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Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows interviews with Marshall Green, the US Ambassador to Australia (1973–75), and Clyde Cameron, a senior Cabinet minister in the Labor government (1972–75). The interviews are intercut with archival footage that includes a key Labor Party figure, Bob Hawke, delivering a victory speech after the Whitlam Labor election win in 1972. Other archival footage includes the city of Hanoi in Vietnam after it had been bombed by US B-52s, and Prime Minister Gough Whitlam holding diplomatic discussions with Green.

Educational value points

• The documentary Allies, from which the clip is taken, uses frank reflective interviews with key players in the Whitlam administration and footage of political speeches and events to illustrate US–Australian relations during the early 1970s.

• The historic win of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in the 1972 federal election is depicted. After 23 years of Liberal–Country Party coalition government, the ALP, led by Gough Whitlam, regained power. Its slogan was 'It’s time’, meaning time for change. Whitlam’s opposition to both conscription and Australia’s participation in the Vietnam War resonated with public opinion of the time and was a crucial factor in the swing to the ALP in the election. Whitlam’s government was responsible for radical legislative reform, but critics maintain it suffered serious administrative failings. In a move that was unprecedented in Australian constitutional history and that continues to attract widespread controversy, the Whitlam government was dismissed by Governor-General Sir John Kerr on 11 November 1975.

• The clip is a series of candid reflections by key political players of the 1970s. The interviewees talk about US–Australian diplomatic relations during the period of the Whitlam Labor government and the final years of the Vietnam War (which culminated in victory for the North Vietnamese in 1975). Relations between the USA and Australia were strained when Whitlam, who opposed the War, withdrew all remaining Australian troops from Vietnam in June 1973, and three of his left-wing Cabinet ministers fiercely denounced US President Richard Nixon’s bombing of Hanoi in 1975. Marshall Green was appointed US Ambassador to Australia in 1973 to work towards improving relations between the two countries and to protect US interests in Australia.

• The Vietnam War (1957–75) was a conflict between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. Its origins lie in the country’s division at the seventeenth parallel in 1954 after Vietnamese communist forces defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu, following 100 years of colonial rule. The conflict began when the South Vietnamese Government refused to hold national elections in 1956 to reunify the country, and thus ratify the Geneva Accord. North Vietnam, allied with other communist countries, fought to unify the country. South Vietnam, allied with Western countries, most notably the USA, wanted to maintain its independence. The clip incorporates archival footage of Hanoi in North Vietnam after massive bombing by the USA in December 1972, one of the most significant events of the War. South Vietnamese forces retreated on 30 April 1975 and the country was reunified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), with a communist-controlled government based in Hanoi.

• Bob Hawke (1929–) is shown speaking at a national ALP conference soon after the federal election. Hawke was president of both the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and the ALP during Whitlam’s term as Prime Minister. Although recognised for his leadership qualities and frequently encouraged to enter federal politics, it was not until 1980 that he stood for Parliament and was elected to the federal seat of Wills in Victoria. In 1983, 3 years after entering Parliament, Hawke replaced Bill Hayden as leader of the ALP and the ALP won the 1983 federal election.

• The clip uses interviews, political speeches, war footage, newspaper headlines and music to build an image of Australian politics during the 1970s. The piano and violin music engages viewers emotionally with the horrors of war, and frank interviews with key protagonists, interspersed with live footage of political messages, make for a powerful and persuasive documentary.

This clip starts approximately 1 hour 5 minutes into the documentary.

An interview in a generic sitting room with Marshall Green, US Ambassador to Australia, 1973-1975.
Marshall Green Labor had been out of power for some 23 years. The governments that had been in power in Australia, the Liberal-County Party coalition, had very close relations with the United States. It was a problem really of over-identification. Lyndon B Johnson always thought that Australia was the next large, rectangular State beyond El Paso, and treated it accordingly.

Footage is shown of a campaign speech by Bob Hawke in front of a cheering crowd.
Bob Hawke This will be a government which will once more return to the concepts of 1945 and 1949. We will once again restore dignity and integrity to Australia’s conduct of its international affairs. We will look each nation in the eye, whether they be the United States, China, the Soviets, the United Kingdom. We will look them in the eye and say, ‘Your policy on this issue we believe is right, or we believe it is wrong.’

We see newspaper headlines and traumatic scenes from the Vietnam war.

An interview with Clyde Cameron, Minister for Labour, 1972-1975.
Clyde Cameron I made a statement saying that I believed that Nixon was a barbarian and Jim Cairns said something along those lines, and Tommy Uren did. We heard no protest at all from the Prime Minister about that until some couple or three weeks later, by which time we subsequently learned he had received a strong word of protest from the Nixon administration.

Marshall Green People like Cairns and Connor, ah, and Cameron, were making these highly critical remarks, personal attacks on the President, especially his role in Vietnam. And President, I mean, Prime Minister Whitlam had written the President what personally I thought was a perfectly understandable and reasonable letter, but the President took great offence from it.

Clyde Cameron When their troubleshooter, Marshall Green, was brought from wherever he came, Manila or Saigon or South Korea – I don’t know where it was, but almost every country he ever goes to, there’s an uprising of some kind. But he came here to take over, because Australia was no longer deemed to be a place where an ordinary political appointment like the old man from Texas or some other fool who just happened to be a friend of the President’s, could be trusted.