Chapter 7- Vietnam-Vietcong
Sixty-three years ago, on 17 and 18 September 1967, I alerted the Australian government via the then Commonwealth Police (now called the Australian Federal Police) that some of Australia's wheat being sent to a starving Peoples Republic of China on humanitarian grounds was being redeployed to North Vietnam during the Vietnam War where North Vietnam Vietcong guerrilla's were slaughtering many Australian, New Zealand and USA troops.(refer to Chapter 7- Vietnam-Vietcong)
Exposing what I thought was the right thing to do as an Australian has plagued my life ever since and appears to have affected my government-endorsed 1994/95 arbitration. The newspaper journalist who covered my story, telling me it was news that had to be exposed, was forced by the editor to pull the story and not disclose the truth surrounding what I had seen and discussed with another international seaman who had not long arrived back in China after having delivered Australian grain to North Vietnam. That journalist also told me I would be branded by the government as a Red Commie and be placed on a watch list.
Why you might ask have I introduced my China strory into my Telstra arbitration issues? I strongly beleive that in most western democracies being threatened by the defendats in my arbitration is one thing but for the arbitrator the government communications regulator and the Australian Federal Police to have been aware of these theats and did nothing to bring Telstra to account suggest someing was not right when those parties allowed those threats to be carried out aware they had finally ruined any chance of proving my phone complaints were ongoing on the day the arbitrator declared my business was fault free when government records show my business was not fault free at all.
The truth that my phone complaints, continued are not in the government archives regardless of the government being provied a report (see AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings, at points 2 to 212. The Casualties of Telstra formation stored in the government Department of Communications Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA) archives is likewise not telling the Casualties of Telstra story the way it happened. In 2006, the government used false information to assess the validity of the COT Cases claims being re-evaluated by the government (refer to Chapter 8 - The eighth remedy pursued).
In simple terms, the government bureaucrats who work for the Australian Establishment have been cooking the books [doctoring Australia's history] for years, and our Australian university students and other academics who are researching Australia's history are only using information stored in Australia's government archives the government allows to be exposed (Refer example File 639 File - AS-CAV Exhibits 589 to 647)
A strong and distressing connection exists between the Vietnam War in which Australians, New Zealand USA and South Vietnamese and Vietcong soldiers lost their lives and the events that fuel this story of COT cases and the flagrant injustices.
What is that connection between my Telstra story and that of Australia’s past trading with Communist China during the Vietnam War (1955–1975)?
My contention is that what the Australian government did was tantamount to trading with the enemy. The incumbent government — Liberal-Country Coalition —continued to trade with Communist China at the same time as it was sending Australian troops into life-threatening circumstances. This was, to my mind, immoral; duplicitous and, importantly, whether inadvertent or not, seeing the many young soldiers here in Australia, New Zealand and the USA as collateral damage. This is an unforgiveable betrayal.
That Australia's bureaucrats kept trading with China even after being aware of China’s assistance to North Vietnam. This brutal pragmatism that was present for Australian public servants then, is still in place.
Australia’s public servants acted as a law unto themselves then; is likely such behaviour and thinking is present today. It was undoubtedly their modus when they were controlling the government-endorsed arbitrations to which COT cases were subjected.
This sacrifice by Australia, New Zealand and the USA has been forgotten by China
1 July 2021 — The editorial in The Australian Financial Review of August 28, 1967, argues why Australia's position on wheat sales to China was rational. (https://www.afr.com › World › Asia - How Australia defied US to sell wheat to a famine-starved China
While the Financial Review might argue that supplying wheat to a starving China saved many Chinese lives, one must also ask how many Australian, New Zealand and USA lives were lost after Australia's wheat went into the bellies of the North Vietnam - Vietcong soldiers who, after eating that wheat went out into the jungle to kill as many troops as they could.
FOOD AND TRADE IN LATE MAOIST CHINA, 1960-1978
When I commenced writing My Story – Warts and All and this website, I told the whole story – I didn’t leave bits out to avoid embarrassing myself. To say all of my COT stories, I had to go back in time to show how the phone faults affected my well-being and needed to cover some details regarding an incident involving China.
In 1967, not many Australians supported America’s fight against communism in Vietnam. In June 1967, I signed onto the MS Hope Peak, a merchant ship crewed by British and West Indian seaman (see British Seamans Record Book R744269 Open Letter to PM File No 1 Alan Smiths Seaman). I was not informed we were bound for The People's Republic of China. A British Seamen’s Union representative informed me the MS Hope Peak was bound for Canada, but the following day, after I signed on board and accepted the conditions, I was told we were bound for the People’s Republic of China; I was sailing out of Australia with a cargo of wheat heading to China.
The crew was horrified that Australia was trading and selling wheat to the People’s Republic of China. At the time, Mao Zedong’s communist government supported the North Vietnamese communists and authorised the supply of armoury, technical knowledge and financial assistance. Australian troops were among those dying in the conflict with the Viet Cong. Nothing made sense to the crew or me.
I became ill during the voyage and needed medical care when we berthed. The briefing we received from the skipper was that Mao’s guards were LAW; they were authorised to beat even their comrades if deemed necessary. Red Guards were everywhere: on the wharves, on our ship, at the hospital entrance, and in the wards. When I refused to accept a non-sterile needle in my arm, the two Red Guards escorting me kept yelling at the shipping agent, who only spoke broken English, and I was arrested for refusing to comply and placed under guard.
While writing my third letter to the People’s Republic of China (previous letters were rejected), the skipper advised me this was my last opportunity. I told him I could not write what he was telling me:
"I am a US aggressor and a supporter of Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalist Party.”
However, I also knew the Red Guards could shoot me at will if I did not obey: they had implied this over the last few days when a Red Guard with a rifle in hand would wake me half-hourly ‘to see if I was asleep. I believed my death was imminent.
The angry skipper reiterated that I would be shot if I did not say what they wanted. I eventually wrote, “I hate America and its invasion of North Vietnam,” and narrowly managed to leave with my ship.
The following three statements taken from a report prepared by Australia's Kim Beasly MP on 4 September 1965 (father of the current Kim Beasly) only tells part of this tragic episode concerning what I wanted to convey to Malcolm Fraser when I telephoned him concerning Australia's wheat deals
(See Vol. 87 No. 4462 (4 Sep 1965) - National Library of Australiahttps://nla.gov.au › nla.obj-702601569see Vol. 87 N
"The Department of External Affairs has recently published an "Information Handbook entitled "Studies on Vietnam". It established the fact that the Vietcong are equipped with Chinese arms and ammunition"
If it is right to ask Australian youth to risk everything in Vietnam it is wrong to supply their enemies"
Australian trade commssioners do not so readily see that our Chinese trade in war materials finances our own distruction. NDr do they see so clearly that the wheat trade does the same thing."
I reiterate, nothing adds up, then in September 1965, or when I arrived back in Australia by the skin of my teeth on 18 September 1997, with the same ship MS Hopepeak taking on another 13,600 tons of wheat back to the starving people of China and those in North Vietnam who was hell-bent on killing and maiming as many Australian, New Zealand and US troops as they possibly could.
I would be a “marked man” - a noted communist
On arrival back in Australia in September 1967, the ship’s crew was paid off, and a new crew was brought in. The Australian Commonwealth Police (now the Australian Federal Police) interviewed me concerning my anti-America/pro-communism words written while under house-arrest. I gave them a copy of my handwritten letter to the Hon Malcolm Fraser, the then-Minister for the Army. This letter advised Mr Fraser that Australia’s grain was being used to assist North Vietnam in their war campaign against Australia, New Zealand and the USA. I asked the police to be sure Mr Fraser received this letter; however, I never received a response, and Australia continued to supply grain to the People’s Republic of China, aware some of it was going to North Vietnam, knowing the possibility that after eating a bowl of Australian wheat, the Viet Cong guerrillas went out on patrol and killed or maimed conscripted Australian, New Zealand and US soldiers?
The press also interviewed me and said my experience in China was an important news story. When the story was printed, however, it was only a tiny article. The journalist said my side of the story had been “pulled”, that I would now be a marked man and that the government would have put a black mark against my name, noting me as a communist sympathiser – a ‘Commie’.
In the Australian Establishment back in the 1960s, who operated the scales to balance whose lives were the more important to save, the starving Chinese or the Aussie, Kiwi and USA troops fighting a war they did not want to fight?
No one transparently investigated my claims. Not once did any government official ask me how I discovered China was sending Australian wheat to Vietnam. What happened to my written account provided to the Commonwealth Police on what I experienced at the hands of the Red Guards or what I had observed in detention?
Even in 2022, this part of my life seems to be in sections and not complete. I know there are hours, perhaps a half-day here and there, that I cannot piece together or fully remember. It seems my trip to China and then Japan comes back in stages, not complete. Even Japan where I relaxed after the events that happened is a haze.
For this part of my story, I shall tell it after my ex-wife Faye had been gone for four years, just before I met Shelia Hawkins in the Society Restaurant in Bourke Street, Melbourne. The first meeting of the COT Cases. Shelia's restaurant had been suffering from phone problems, and these issues had been picked up by the talkback radio show Deryn Hinch. From that radio show, I contacted Sheila, and we agreed to meet to discuss our mutual phone complaints.
THE COT STORY - was about to begin.
Local Portland police files will record the date their Sergeant Frank ------ (who our now know professionally) visited the holiday camp after I confronted an intruder. This was the same time I was pushing the advertising for the singles club weekends, a great way for single people to meet and socialise. I noticed a small light in the distance in the early hours of one morning, just after 1 am. At first, I thought perhaps the glove box in my ute had somehow dropped open, and it was that light that I could see. As I got closer to the morning, I discovered a four-wheel-drive vehicle parked and a person standing under the overhanging branches of a couple of giant cypress trees on my property. I picked up an axe from a nearby woodpile as I passed. The person got into the car before I reached the trees. I walked up to the car and yanked the car door open. With my axe in the other hand, I demanded that this person identify himself and his purpose. I was particularly intrigued as there were no guests staying at the camp that night. The man, startled and confused by an angry man waving an axe at him, stammered that he was a fishing inspector waiting to catch abalone poachers. This answer seemed entirely plausible, so I let him drive away. However, I lodged a report with the Portland police later that morning, just in case there was more to this than seemed at first.
A few days after the police sergeant visited the camp to discuss the intruder issue, the same sergeant phoned me to arrange a second visit. He did not want to discuss his investigation into the fishing inspector story on the phone. The sergeant arrived within the hour and explained that he had checked with the Victorian and South Australian wildlife authorities investigating fishing and abalone poaching matters. Neither of them had authorised an investigator to be on my land, and if they had, they would have notified me first. Why had this man been standing under the cypress tree? What was he waiting to see if he wasn’t a fishing inspector waiting to catch abalone poachers?
Whenever a school group was in attendance, I did a security check various times during the night or my overnight staff did the same. I notified teachers and group leaders that I often was in my office when the light was on. Many a cup of tea or coffee was shared with a school teacher or a group member on night duty.
But on this occasion, this particular intruder brought back memories of my time in The People’s Republic of China, my confrontation with the Red Guards and to the Sydney newspaper reporter in September 1967 warning me that I would be a “marked man” for insisting that Australia should not be selling wheat to the People’s Republic of China while Mao Zedong supported North Vietnam, while Australian, New Zealand and USA troops fought and died in the war against the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. Nothing made sense to me then, or still does in 2018
I couldn’t clear my mind of that episode or the feeling that there had to be a link between those two events: the secret eavesdropping on my personal affairs carried out by this government-owned telecommunications carrier and this still-unidentified man on my property.
I arrived back in Australia from the People’s Republic of China (lucky to have escaped with my life) on 18 September 1967. At that time, I was interviewed by the Australian Commonwealth Police (now the AFP), and I gave them a copy of a letter I had written to the Hon Malcolm Fraser, who was then the Minister for the Army. I asked the police to be sure he received it. However, I have never had a response to that letter.
During my 1994/95 arbitration, I supplied the Australian Federal Police ( Australian Federal Police Investigations - Chapter 1 - Hacked documents and Australian Federal Police Investigations several Australian newspaper articles concerning two separate telephone conversations I had with The Hon Malcolm Fraser. Mr Fraser reported to the media only what he thought was important concerning Telstra's phone bugging issues and nothing else.
“FORMER prime minister Malcolm Fraser yesterday demanded Telecom explain why his name appears in a restricted internal memo.
“Mr Fraser’s request follows the release of a damning government report this week which criticised Telecom for recording conversations without customer permission.
“Mr Fraser said Mr Alan Smith, of the Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp near Portland, phoned him early last year seeking advice on a long-running dispute with Telecom which Mr Fraser could not help.” (See Senate Evidence File No/53)
Who in Telstra Corporation thought it important to note that I had telephoned Malcolm Fraser? Is my conversation with the former prime minister on one of the nine audio tapes AUSTEL provided to the Australian Federal Police but refused to supply copies to the COT cases? I was never suspected of committing a crime or being a possible risk to Australia’s national security.
As mentioned above, I even went as far as reporting in writing to both the Hon Malcolm Fraser and the then Commonwealth Police what was happening to Australia’s wheat once it left Australia’s shores (see The People’s Republic of China segment on google).
AUTHORS COMMENT:
It is unbelievable for the Liberal-Country Coalition to have placed Australian troops in life-threatening circumstances as they did for their political point-scoring To have done this while trading with the enemy, using so many young lives here in Australia, New Zealand and the USA as collateral damage, is a betrayal of the worse possible kind.
Possibly worse is Australia's bureaucrats continued to trade with China for so long after being aware China was assisting North Vietnam (the enemy) while that enemy was killing our youths and the youths of our allies.
I believe every Australian should be advised to read a full two-page mainstream media release prepared by an independent historian on the history of China and Taiwan. What the west should be shown is to take sides in any war between these two nations is asking them to take sides in a civil war like that experienced back in the USA, North against the South,
After the release of this two-page newspaper size history on China and Taiwan, if a referendum was held in Australia, the result of its finding might shock Australian politicians into taking a stern look at the way China is today towards the west even though the west stopped them starving to death in the 1960s during the great famine.
What we in the west sacrificed to help China is beyond all belief.
However, one thing must never be forgotten, and that is that The Hon Malcolm Fraser, Prime Minister of Australia, bridged a gap that the South Vietnamese has never failed as the following government documents
It is however, most important we pay tribute to one of Australia's finest Prime Minister's that Australia has ever had, a compassionate man as well as a politician (see https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display and 
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