1967 Meeting between Australian Immigration Minister, Billy Sneddon and SFR Yugoslavia authorities in Belgrade undermines the Belgrade and Skopje cafe society conspiracy theories ! Secret cabinet documents now de-classified and lodged with the National Archives of Australia detailing a meeting between Minister Sneddon and the highest ranking bureaucrats of Communist Yugoslavia, Anton Polajner, Djuro Stankovic and Rafael Tabor held in Belgrade between 27 July to 1 August 1967...reveal Yugoslavia had many unemployed workers it wanted to send to Australia... Many important issues were dicussed but we dont know if Minister Sneddon was taken to a Belgrade cafe and offered Slivovic (Slivovitz) or sampled any Serbo-turbo folk music.... What the documents do reveal, and reading between the lines, was Yugoslavia because of its economic policy and the resultant high unemployed had to push as many of these people overseas, preferably to Australia, where they could send back hard currency to their relatives in the various republics of SFR Yugoslavia: Macedonia, Croatia etc etc. So in effect, the people who were left behnd in SFR Yugoslavia enjoyed a kind of prosperity where they were given the government or public service jobs and university scholarships (stipendi)...but this came at the expense of emigre workers in Australia. source: naa.gov.au
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 06:28:29 +0000
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