CR L/M 188/75
BY BAG
CONFIDENTIAL
RECEIVED IN
REGISTRY No. 50
29 MAY 1975
Axk18/25
16 May 1975
CHANCERY
CANBERRA
ра
Dun
164
3015
39
MICHAEL DARBY
36
Please refer to y our telegram No. 408 of
5 May about this person and his offer of assistance for Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong, which we turned down in our telegram No 9 of 5 May.
2.
He
If you are not already aware of it, it may be useful for you to know something about the background of Darby, who has quite a reputation in Hong Kong. was sent here as an Australian Army officer to learn Mandarin and worked in Hong Kong from 1969 to 70 in the csos, where his behaviour was, to put it mildly. typically Australian. In 1974 he turned up again in Hong Kong as a wheeling-dealing businessman and gate- crashed a reception being given by the Deputy Australian Commissioner'in Hong Kong. At the same time he gave an interview to the press in which he misrepresented the degree of support which his business activities were receiving from the Federal Australian authorities and as a result the Deputy Commissioner (who is in charge of the Trade Section of the Australian Commission here) called him in and asked him to issue a correction in the press.
3.
On returning to Australia, Darby apparently pulled strings through his father, who is an ex-member of the New South Wales Legislative Council, so that an official rebuke was sent to the Deputy Commissioner here for having dared to dampen Darby's commercial operations. This naturally incensed the Deputy Commissioner, who was however able to refute the charges by pointing out the full circumstances of Darby's misrepresentations.
As a result
of this fracas Darby is more or less persona non grata with the Australian Commission here and however useful the assistance he offered might have been, I somehow think that his presence in Hong Kong would have probably led to a further stormy instalment in this story.
CONFIDENTIAL
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