The Fall of Saigon

This letter in todays Australian serves to highlight another reason to recall the embarrassment of being an Australian when Whitlam was in power Last days of Saigon still linger 04 May 2005

RODNEY Dalton’s article (“Pain lingers for deserted four – fall of Saigon: 30 Years On”, 30/4) recites, without comment, unfounded and hurtful criticisms of my late father, Geoffrey Price, the last Australian ambassador to South Vietnam. My father, as Australia’s ambassador, was obeying direct and specific instructions from the Australian government, which he had bitterly but unsuccessfully disputed over the preceding days, in not evacuating the Australian embassy’s 55 Vietnamese staff on the RAAF Hercules sent to evacuate the other few remaining Australian staff and him. He certainly was not loading the aircraft with his personal possessions or any pets during the scramble on that day. In an article The Australian ran on the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon in April, 2000, Stuart Rintoul reported my father’s enduring sense of shame at the way Australia abandoned all but one of its locally engaged Vietnamese embassy staff, together with many other Vietnamese at risk of being punished by the incoming North Vietnamese for their associations with Australia. I can confirm that my father’s shame at Australia’s petty betrayal of Vietnamese colleagues who had worked alongside him for many months did remain with him until the day he died. Christopher Price Bellevue Hill, NSW

Whitlam wouldn’t have anything to do with ‘those f**king Vietnamese Balts’, as he put it at, least not with the ones from the South. Stuart Rintoul, of course would blame the military, or the Diplomatic Corps, or the Ambassador, or the…..well , anyway, anyone but Whitlam.