The Lies Abbott Tells - Part Six

THE AIRBRUSHING OF AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL HISTORY

I've asked the Leader of the Opposition to accompany me, in recognition of the fact that governments of both sides of Australian politics campaigned for an end to apartheid...

[Prime Minister Tony Abbott in YouTube video produced by his media team, 8 December 2013]

THE INCONVENIENT FACTS

1952-1957

In 1952, Australia [Menzies Coalition Goverment] defended Pretoria at the United Nations during massive internal defiance campaigns. The Australian Foreign Minister [R.G. Casey] conceded privately that in 1957 he had made `as good a plug as I could for South Africa'.

1960-61

Liberal Party MP and Coalition Prime Minister of Australia Robert ‘Bob’ Menzies:

* Refuses to condemn the Sharpesville Massacre. South African Prime Minister Verwoerd informed him that he was the "best friend South Africa has".

* When South Africa’s apartheid policies threatened to split the Commonwealth advocated ‘non-interference’ on the grounds that it was an internal matter. 

1964

Coalition Prime Minister of Australia Robert ‘Bob’ Menzies:

* Prime Minister’s XI played visiting South African cricket team

1970

Former Coalition Prime Minister of Australia Robert ‘Bob’ Menzies:

* Regarded the cancellation of the South African cricket tour of Britain as “a great injury to cricket – a giving way to the threats a noisy minority...”.

1971

Liberal Party MP and Coalition Prime Minister of Australia William ‘Billy’ McMahon:

* Called the six Australian Wallabies footballers, who refused to play the South African Springboks when they toured Australia, “a disgrace to their country”.

Federal Minister for Primary Industry and Country Party MP Ian Sinclair:

* Called South Africa “a market of growing importance”.

Queensland Country-Liberal Coalition Premier Joe Bjelke-Petersen:

* Declared a state of emergency in order that a Springbok tour football game could be played at Exhibition Ground behind a high barbed-wire fence.

Victorian Liberal-Country Coalition Premier Henry Bolte:

* called the anti-apartheid protests “rebellion against constituted authority”.

1975-1977

It wasn't until the a Coalition Government led by Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser came to power that the Liberal and National parties took an anti-apartheid policy stance by supporting the UN General Assembly resolution on apartheid in sport in 1976 and became party to the Gleneagles Agreement in 1977.

1979

President of the Sydney University Students Representative Council Tony Abbott:

* allegedly objected to student union funding “groups such as International Socialists, South African terrorists,....ultra militant feminism, homosexual proselytism and environmentalism gone to crazy lengths”.