Snapshot of White Australia in letters

SINGAPORE'S Lee Kuan Yew once said Australia was in danger of becoming the "poor white trash of Asia".

SINGAPORE'S Lee Kuan Yew once said Australia was in danger of becoming the "poor white trash of Asia".

But in 1967 he thought the best thing for Australia's future was if Gough Whitlam became prime minister.

"I hope the ALP will make sufficient recovery before the next elections," the long-serving Singapore prime minister wrote to the Labor Party's federal secretary, Cyril Wyndham, in April 1967.

"Harry" Lee -- as he signed letters -- saw Mr Whitlam as a fresh new face for Labor who could transform Australia's foreign policy and help Australia turn the corner on racial prejudice. Mr Whitlam had replaced Arthur Calwell as Labor leader in February 1967. Calwell had a complex but often prejudiced view of racial matters, particularly in Asia.

Mr Lee, the first prime minister of the Republic of Singapore, was critical of the Menzies and Holt governments' White Australia policy, which Labor had pledged to abolish in 1965.

Mr Whitlam was a leading proponent for ending White Australia, while Calwell, who had administered the policy as immigration minister in the 1940s, privately supported it.

A series of letters between Mr Lee and Wyndham, who died in July, has been discovered in Wyndham's personal papers, recently given to the State Library of NSW.

The pair corresponded on the Vietnam War, the Coalition's policy of conscription, the British role in Asia and other matters.

In October 1965 Wyndham led a delegation of Labor officials to Singapore as Mr Lee's guests.

Labor and Mr Lee's People's Action Party were seen as fraternal parties of the Centre-Left. They were both members of Socialist International. Mr Lee addressed Labor's caucus and developed a friendly relationship with Mr Whitlam.

In 1965 Mr Lee invited Calwell to visit Singapore but Calwell declined, telling Mr Whitlam: "You'll never get me visiting those countries. You never know what you'll catch."

Mr Whitlam visited Singapore several times as prime minister.

"There is no head of government with whom I have had a longer, closer association," Mr Whitlam said at a state dinner there in 1974.