CABINET CONFIDENTIAL
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday January 1, 2010
WOMEN IN THE WINGSNumerous examples of sexual discrimination were not enough to persuade the Fraser cabinet to introduce federal legislation. Despite a detailed submission, the attorney-general, Peter Durack, and home affairs minister, Robert Ellicott, were unable to persuade cabinet to follow the lead of the US, Canada, Britain and New Zealand.Examples cited by the ministers included the sacking of a Queensland council worker after she got married and the Royal Automobile Club of Tasmania refusing a personal loan to a woman unless her husband acted as guarantor - even though she was the household's breadwinner.Cabinet found it was an issue for state governments, although it agreed to introduce a sex discrimination ordinance in the Commonwealth-controlled ACT. A Sex Discrimination Act was eventually put in place under the Hawke government in 1984.SEA SLAUGHTER ENDSCabinet banned whaling within Australia's 200-mile fishing zone. It was feared the ban would outrage some West Australians, although the Cheynes Beach Whaling Company at Albany had closed the previous year.An inquiry into the industry made the ban inevitable. Trade in whale products was declining, the use of substitutes growing. Imports of goods such as perfumes using ambergris from sperm whales were banned. Eco-blockades began at Terania Creek in northern NSW. Cabinet banned petroleum exploration on the Great Barrier Reef and declared the first stages of Kakadu National Park and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.DRUG BUREAU DISGRACESydney's real-life Underbelly drama began when news broke that an unknown officer in the Federal Narcotics Bureau's Sydney office had leaked information on the Mr Asia drug syndicate couriers Douglas and Isobel Wilson. On May 18, 1979, the Wilsons' bodies were found at Mornington Peninsula in Victoria and the royal commissioner Justice Edward Williams issued an interim report recommending that the bureau be disbanded. In a submission to cabinet on November 1, 1979, three ministers tried to save the bureau but acknowledged its reputation was in tatters: "Press likely to push for detailed reasons behind Government decision because of spate of recent unfavourable publicity directed towards Narcotics Bureau. Could be answered by indicating Royal Commission has conducted exhaustive inquiries and the Government has decided to accept the judgment that the Royal Commission has arrived at." Cabinet split the bureau's functions between the Bureau of Customs and the new Australian Federal Police.MOUNTBATTEN DEATHWhen an Irish Republican Army bomb killed Lord Louis Mountbatten on August 27, 1979, cabinet decided a RAAF VIP 707 aircraft should fly Australian dignitaries to his funeral in London.Mountbatten had been supreme allied commander of the South-East Asia theatre in World War II and oversaw the recapture of Burma, so two former prisoner of war MPs, the minister for education, John Carrick, and Tom Uren of Labor, were chosen to represent the parliament. However, the opposition leader, Bill Hayden, told the prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, that he was against Uren flying by VIP aircraft, presumably to save taxpayer's money.On August 30, with Mountbatten's death threatening to become political football, the undersecretary to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Michael Codd, advised that if Uren's travel arose in parliament the government should cite security concerns for the VIP travel involved.JOH'S DOMAINThe Queensland premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, was in thrall to few men, but one of them was Pat Killoran. He ran Queensland's Department of Aboriginal Affairs like a personal fiefdom, even down to choosing young Torres Strait Islands women to bring down to Brisbane. Together the politician and the public servant campaigned against attempts by successive federal governments to improve the lives of Queensland's indigenous people.In 1979 the people of Yarrabah, a former mission on the headland south of Cairns, were sick of Bjelke-Petersen's and Killoran's iron-fist rule and sought self-management. Land rights and the Queensland government's treatment of Aborigines and islanders had been a continuing issue. In September Bjelke-Petersen not only banned street marches protesting against his black policies but, to fan them into a law-and-order issue for the state election the following year, he reneged on his previous commitment to negotiate on Yarrabah.The federal minister for Aboriginal affairs, Fred Chaney, although pushing for a negotiated settlement with Queensland, indicated legislation might be necessary as inaction "would be a fillip to the movement being mounted internationally against Australia because of Queensland's Aboriginal policies". But Fraser's cabinet did not want to pick a fight with the wily Queensland premier, nor annoy Western Australia or the Northern Territory, and voted against endorsing Chaney's fallback position that the Commonwealth should legislate to acquire Yarrabah.KEPT IN THE DARKThe Fraser government made 3032 decisions in 1979, but not all the cabinet documents have been released. At least 24 were censored. Most covered defence, foreign affairs and security and intelligence. Australians are not able to see entire cabinet information on defence spending, Chinese and Russian policies on Vietnam's invasion of Kampuchea, ASIS's move to Canberra, pro-Palestinian terrorist interests, an assessment of threats to internal security, Antarctic mineral resources and security of ESSO/BHP installations in Gippsland.
© 2010 Sydney Morning Herald