"A world in which our children can live in peace": Malcolm Fraser and conflict in Southeast Asia, 1964-1972
I left my heart to the sappers round, Khe Sanh
And my soul was sold with my cigarettes to the black market man
I’ve had the Vietnam cold turkey, from the ocean to the silver city
And it’s only other vets could understand.
Cold Chisel, 1978
I only ordered three boxes from the University of Melbourne Archive’s Malcolm Fraser collection, but that was enough. In fact I only went through one and a half, the third box left untouched. As someone who actively researches the histories of marginalised and forgotten figures of history, particularly queer women, it was overwhelming to suddenly have so much material at my fingertips. Folders bulged with letters written on typewriters over forty years ago, clippings from newspaper articles that mentioned local political events, and transcripts of the many speeches Fraser made during his time in politics. With theme in mind I instinctively sought out Malcolm Fraser’s pre-prime minister years, before he offered asylum to tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees, to when he was a young Member of Parliament faced with the challenging and controversial issue of national service.
In 1971 the Minister for Education and Science, Malcolm Fraser, addressed a hall in Adelaide to speak on the current war in the Asia Pacific. Fraser predicted that “in the 1970’s and 1980’s Australia will be faced with formidable uncertainties in international affairs. The future course of events cannot be so easily seen as was the case in the 1950’s or even the 1960’s.” At this time Australia was still involved with the Vietnam War, though the conflict had seen a turning point with the 1968 Tet Offensive and Australian soldiers had begun to be withdrawn by 1970. Fraser was correct in stating that the oncoming decades for Australia would be uncertain in regards to international affairs – it is interesting to wonder if he ever saw himself as leading the nation as prime minister during these decades.
Throughout the 1960s Malcolm Fraser played a significant role as Minister for the Army and later Minister for Defence under the Holt and Gorton Liberal Governments. This included overlooking the controversial conscription program throughout the Vietnam War, an issue that was heatedly challenged by members of the public in addition to the Australian Labor Party (ALP). In an election campaign broadcast in November 1964, the then Prime Minister Robert Menzies argued that the ALP did not have a defence policy as they were opposed to national service, and stated that “We are bound to help if we want to be helped. We have forces in Thailand, in Malaysia, in South Vietnam. Why? Because eleven million Australians in the line of advance of aggressive Communist China cannot defend our country alone.” In the following year Fraser also publicly supported national service, hoping that it would come to be “regarded as a point of pride” and that in time the Australian public would “recognise that the national service can be something to make a person a better citizen.”
The war in Vietnam was presented by politicians as a global event, rather than a war isolated within Southeast Asia. The image of ‘aggressive Communist China’ articulated by Menzies was echoed by leaders in America and the United Kingdom, Fraser alluding to a speech given by British Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart in a press statement in 1965.
“He pointed out that the communist campaign in this country is a campaign of terror. Terror against the ordinary civilians, including women and children. … If this kind of terror, if this kind of aggression succeeds, the effect on many countries would be profound.”
This campaign of terror within the pacific was a key motive for conscription throughout the war, with the Liberal Government emphasising the proximity of Australia to Vietnam. As Fraser later noted in 1970, “We are part of the environment and we are affected by it.” The notion of ‘containment’, of neighbouring countries falling to communism, played a key element in this fear campaign. As Minister for Defence, Fraser continuously stressed Australia’s obligation to assist the South Vietnamese in the fight against the Viet Cong, presenting the end goal as “a world in which our children can live in peace.”
Despite Fraser’s wishes, national service never became a ‘point of pride’ and was seriously resisted, attacked, and suspended under the Whitlam Labor Government in 1972. Conscription and Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War was protested widely by the end of the 1960s, and upon their return home soldiers were often treated with hostility or indifference. Rather than pride, Vietnam vets were largely left with a sense of bitterness and disillusionment which was later evoked within the hugely successful Cold Chisel song Khe Sanh in 1978.
Stepping back from this time period, and back into the University of Melbourne’s Reading Room in 2019, what information can be gathered about the archival source itself? What elements of truth does the Malcolm Fraser collection actually possess?
Firstly, these are all Fraser’s personal papers and documents, first given to the university in 2004. The archive boasts one hundred metres of material relating to Fraser’s personal life and time in politics – this suggests, if anything, that he was an avid collector, and also recognised a value in maintaining a documented record of his life. In regards to ‘truth’, the sources cited here clearly hold factual evidence – they tell stories of Fraser’s political life prior to his prime minister years, and give insight into Australia’s national service and involvement with the Vietnam War. But, read on their own, these sources do not tell a ‘whole’ story – they are, ultimately, from a single perspective, being taken from the collection of a single man. As Lynn Hunt notes, historians can only focus on a tiny number of facts at a time, and “can tell very different stories about the same event by choosing to emphasize different facts.” To garner a larger, ‘truthful’ account of the time, one cannot rely too exclusively on an individual’s papers alone. There are no accounts of Vietnamese perspectives, of protestor perspectives, of national servicemen perspectives, of ‘aggressive Communist China’s’ perspective. These are stories told from an Australian Liberal Government. It does not necessarily mean that the archives referenced here are not ‘telling’ the truth, it is just to say that they are only representing one truth of a story that has many sides, and many truths.