"We Shall Chart a New Course"

"Dressed in a dark blue suit and a blue and white striped shirt with matching handkerchief, Gough Whitlam looked like everyone's friendly neighborhood banker," TIME Sydney Bureau Chief Ed Ogle reported after an interview with the Australian Prime Minister. "When I told him that my first question was going to be about the future of Australia, he flashed a grin and quipped to his press secretary: 'Quick, get my papers on that.' But it was obvious as the interview progressed that Gough Whitlam needed no papers on Australia's future--or anything else."

ON AUSTRALIA'S ROLE IN ASIA: There are no countries that display greater disparity in economic development than Australia and her neighbors. Australia certainly can and should do a certain amount toward decreasing this disparity. We have a Gross National Product equal to that of all the countries between the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea. Those countries have 20 times our population. Developing the resources of these countries is something that should be, must be, solved in a short term, that is, a generation.

The other great theme our government will wish to stress is that with the end of foreign intervention in Viet Nam, the region has a second chance. The West threw away an opportunity for a settlement in 1954, after Geneva. I believe the U.S., the Soviet Union, Japan and China are determined not to let the second opportunity slip. We shall support the proposal for a zone of peace and neutrality in Southeast Asia.

ON CHANGES IN FOREIGN POLICY: Regional cooperation will be one of the keystones of Australia's foreign policy for the '70s. We shall be charting a new course with less emphasis on military pacts. It will be based on an independent outlook in foreign affairs and will be directed toward a new regional community to help free the region of the great power rivalries that have bedeviled its progress for decades.

ON RELATIONS WITH THE U.S.: [We have expressed] opposition to Australia's military involvement in Viet Nam, yet our mandate and duty to maintain the American alliance was equally clear. This we will do. But friendship does not require Australia to be subservient.

ON THE DOMESTIC ECONOMY: This is the big problem for Australia now. Our secondary industry is increasingly dominated by overseas companies and multinational corporations, [creating the danger] that our internal development and external trade outlets will be controlled by foreign countries. But we are not going to be inhospitable to capital. We simply intend to set up certain rules--a reasonable return for raw materials we sell, reasonable opportunities for processing these raw materials in Australia.

ON TRADE WITH CHINA: Per head of population, China will remain one of the smallest trading countries in the world. Where the U.S. went wrong in its revulsion against the change of government in China--and where Australia went wrong in America's wake--was in believing that China was internationally an aggressive country. It never has been. It isn't now. I don't foresee that it will be. It is an amazingly docile country. More than any country in the world, the Chinese are satisfied to live in all senses within their own borders.

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