin is the second most spoken language in Australia after English. 

·      People of Chinese ancestry represent nearly 6% of our population. 

·      Australia is one of the most popular destinations for Chinese students wishing to study overseas, and

·      China is a key destination for Australia’s New Colombo Plan. 

·      Prior to the COVID pandemic, China was our largest source of inbound tourists. 

With the pandemic seemingly in abatement, we can hope that these interactions will return to their earlier levels.

So my family and I rejoice in the Chinese proverb:

“When you draw water from the well, you must not forget those who dug the well.”

…

By 2014 our political leaders agreed to describe the relationship between our two countries as a “comprehensive strategic partnership.” 

There is no point, however, in ignoring the fact that in recent years the relationship has been subject to decay, neglect, and some conflict - and that, in many circles, China has been demonised.  As have people of Chinese extraction.  I deeply regret this. 

My father always said that Australia should not be asked to choose between China and the USA. 

We do not always share common values or interests - not with China, nor with the USA.  But we do have many common interests and  common problems, issues on which we agree.  At the highest level, doing something about climate change is the most obvious and immediate such issue. Without ignoring those matters on which we disagree we can make progress on other things.  Because, you know,  most of us can chew gum and walk briskly at the same time.

There is every sign that our new government is trying to put the government-to-government relationship back on a stable footing.  That is what diplomacy is about.  The recent meeting between our Prime Minister and President Xi  apparently went well.  President Xi graciously opined that China’s relationship with Australia “is worth cherishing”.  It’s a sentiment many Australians still feel towards Britain.  Cherishing.  You cannot be much more welcoming than that.

No-one could pretend that our relationship with China is as deep and broadly-based as that we have with Britain or even the USA.  But, in due course, it must be.  

Fifty years ago my father’s riding instructions to our first ambassador, Stephen FitzGerald, were clear:

“We seek a relationship with China based on friendship, cooperation and mutual trust, comparable with that which we have, or seek, with other major powers.”

That is still our challenge

MALCOLM TURNBULL

This is a review by Nicholas Whitlam of Malcolm Turnbull’s autobiography “A Bigger Picture” (Hardy Grant Books, 2020), published in The Weekend Australian 25-26 April 2020

When Malcolm Bligh Turnbull was dumped as Prime Minister he joined his namesake Captain William Bligh in having been twice removed by his subordinates.  Turnbull spends much of this book telling us who betrayed him on those two occasions, but he gets the reasons for their insubordination wrong.

 He has always been good at personal PR.  After Malcolm was dumped as Leader of the Opposition in 2009, he worked up a narrative that he had lost the job because of policy differences over climate change; it was certainly the subject of dispute in the Opposition, but the fundamental reason he had to go was because his colleagues were sick of him.  Contemporaneous sources confirm this.   Now, in this book and in countless interviews, we learn that, again, his downfall was because he was standing firm on developing a rational climate change policy – this time as Prime Minister - and that loony right-wingers opposed this.  True.  But that's not why his colleagues removed him; they removed him because they'd given up on him as a winner.

 Turnbull takes this further.  He now says that these same right-wingers wanted him off the scene because he was set to win the 2019 election.  Yet in the book he has Kerry Stokes quoting Rupert Murdoch:  "We have to get rid of Malcolm…He can't win, he can't beat Shorten."  You can't have it both ways.

 Malcolm can exercise considerable charm.  ABC viewers will have seen this on the Q&A program, where he enjoyed a residency for several years.  Charm is not, however, part of his DNA.  Turnbull uses it as part of a transaction.  He is inconsistent and, as his colleagues have found out over the years, he is inauthentic.  He lacks sincerity and is untrustworthy; according to the book, this last quality is one he shared with many of his parliamentary peers.  He is wily but not wise.

 The truth is that he is very difficult to work with.  People only find this out when they have to do so.  He had four chiefs of staff as PM.  Why has he lost so many supporters over the years?  It's because he lacks empathy.  Some, perhaps many, of those people who have worked with him have come to dislike him.

 The best parts of the book are when he talks of his family.  The book id dedicated to his wife, Lucy.  He paints his father, Bruce Turnbull, as something of a secular saint and a great single father.  There is one amusing anecdote involving Bruce Gyngell and Bruce's running mates - but we could have done with more of this, because his father was a particular Eastern Suburbs knock-about type, more Bondi or Maroubra than Vaucluse, and there must be more.  Malcolm doesn't pull his punches with his mother, Coral.  She simply left him, and Bruce; and Bruce kept this from him for years.  Lucy, of course, is a constant presence.  No-one doubts his love for her and how important she has been in his life.  He does not need to sugar coat it with the sort of guff we heard on TV this week – "I have always had a stronger sense of Lucy and me than I do of me", and "When I was a kid, I used to sometimes think of who I would marry…".  In the book itself, he does bring us into some intimate – even touching - moments with his children and grandchildren, particularly with his daughter Daisy.

 "A Bigger Picture" is not an easy read.  As a student Malcolm taught himself to touch type at great speed.  It is a most impressive skill, but it does not serve him well in the book.  He has allowed himself to go on too much, and could have done with a tough editor.   And he's been indiscrete.  Surely he could have kept the private views of Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove to himself, and no doubt former President Barrack Obama would not be happy with the disclosure of their private conversations.  These add spice and interest, of course, as do his recollections of his conversations with Scott Morrison, Peter Costello and Tony Shepherd.  Many of them ring true.  The tone is sometimes unnecessarily self-righteous.  He can be condescending and, notwithstanding excellent advice from his father on the subject, he belittles colleagues.  He is sanctimonious too; Malcolm writes about his "office bonking" ban, but people who knew him as a young man find this hypocritical.  As most readers would hope, the book is littered with names dropped and stories of his engagement with the rich and famous:  Kerry Packer, of course, plus Robert Maxwell, Robert Holmes à Court and Alan Bond, and his political pals David Cameron, John Key and the yet-to-be-indicted Benjamin Netanyahu.  

 There are omissions, of course, which is one of the good reasons for writing an autobiography or memoir.  Yet this would have been the opportunity to disclose the contents of his written agreement with the Nationals when he became PM; what did he agree to on climate change and same-sex marriage?  He writes at length about the Tourang bid for Fairfax, yet he has always been coy about the documents he handed over to Peter Westaway that cold Kirribilli night - and is silent on the subject in this book.  He writes of Lucy's role as Lord Mayor and how she succeeded Frank Sartor, but he does not disclose his and Kerry Packer's important role in financing Sartor's campaign.  He writes about their dogs and of Coral's love of cats, but we learn nothing about his torrid correspondence with Nessie the cat.  Does he have a deep religious faith?  Why did he convert to Catholicism? 

To be fair, Malcolm does include some pretty savage condemnations of himself and his roles in various matters; such as Justice Hunt's calling his activity in the Goanna affair an abuse of process and an attempt "to poison the fountain of justice", and during the republic debates, Tony Abbott's characterisation of him as "arrogant, rude and obnoxious – a filthy rich merchant banker, out of touch with real Australians, he is the Gordon Gekko of Australian politics".  Perhaps he wears these statements as badges of honour.

 I worked with Malcolm for three years.  (He might have it that I worked for him.)  We set up the investment bank Whitlam Turnbull together; as with Turnbull McWilliam, the law firm he had established with his great friend Bruce McWilliam, there was good reason for the firm's name not to list the principals in alphabetical order.  Neville Wran was the chairman, and we had enormous success.  Malcolm has convinced himself that he brought in most of the business; he says so in this book.

 Investment bankers fall into two broad categories, those who are relationship-driven and those who are transaction-driven.  The two best I ever came across were an American PhD in anthropology and a British gent who would always question the merits of a prospective transaction, making sure it was the right thing for his client to do; they were relationship-driven.  They were trusted advisors, a posture I preferred.  Malcolm was decidedly in the second category.  Trump-like, it was all about winning: go for the jugular; do whatever it takes; if you see a head, kick it.  And he was good at it.

 Malcolm writes "Nick Whitlam became unhappy.  Neville and I never understood why."  Not true.  Neville knew.  Everyone in the firm knew.  It was because of his unwillingness to work as a team, his unwillingness to think beyond the transaction at hand, gross rudeness to subordinates, his inconsiderateness and his discourtesy, and a single-minded inclination to resolve conflicts by intimidation and confrontation.  Neville stayed with him when we split; he was always closer to Malcolm than to me.  We had some very talented people at Whitlam Turnbull.  Most left the firm when I did.  Dr Kerry Schott bailed out immediately, as did a young Rhodes Scholar whose parting shot was:  "I know, Malcolm, you think that you are the smartest person in the room here at Whitlam Turnbull; let me include you into a secret: you are alone in that belief."

 Malcolm Turnbull came to public life with a trinity of public policy positions:  the need for Australia to become a republic, the need to address climate change, and the right of same-sex couples to marry.  Each subject is covered extensively in the book.  What went wrong?  Something happened after he lost the leadership in 2009.  For his comeback he went on a strict diet and lost weight.  This was the fit, new Malcolm.  A New Age Malcolm.  

 He was a different person as PM to the solicitor, investment banker and Leader of the Opposition.  Either he made a deliberate decision to be a different person or he became one via some psychological metamorphosis.  Whatever the process, it didn't work.  He did nothing on the republic, failed to get anything done on climate change – indeed it seems he was obliged to do nothing in his 2015 agreement with the Nationals - and he only got same-sex marriage up after an unnecessary plebiscite that delayed the parliamentary vote and caused great anguish and hurt to the very people most affected by the reform.  He goes to great lengths to justify these failures in this book, but his arguments are unconvincing.  True reformers find solutions to problems.  They proselytise; they campaign.  Not the New Malcolm.  If it didn't get traction, he moved on (rather like Rudd).  The New Malcolm seemed to have lost all fight.

 He lists his achievements as reforming corporate and personal tax, legalising same-sex marriage, establishing Snowy Hydro 2.0, the Melbourne airport rail link, starting Western Sydney airport, keeping the TPP alive, standing up to Donald Trump, reforms to childcare and investment in the ADF.  By his own lights, each was an achievement and a success.  Malcolm tries hard to justify his NBN intervention, and also his quick rejection of an indigenous Voice to Parliament - which is strange and sad, given his and Lucy's  generous support for Aboriginal initiatives in Redfern.  He has a good chapter on Gonski 2.0, where he did make serious progress.  We read little about refugees, housing affordability, youth unemployment or (again strangely, given his genuine interest in the subject) innovation. 

 Few have the privilege to be Prime Minister.  I expected Malcolm Turnbull to be a good and successful PM.  After the horrors of his predecessor I even hoped for his success.  He had been a success as a solicitor and as an investment banker.  As Prime Minister, however, he was a failure.

ON CHINA-AUSTRALIA RELATIONS

Remarks by Nicholas Whitlam at the roundtable discussion organised by the Consulate-General of the People’s Republic of China to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the reform and opening up China; Shangri-La Hotel, Sydney, 20 December 2018

There is no point in ignoring the fact: in recent years the relationship between Australia and China has been subject to decay, neglect – and attack.  I deeply regret this.

 In 1973, Stephen Fitzgerald, Australia’s first Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, was given these riding instructions by his PM: “we seek a relationship with China based on friendship, cooperation and mutual trust, comparable with that which we have, or seek, with other major powers”

There were times since when we were on the way to achieving this goal.  But not now.  Not in 2018.

Today we are rightly celebrating many of the advances China has made in the forty years since Deng Xiaoping’s revolutionary free market initiatives that began in 1978.  For Australia the reforms resulted in experiences that are part of our everyday life:  unprecedented growth in trade between our two countries – growth that no one could have anticipated - and, in the education sphere, we have now what is, in effect, a permanent population of Chinese students. Every day visiting Chinese students rub shoulders with their Australian peers – and many of these Australians are ethnically Chinese.  We have engaged with China in a dramatic, if incomplete, way.

By coincidence, my own journey with China started that same year.  1978.  I was working in Hong Kong with Paribas – Banque de Paris et des Pays-bas: we had raised the first Eurodollar loan in which the Bank of China had ever participated, but I had yet to “cross the border” into China proper.  My wife and I and four friends took the old Kowloon to Canton railway from the Kowloon railway station next to the Star Ferry.  At Lo Wu we decanted, carried our bags across the old two-track bridge that braced the Sham Chun River and, after passing the inspection of customs and immigration – and the steely gaze of the toughest and fittest looking PLA cadres you can imagine – we took our seats in the historic train carriages, antimacassars and all, that conveyed us from Shenzhen to Guangzhou. In those days, 1978,  Shenzhen was literally a fishing village.

Over the next two weeks or so - in May 1978 - we “did” Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai and Guilin, and we were treated royally.  As a son of the man who established our relationship with modern China, we were enjoying the fruits of the Chinese proverb: “When you draw water from the well, you must not forget those who dug the well.”

There was no advertising save the giant blown–up visages of Chairman Mao and the now-forgotten Huang Guofung. In Shanghai I discovered the Australian connections of the Kwok family at the Wing On department store, Ying Piu at Sincere and Choy Hing at the Sun Company; we went to the Red House and enjoyed their famously decadent orange soufflé.  Everyone, male and female alike, wore Mao jackets in green or grey.

I’ve been back many times. My particular interest right now is in the creation of a new investment fund, the Generations Fund, which will invest in new projects in China and investments outside China that are consistent with the Belt & Road Initiative.

My father always said that Australia should not be asked to choose between China and the US.  I’m not sure that still holds.  We do not always share common values – with China, or the US. We do not share the widespread opposition to universal health care in the United States, nor their gun culture, nor indeed their money politics.  And we do not believe in a one Party state, and we value media free from government interference. 

But we do share common interests.  And it is these that we must seek out.  There is plenty of time.  (As Zhou Enlai is alleged to have responded when asked about the significance of the French Revolution; “It is too early to say.”)

 We can say “No”.  We can advise and warn.  No one respects a pussy cat.  Just as few respect a bully.  We are a middle-sized educated society and China respects that.  We will disagree with China from time to time - just as we ought to disagree with the US when we do in fact disagree with that nation. Today our relationship with the US is sycophantic; it was not always so.  Even in the Menzies era.

To understand each other better – and to influence each other - we need to engage better: more visits, both ways, speaking the language, learning about one another’s culture and history.  No one could pretend that our relationship with China is as deep and broadly-based as that we have with the US or Britain.  But, in due course, it must be.  To repeat the instructions given to Stephen FitzGerald more than forty years ago:

“we seek a relationship with China based on friendship, cooperation and mutual trust, comparable with that which we have, or seek, with other major powers.”

That is still our challenge.