Malcolm Fraser, India and CHOGRM – high moments in the bilateral relationship

Abstract

Observations of Australia and India as committed partners in a shared venture during the Prime Ministerships of Malcolm Fraser, Morarji Desai and Indira Gandhi reveal a rare period of close collaboration at prime ministerial and senior government levels. The prime ministerial triumvirate's Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meetings (CHOGRMs) grew out of annual Officials' Talks and are not replicated in today's plethora of regional groupings. They are, however, a glimpse of a successful Commonwealth endeavour led by Australia and India, disbanded after Fraser lost government.

Keywords:

• Australia–India bilateral relationship
• Fraser
• Desai
• Gandhi
• Indian Ocean
• CHOGM
• CHOGRM

Notes

1. The author's research on Malcolm Fraser's defence and foreign policy was undertaken with the support of the Australian Prime Ministers' Centre at the Museum of Democracy, Old Parliament House, Canberra in 2010–2012. A paper on parts of that work appeared in Weigold (2013a). Notes from that work are cited in this publication.

2. Mrs Gandhi, as Indian Prime Minister, visited Australia in May 1968 and again in October 1981 for CHOGM. Prime Minister Desai visited in 1978 for CHOGRM and Fraser made two visits to India while Prime Minister, in January–February 1979 for official talks, and in September 1980 for the second CHOGRM.

3. The records of these talks are held in the National Archives of Australia, entitled: ‘India-Political – Relations with Australia – Consultations’.

4. Accounts of the organisation and negotiation behind the first CHOGRM, agreed at CHOGM in London in July 1977, are recounted in part from Fraser's biographer, Philip Ayres, and Fraser's memoir written with Margaret Simons, as well as from official records.

5. Prime Minister Hawke in closing down the CHOGRM meeting series at the fourth such event, held in PNG in 1984, said ‘they were largely a wasteful duplication of the South Pacific Forum meetings (Hawke 1994, p. 265). Press comments did not endorse Hawke's memory of the event (see The Age, 1984, August 9, Michelle Grattan, ‘Meeting on the meeting’).