847.7961/40: Telegram
The Consul General at Sydney (Moffat) to the Secretary of State
[Received February 10—4:40 a.m.]
[Your] February 1, 2 p.m. While in Canberra I discussed in considerable detail the problem of the admission of American aircraft and urged the authorities to accept to [the?] procedure outlined in our agreement with Great Britain. I found them quite perturbed that we had read their proposals in the light of a refusal to accept the findings of the American air authorities; the purpose, as they explained it was to obtain additional data on types and individual aircraft over and above what was normally given other countries as owing to their distance and the slowness of communications they felt they needed such data to supervise repairs and maintain unimpaired our standards of airworthiness. In view of our observations, however, they are going to reconsider their suggested procedure and will approach me later.
Frankly I am not hopeful of Australia being willing to exchange notes with us along the line of the present British-American agreement [Page 777] as it is hard to see how this could be reconciled with their governmental policy of giving licenses only to types of airplanes which they feel would suit their needs and above all only to new airplanes. On the other hand, I am reasonably hopeful that they may modify their suggested procedure to bring it more into line with that of other countries.