Australia, the Cold War, and the Rhodesia Information Centre, 1971–1972

Abstract In March 1972, the Rhodesia Information Centre (RIC) in Sydney was burglarized by political activists who seized key documents and later released them to the Australian press. The documents showed that, despite UN sanctions against the white minority regime in Salisbury, the RIC was importing and distributing Rhodesian propaganda, lobbying senior Australian policymakers, and violating Australian customs regulations. The Australian government, led by Prime Minister Billy McMahon, declined to take action against the RIC, instead favoring a revision of Australian customs regulations that would make it easier for Rhodesian representatives to import otherwise prohibited material. Canberra's lack of enthusiasm for punitive action against Rhodesia has often been interpreted as muted support for the Rhodesian government's white supremacist ideology, but, in fact, the evidence makes clear that Australian policymakers unequivocally rejected that ideology. A more helpful way of understanding the Australian government's peculiar response to the controversy is to examine the Cold War assumptions that continued to shape the thinking of the highest policymakers in Canberra throughout the 1970s. Although some realities of the previous two decades were by this time unraveling, McMahon and his colleagues were influenced by earlier precepts of the Cold War that made them reluctant to take punitive action against a regime that was culturally similar to Australia, Western in origin, and staunchly anti-Communist.