Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 2 May this year the Minister for Foreign Affairs Mr Downer had an article published in the Australian newspaper, entitled: ‘Labor has a history of blind pacifism’. The article claimed that new evidence revealed in a book by Bob Wurth showed that John Curtin, the former Prime Minister, was an appeaser. I quote from Mr Downer’s article:

Bob Wurth’s new book, Saving Australia: Curtin’s Secret Peace with Japan, confirms what some of us have argued for some time: that until he became prime minister in 1941, John Curtin was not prepared to confront tyrannical regimes. This has been the pattern of Labor leaders since World War I.

Wurth reveals previously unpublished documents from Japan that show Curtin negotiated a secret peace deal with the Japanese in April 1941, just before the outbreak of war in the Pacific. Under the deal, Australia would give Japan access to iron ore mines in exchange for a guarantee that Japan would not attack us. At the time of the deal, Curtin was Opposition leader but was only months from becoming prime minister. The war in Europe was already advanced, with Australia a full participant.

It is quite clear from reading this article that the minister has grossly misrepresented Bob Wurth’s excellent book. In his obsessive campaign to denigrate the reputation of Australia’s heroic wartime leader, and probably greatest ever prime minister, the foreign minister Mr Downer distorts facts and history, draws erroneous conclusions and ignores the substantial evidence that contradicts his biased analysis.

As the quote says, the basis of Mr Downer’s argument is the revelations by Bob Wurth about a supposed secret peace deal negotiated by John Curtin with Japan in April 1941. It should be noted that at this stage John Curtin was not the Prime Minister and he was the opposition leader. John Curtin did not become Prime Minister until October 1941, yet this deal was supposedly negotiated in secret in April 1941.

I also note Mr Downer says that this happened ‘just before the outbreak of war in the Pacific’. It may seem a pedantic point but it is important to note that this was in fact seven months before the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, which was when war with Japan commenced. That is important to note because up until the attack many countries, in particular the United States and the United Kingdom, were still trying to prevent an outbreak of war with Japan. Diplomatic negotiations were still occurring and Australia was involved in those negotiations under the then prime ministership of Mr Menzies.

It was clearly in the allies’ interest to avoid a war in Asia and the Pacific given that the war was already raging in Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa and Russia. Moreover, the United States was still pursuing its policy of isolationism and was not involved in the conflict. This may well be labelled ‘appeasement’ with the benefit of hindsight, but at the time it was the reality. Yet the implication of Mr Downer’s comment is that Curtin, as opposition leader, was selling out Australia’s future whilst the bombs were dropping on Pearl Harbor. As I said, Mr Curtin was not the Prime Minister at the time. In fact, he became Prime Minister somewhat later than April 1941. Mr Downer deliberately coalesces the dates to misrepresent the events of the time.

What is also quite revealing is that there is no mention in Mr Downer’s article of Prime Minister Menzies’ support for ongoing trade with Japan and how he acquired the infamous nickname of ‘Pig Iron Bob’. Perhaps the most objectionable of Mr Downer’s comments—and there are quite a few in his article—is the following, referring to Mr Curtin:

Most telling are his comments in parliament in response to Germany’s invasion of Russia in June 1941. While Robert Menzies quoted Winston Churchill’s stirring words resolving “to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi regime”, Curtin condemned the invasion but went on to say “the Labor Party has no objection whatever to the Germans practising Nazism in Germany”.

Once again Mr Downer’s statements and selective quotation of John Curtin’s comments are an outrageous distortion of the facts and of Mr Curtin’s speeches during those dark days leading up to the war. Let me quote from John Curtin’s actual speech to the parliament on 24 June 1941. It is a lengthy quote but it is important to have it read in full to get the context. Mr Curtin said:

This war commenced as the violation of the agreement made at Munich. Had the Treaty of Munich been kept by Germany the world would have been spared all the horrors it has suffered, and the possibly worse horrors that are to come. Thus, the violation of treaties by Germany is no new thing. The whole course of recent world events has been founded upon the utter disregard by Germany of treaties made with any other nation. Therefore, it must be clear that negotiations of any sort with the present German regime are futile. To attempt to negotiate is merely to accept a situation which will stand only so long as the arrangement is satisfactory to Germany.

He went on, after an interjection:

I hold no brief for any country other than Australia, and I do not feel called upon to offer criticism of any country except Germany because we are at war with Germany, and we are at war because Germany failed to keep the Treaty of Munich. Since Germany broke that treaty it has repeatedly demonstrated its unwillingness to keep other treaties made subsequently to that one.

He then said:

I do not hesitate to take a realistic and, I hope, a truly civilized view, namely, that peoples other than ourselves who are resisting Germany are, like ourselves, servants of civilization ... The dominions are quite free not to accept the statement that Mr. Churchill made, but the Commonwealth Government has to-day indicated its acceptance of the statement on behalf of the Commonwealth, and, for my part, I acquiesce in that decision.

The Labour party has no objection whatever to the Germans practising nazi-ism in Germany; that is their concern. We do not engage in any philosophic discussions with them about that system so long as they make no endeavour to foist it by force upon people outside their country. We stand for self-government. In the same way, we offer no opinions regarding the justification or non-justification of bolshevism in Russia; that is the concern of the Russian people. Their form of government is their own affair, just as our form of government is our affair.

It is interesting to note that, on that same day, Mr Menzies also made a statement referring to the attack by Germany on Russia. He was speaking about how the Allies would support Russia in its conflict with Germany and how Russia would become part of the Allied cause of defeating Nazism. He said this:

That does not mean that we are able to see at present any concrete methods by which we in Australia can directly assist Russian resistance to Germany, but, while we attack the German forces wherever we may encounter them, we welcome the fact that the Russians will attack the German forces wherever they may encounter them. The overthrow of German military power is the thing that will lead to the winning of this war, and all Russian activity towards that end will be welcomed, I believe, by every British citizen all over the world.

Mr Menzies went on to say:

I want to make quite clear that, when any British country welcomes, as British countries do, any aid that can be given by Russia in the way of destroying German military power, it is not equivalent to saying that we identify our political views with those of Russia. Those are matters which Russia will determine inside its own borders, as we hope to be at liberty to determine them within ours.

They are not dissimilar statements to the ones made by Mr Curtin that Mr Downer has so atrociously labelled as somehow a support for totalitarianism.

Mr Downer seeks to compare John Curtin to Menzies, implying that Menzies was a strong opponent of Nazism and an advocate of force against Germany. Yet prior to the war the opposite was true. There are many recorded instances of Mr Menzies using the language of appeasement and acceptance of totalitarian regimes. For instance, in March 1938, Mr Menzies travelled to Rome hoping to meet the Italian fascist leader Mussolini. He was not successful, and he went on to Berlin. Shortly after his visit to Berlin, he did an interview with the Yorkshire Post in England. He is reported as saying:

It is surely a truism to say that nobody in Germany wants war.

He went on to say this:

The principles of the totalitarian State, as Germans freely admitted to me in Berlin, are not suited to the British genius, but I hope that we British people will not too easily accept the idea that because personal liberties have been curtailed in Germany the result is necessarily a base materialism. There is a good deal of really spiritual quality in the willingness of young Germans to devote themselves to the service and well-being of the State.

Further, on 3 March, Mr Menzies made a speech in London after the announcement that Japan was joining the German-Italian Axis. He said this:

Don’t let us become victims of the very pernicious habit of believing that a possible conflict becomes inevitable. I do not believe in the inevitability of conflict except in the case of Europe, where the burglar is being thrown out of the house. We aimed, and are aiming, at getting nearer to Japan. We are not aiming at sitting suspiciously in our corner.

This is Mr Menzies speaking of our relationship with Japan, and yet Mr Downer has the hide to write in his article that Menzies was a great and noble person who stood up to the forces of fascism and Nazism and that Mr Curtin was an appeaser.

In fact, the opposite was true. It is well recorded that John Curtin was one of the first political leaders to take seriously the threat from Japan and to take steps to prepare for it. This is indeed very clear from Bob Wurth’s book. Mr Wurth responded to Mr Downer’s attack on Curtin by writing an article in the Australian on 27 April, entitled, ‘Curtin: a hero or appeaser?’ Let me quote from Mr Wurth’s article:

To be sure, Curtin, firstly as Opposition leader, had a big influence on the Menzies government during 1941. It was Curtin who began warning the advisory war council of the threat from Japan. As Japan’s belligerency mounted, Curtin constantly changed his stance about Japan and began sounding the alarm.

In February 1941 Curtin told the war council that if and when the situation favoured, ‘Japan would make war against Australia tomorrow’.

Curtin led the council on defence issues. With Menzies overseas, Curtin and acting prime minister Arthur Fadden took the unusual step of meeting the press together, dramatically declaring that Australia’s very existence was at stake.

Curtin girded the government to prepare for the possibility of war with Japan at a time when Australia’s attention was firmly fixed on helping Britain. On February 14, 1941, the advisory war council heard reports that raised the spectre of Australia being abandoned by the great powers and being forced to fight a holding war with Japan.

The British believed that the capacity of the Japanese ‘should not be over-stated’. But Curtin demanded that Australia be put on a war footing.

‘Even if America intervened in a war with Japan, Australia initially would have to stand alone,’ he said. At Curtin’s urging he and acting prime minister Fadden issued yet another joint warning, declaring that the war had moved to ‘a new stage involving the upmost gravity’.

Prime minister Menzies was, of course, the worst appeaser of all. The warnings about Australia’s danger issued by Fadden and Curtin were undermined by Menzies in London.

Menzies said:

I do not believe in the inevitability of a conflict in the Pacific ...

John Curtin’s reputation will survive the attempts by historical revisionists and puffed-up popinjays masquerading as statesmen. He put the defence of Australia first and foremost. He promoted the alliance with the US, which was crucial to the war in the Pacific and to repelling the Japanese threat of invasion. He stood up to Churchill and General MacArthur to ensure that Australia was directly involved in the planning and leadership of war strategy. This is borne out by the eulogies delivered by his political opponents, particularly Artie Fadden, a former Prime Minister and Leader of the Country Party, on the occasion of John Curtin’s untimely death. The words Mr Fadden and others spoke on that day attest to John Curtin’s greatness. I will finish by quoting Mr Fadden:

The strain under which he laboured ultimately and finally led to his death.

…         …         …

Although he was not in the fighting services or in the front line, it, can be said, truthfully and sincerely, that he died fighting for Australia ... Whilst it is fundamental to democracy to disagree and dispute on political matters and policy, let us do it with dignity and decency, as did John Curtin during the whole time that I knew him.

That is an example that the foreign minister could well follow. (Time expired)