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Downer attacks Labor, defends Iraq, Vietnam

May 18, 2005

The Hon Alexander Downer MPAustralia’s Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, has used the annual Earle Page College Politics Lecture at The University of New England to attack what he called Labor’s “little Australia” mindset and defend Australia’s involvement in foreign wars, including Iraq and Vietnam.

About 600 students, official guests and members of the public attended the lecture, which has previously attracted speakers as diverse as Natasha Stott-Despoja and Philip Ruddock.

Mr Downer’s speech was titled “Freedom, the Spread of Democracy and Contemporary Challenges in Foreign Policy” and focused on what he described as the Labor Party’s “long tradition of wringing its hands over a ‘little Australia’ incapable of playing anything more than a minor role internationally”.

“Since World War II there has been a fairly consistent pattern of weak Labor leadership in Australia, particularly on the issues of appeasement, isolationism and shirking international treaty obligations,” he said.

“In Vietnam, the war was lost not on the battlefields but in the media and on the university campuses.”

Mr Downer accused Labor leaders from John Curtin to Mark Latham of “abandoning both realism and idealism…and to hell with the consequences”.

“In a time when bipartisanship was imperative in Australia in the national interest, Curtin had chosen from 1935 on to placate the international socialists, pacifists and anti-conscriptionists within his own party,” Mr Downer said.

He went on to criticise former Labor leaders including Arthur Calwell and Gough Whitlam, and Labor Foreign Affairs Spokesman Kevin Rudd. “The ‘Little Australia’ mindset persists in the Labor Party. No doubt, along with a preference for populist appeasement and isolationism, it played a part in Mark Latham's thinking when he argued that our contribution to the war on terror should be limited to our own region and that our troops' proper place was not on the other side of the world but at home,” he said.

Mr Downer praised former Country Party leader Sir Earle Page for his determination to commit Australian troops to the fight in Europe in World War II. “Earle Page, whose memory we honour here tonight, saw with great clarity 90 years ago that tyrannical regimes can threaten the peace and freedom not just of their immediate neighbours but the whole world.

“For politicians of his generation, the challenge of leadership was above all the task of patient explanation of why it was necessary that our troops should be engaged, yet again, in battles for liberty and democracy half a world away.

“Australian conservatives have long shared a broad understanding of the world's interconnectedness.”

He said progress in relations with Indonesia and democratic elections in Iraq and Afghanistan were proof of “Earle Page's argument that the national interest is best served by a judicious balance of pragmatism and principle”.

In a prelude to his speech Mr Downer spoke of his own college days, and said one of the highlights of his job was meeting stars like Nicole Kidman and John McEnroe.

Afterwards, Mr Downer was presented with a plaque by the President of the Earle Page Junior Common Room.

For a full transcript of Mr Downers speech go to http://www.foreignminister.gov.au/speeches/2005/050517_earle_page_college.html.

For more information contact Leon Braun (UNE Public Relations) on (02) 6773 3771 or David Ward (Master, Earle Page College) on (02) 6773 5301. A photo is available to accompany this story.

Posted by Leon Braun at May 18, 2005 11:45 AM