Australian National Archives release Loans Affair documents
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Saturday, January 1, 2005
The National Archives of Australia have, as part of their standard
document release cycle, released thirty year old documents from the
Whitlam government.
The centre piece of the 1974 archives are a series of documents from
the Australian Cabinet and the Treasury pertaining to the attempt to
obtain a $US4 billion loan by the Whitlam government from the Middle
East. The obtaining of these loans and the scandal generated became
collectively known as the "Loans Affair," and contributed
significantly towards the dismissal of the Whitlam government by Sir
John Kerr the following year.
The documents from Treasury, which include descriptions of both the
loan itself and the people involved in arranging them, are scathing.
The "Points that might be made" document of December 13, 1974 clearly
states that Treasury believed the distinct possibility that the loans
might be part of "a confidence trick of major proportions". Minutes
from another meeting five days later state the "incredulity" on the
part of the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
regarding the viability of the loan.
Those documents now available comprise the beginning of the Loans
Affair, from the initial offers to the end of 1974. The remainder of
the Loans Affair documents, as well as everything else from 1975 will
be released on January 1, 2006.
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This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.
Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.
Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.
The text of this article has been released into the public domain. In the event that this is not legally possible, this article may be used for any purpose, without any condition, unless such conditions are required by law. This applies worldwide. Copyright terms on images, however, may vary, so please check individual image pages prior to duplication.
