Foreign Policy – from the American war in Vietnam to AUKUS (1970 – 2023)

The current chancellor of the University of Queensland, Peter Varghese, former head of the Office of National Assessments and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, says that: “AUKUS is too momentous a decision to be left to the ‘echo chamber’ of classified discussions.” Yet the University Chancellor did not sign the letter by academics opposing the AUKUS agreement. Peter Varghese was appointed to Office of National Assessments by Prime Minister John Howard after serving as his chief advisor.

In 2009, Prime Minister Rudd sent Peter Varghese on a mission after racist attacks on Indian students in Australia. Varghese’s job was to repair damage done by these attacks in the eyes of the Indian government. To make matters worse Victorian police sent around inflammatory emails about tasing Indian students encouraging them to leave the country. Rudd’s motive was that Indian students are a sacred cash cow to Australian Universities. Rudd did not wish to damage Australia’s International competitiveness in the Education industry especially in India and China.

I remember Peter Varghese’s brother Frank Varghese giving one of the best speeches I had heard against apartheid. Frank spoke out against the American war in Vietnam in the Great Court of the University of Queensland during the 1970s moratorium campaign. We marched to Brisbane city on May 8, 1970. At the same time there was a huge march in Melbourne. The extraparliamentary opposition brought about change to foreign policy when both McMahon and Whitlam governments withdrew troops from Vietnam. Whitlam began active engagement with China. He ended conscription as a direct result of those marches and freed the people imprisoned for conscientious objection to the war in Indo-China.

In 1973, the Attorney General, Lionel Murphy, fearful that the spooks would not carry out Labor’s modest reforms, raided ASIO headquarters. Murphy’s press secretary, George Negus said : “Lionel (Murphy) had asked for the files of the six most dangerous or subversive people in Australia“. When the files arrived, Murphy found they were of several Communist Party (CPA) unionists and people such as CPA leader and peace movement activist Mavis Robertson. According to Negus, when Murphy told Whitlam, they both laughed.

In 1970, as part of opposition to the American war in Vietnam, university radicals called for a teach-in and general strike at the university in preparation for the moratorium of May 8. A People’s Park was set up in the University Great Court.

Another brother of Peter Varghese, Jim, also opposed the war as part of the Revitalisation of Christianity (ROC) movement on the campus at the time. Frank, Jim and another member of ROC, David Franken, had all attended the conservative Christian brothers school Saint Joseph’s College Gregory Terrace. David Franken and Jim Varghese, returned their cadet trophies to their old school as an expression of their pacifist principles. In April of the following year, Franken, David Martin and Bill Cochrane appeared in Court for refusing to register for ‘the draft’.

Their old University now proudly houses corporations with direct ties to the military industrial complex. For example, the former CEO of Dow chemicals, the manufacturer of napalm and agent orange that killed so many people in Vietnam, paid for his name to be put on a building at the University now led by Peter Varghese. What an embarrassment for the Chancellor. To make things worse the Queensland government superannuation fund, QSuper, owns shares in companies involved in arms manufacture and nuclear weapons. The government sponsors arms dealer conventions and the making of troop carriers and is vying for the AUKUS nuclear submarine base to be located in Brisbane.

As Chancellor, Peter Varghese and his fellow senators at UQ, probably uncomfortable with the insanity of taking up arms against our major trading partner, did not sign the letter opposing AUKUS. This policy takes Australia back to the ‘forward defence policy‘ of the American war in Vietnam, an era that radicalised Peter Varghese’s brothers and their contemporaries.

The letter has 111 signatories questioning AUKUS and Australia’s aggressive foreign policy states:

We the undersigned are scholars of the humanities and social sciences and other disciplines with expertise in the following issues. We write this open letter to express our concerns regarding the Australia, United Kingdom, United States (AUKUS) trilateral security agreement. Specifically, our concerns relate to pillar one of the agreement, the joint development with the US and the UK of a nuclear-powered submarine (SSN) capability for Australia.

The academics who have signed the letter are:

Signatories (as of 23 May 2023):

Dr Vince Scappatura, Sessional Academic, Macquarie University

Adjunct Professor, Mark Beeson, University of Technology, Sydney

Adjunct Professor, Albert Palazzo, University of New South Wales, Canberra

Dr Lloyd Cox, Senior Lecturer, Macquarie University

Honorary Professor, Richard Tanter, The University of Melbourne

Dr Jonathan Symons, Senior Lecturer, Macquarie University

Professor Dennis Altman AM, Vice Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University

Professor John Quiggin, Laureate Fellow, University of Queensland

Emeritus Professor, James Cotton, University of New South Wales, Canberra

Professor Henry Reynolds, University of Tasmania

Margaret Reynolds AC, Former Visiting Professor, University of Queensland

Dr Sian Troath, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Canterbury

Dr Scott Burchill, Honorary Fellow, Deakin University

Dr Tania Miletic, Senior Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

Dr Binoy Kampmark, Senior Lecturer, RMIT University

Dr Allan Patience, Honorary Fellow, The University of Melbourne

Professor Marilyn Lake, The University of Melbourne

Dr Michael McKinley, Emeritus Faculty, The Australian National University

Dr Tom Chodor, Lecturer, Monash University

Honorary Professor Peter Stanley, FAHA, University of New South Wales, Canberra

Associate Professor David Lee, University of New South Wales, Canberra

Allan Behm, Director, International and Security Affairs Program, The Australia Institute

Professor Anthony Burke, University of New South Wales, Canberra

Professor David S G Goodman, The University of Sydney

Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe, Griffith University

Dr Danny Cooper, Sessional Lecturer, The University of Sydney

Adjunct Professor Richard Broinowski AO, Universities of Canberra and Sydney; Former Australian Ambassador

Dr Alison Broinowski AM, FAHA, FAIIA, President, Australians for War Powers Reform

Dr Douglas Newton, Independent Scholar

Dr Julie Kimber, Senior Lecturer, Swinburne University of Technology

Emeritus Professor, Timothy Rowse, Western Sydney University

Dr Marty Branagan, Peace Studies, University of New England

Dr Jumana Bayeh, Senior Lecturer, Macquarie University

Professor John Langmore AM, The University of Melbourne

Adjunct Professor Bob Boughton, University of New England, Armidale

Dr Daryl Le Cornu, Western Sydney University

Dr Tilman Ruff AO, Hon Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne

Professor Dianne Otto, The University of Melbourne

Distinguished Honorary Professor, Carroll Pursell, FAAAS, The Australian National University

Dr Luke Fletcher, Visiting Fellow, University of New South Wales, Sydney

Emeritus Professor Louise Edwards, FAHA, FASSA, FHKAH, University of New South Wales, Sydney

Dr Murray Noonan, Casual Academic, Deakin University

Professor Derek McDougall, Professorial Fellow, The University of Melbourne

Professor Robyn Eckersley FASSA, The University of Melbourne

Honorary Associate Professor, Greg Fry, The Australian National University

Dr Umut Ozguc, Lecturer, Macquarie University

Associate Professor Jake Lynch, The University of Sydney

Honorary Professor Peter Hayes, The University of Sydney, Director, Nautilus Institute

Professor Angela Woollacott, The Australian National University

Professor Sarah Joseph, Griffith University

Emeritus Professor Gavan McCormack, FAHA, The Australian National University

Adjunct Professor Scott Poynting, Queensland University of Technology

Professor John Keane, The University of Sydney

Emeritus Professor Michael Hamel-Green, Victoria University

Associate Professor David Hundt, Deakin University

Dr Mike Donaldson, University of Wollongong, retired

Dr Monique Cormier, Senior Lecturer, Monash University

Dr Charles Hawksley, University of Wollongong

Emeritus Professor Stuart Rees AM, The University of Sydney

Associate Professor Nick Apoifis, University of New South Wales, Sydney

Dr Greg Lockhart, Historian and Writer

Dr Benjamin Zala, Fellow, The Australian National University

Conjoint Professor Aurelia George Mulgan, University of New South Wales, Canberra

Honorary Professor Geoffrey Hawker, Macquarie University

Professor Susan Park, The University of Sydney

Professor Mobo Gao, University of Adelaide

Associate Professor Peter Christoff, The University of Melbourne

Professor Kanishka Jayasuriya, Murdoch University, Western Australia

Professor George Lawson, The Australian National University

Dr Peter Van Ness, Visiting Fellow, The Australian National University

Dr Anna Hood, Senior Lecturer, University of Auckland

Professor Christian Reus-Smit, University of Queensland

Professor Susan Harris Rimmer, Griffith University

Professor Wanning Sun, University of Technology Sydney

Professor Yingjie Guo, The University of Sydney

Professor Jane Golley, The Australian National University

Professor Jocelyn Chey, Visiting Professor, The University of Sydney

Associate Professor Matt McDonald, University of Queensland

Emeritus Professor Christopher Cook, University of Wollongong

Emeritus Professor Colin Mackerras, Griffith University

Distinguished Professor Ien Ang, FAHA, Western Sydney University

Professor David Lowe, Deakin University

Honorary Professor, Melanie Oppenheimer FASSA, The Australian National University

Dr Emma Shortis, Lecturer, RMIT University

Associate Professor Jamie Reilly, The University of Sydney

Dr Valentina Baú, Senior Research Fellow, Western Sydney University

Dr Declan Kuch, Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, Western Sydney University

Dr Federica Caso, Lecturer, La Trobe University

Dr Ben Wellings, Senior Lecturer, Monash University

Dr Kelly Gerard, Senior Lecturer, University of Western Australia

Dr Priya Chacko, Senior Lecturer, University of Adelaide

Associate Professor Jingdong Yuan, The University of Sydney

Dr Melissa Johnston, Lecturer, The University of Queensland

Associate Professor Chengxin Pan, University of Macau; Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney

Professor Michael Dutton, FASSA, University of London

Professor Joy Damousi, The University of Melbourne

Associate Professor Marianne Hanson, University of Queensland

Honorary Professor Garry Rodan, The University of Queensland

Dr Evan Jones, Honorary Associate, The University of Sydney

Dr Judy Hemming, Emeritus Faculty, The Australian National University

Emeritus Professor Ian Dance, University of New South Wales, Sydney

Emeritus Professor David Holm, National Cheng-Chi University, Taipei; Former Professor, The University of Melbourne

Professor Baogang He, Deakin University

Emeritus Professor Tony Bennett, Western Sydney University

Associate Professor Nichole Georgeou, Western Sydney University

Dr Erik Paul, School of Political and Social Sciences, The University of Sydney

Dr Qian Gong, Senior Lecturer, Curtin University

David Morris, Senior Research Fellow, Beijing Foreign Studies University

Professor Justin O’Connor, University of South Australia

Dr Monika Barthwal-Datta, Senior Lecturer, University of New South Wales, Sydney

Thanks to Just Peace Qld for bringing this letter to our attention.

Ian Curr
28 May 2023

References
https://johnmenadue.com/an-open-letter-to-the-australian-government-from-concerned-scholars-regarding-the-aukus-agreement/

‘Revitalization of Christianity’ in Fryer library, University of Queensland.

A Historical Portrait of the New Student Left at the University of Queensland, 1966 – 1972 by Mark Young.

Photos by Grahame Garner, See Fryer Library collection at University of Queensland.

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