Leading  Issues Journal  

                    March 2001

 

In  this  Issue:

Section A: 

Sir Edward Weary Dunlop ASIALINK Lecture 

Delivered by Rt Hon Malcolm Fraser  AC CH  

Click for Options: Lecture Overview       Complete Lecture

 

Section B: Resources Available for Women

Click above title for Resources.

Stepping Stones Kit - to help you become more involved in the community

Women in Decision Making Kit - how to become involved in Boards and Committees 

Older Women Out There Wellness Project - a six part ABC Radio program encouraging rural women to think more positively about being an older woman. Themes include: Body Image, Older Women & Violence, Taking Charge, Managing Change: Grief & Loss, Transport and Technology and Having a Voice

 

Section C: Rural Women's Award 2001

Click above title for Winners and information about the Award.

The RIRDC Rural Women's Award recognises and encourages the vital contribution women make to rural Australia. Rural women have a diverse range of skills and talents. They possess a great passion for rural industries, the land and their community. Through creativity and enterprising spirit, they continue to make an outstanding contribution to sustainable agriculture and resource management. The RIRDC Rural Women's Award supports these women who have a strong and positive vision for the future of agriculture - including forestry, fisheries, natural resource management and related service industries. Each State Winner receives $20,000 to enable them to more fully participate in the future of rural Australia. (Source: Rural Women's Network)  

 

 

 

Sir Edward Weary Dunlop AsiaLink Lecture

Delivered by:

Rt Hon Malcolm Fraser 

AC CH  

Overview of Lecture

In this lecture, Former Prime Minister, Mr Malcolm Fraser challenges us as a nation to re-evaluate our  relationship with the United States of America, particularly in relation to "our search for security."   Should we be looking at improving our regional relationships with the countries of East and South East Asia or should we continue to assume that as our region is undergoing, "profound strategic change," that the United States is kept involved in the region?  

Acknowledging that, "because of language and because of historic and cultural associations, it is natural that many people should look to the United States for security," Mr Fraser challenges us to "to examine the past, to see how much the United States has supported us and how much it has not ... to make an objective assessment of our shared or disparate interest in the future."

With this critical outlook, he presents a number of arguments including the United States lack of genuine support of the ANZUS Treaty and their adoption of a "policy of distance and of relative disinterest" when in the past there have been concerns in our region in relation to " West Irian, ... attitudes to Indonesia itself, or to the spread of Communism in Malaya or to confrontation between Malaysia and Indonesia." 

He proposes that we should do three things.  "We should do what we can to keep the relationship with the United States but we should not depend upon it as though that absolves Australia from responsibility for her own defence.  We should not allow the American relationship to blind ourselves to the degree of security which it provides.  In particular we should not allow the relationship to drag us into United States arguments over which we have no influence or control."    

He warns that, " if Australia were to allow facilities at Pine Gap to be used as part of the establishment of the forward echelon of Anti-Missile Defence for the United States, it would clearly become, not a tenth-rate target but a first-rate target in the event of hostilities between America and some other country.  When we have no control over the policy that might involve America in conflict with other countries, we should be wary of tying ourselves so completely to United States actions.  We would have no control and no influence over circumstances that might put us into extreme danger."  

"We need to make sure that when our own Defence Review is being implemented that it is designed to maximise Australia’s capacity to meet our own strategic objectives and that it is not designed merely to complement something that may be required of us by the United States.  It would be an act of lunacy for Australia to participate in a conflict between China and America over Taiwan.  If those demands have been made of us, as Tim Fischer has so clearly enunciated, they have presumably also been made of Japan.  I could imagine no venture more foolhardy for either country."     

"ANZUS was meant to provide a country, small in resources, with support in the event of an attack, support from a great power.  As I have shown, it is more likely that the United States would call on us to support her in her policies under ANZUS than it would be that we would call on the United States to help protect the territorial integrity of this country.  What a perverse outcome that would be. The instrument designed for our protection could lead to our destruction."

Mr Fraser's concluding remarks, "If growing confidence in ourselves causes us to let the American relationship slip into disuse, we will have succeeded," is indeed bold but justified in the context of a perspective that is thought-provoking and significant to any discussion about Australia's identity and leadership.

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