I. E. L. uses the Security Pacific Bank to acquire 20 per cent of Fletcher subsidiary Marac, allegedly helped by Marac corporate secretary Alan Hawkins.

Michael Hand and Frank Nugan set up the Nugan Hand Bank, using Fletcher and Renouf and their NZ United Corporation to link with I. E. L. and Brierley/Jones Investments through a cross-shareholding agreement.

The Nugan Hand Bank begins operations in Australia with 30 percent of the stock held by Australasian and Pacific holdings (100 percent Chase Manhattan Bank), 25 percent by the CIA’s Air America, 25 percent by South Pacific Properties and 20 percent held by Nugan, Hand and Seldon.

Hand allegedly uses the bank to launder some of the enormous profits from the CIA-run weapons-for-opium trade in Laos.

The New York branch of Irving Trust allegedly establishes links between the Nugan Hand and a worldwide network of 22 banks.

The network is allegedly a money laundry for heroin operations in the Golden Triangle and Iran; a CIA funding channel for pro-US political parties in Europe and Latin America; an intelligence conduit for information concerning the Southeast Asian nations; a financing system for arms allegedly smuggled to Libya, Indonesia, South America, Rhodesia and the Middle East under the supervision of CIA operative Edward Wilson.

Supposedly overseeing the operation are key CIA and Naval Intelligence personnel, allegedly placed by Colby and Henry Kissinger; these include Walter McDonald (former Deputy Director of the CIA), Dale Holmgren (Flight Service Manager, Civil Air Transport), Robert Jansen (former CIA station chief in Bangkok), and others.

Longtime CIA operative Ray Cline allegedly meets with Michael Hand in Adelaide on August 18, 1973 to establish intelligence operations in New Zealand.

Seagram’s (strongly linked to Chase Manhattan Bank of Montreal and Toronto Dominion Bank), purchases 2,800 acres of prime land in Marlborough, New Zealand.

Whitlam ends conscription and orders troops home from Vietnam.

He also champions legislation furthering the claims of the Aborigines, other ethnic minorities, and women.

Opposed to uranium mining, he takes steps to block it.

Kirk pulls New Zealand troops out of the Vietnam War and attempts to block France’s Pacific nuclear tests.

He also introduces a new, tough Anti-Monopoly Bill and attempts, through price reduction and a wages policy, the redistribution of income from large companies to the labor force.

Kirk also rejects plans to construct a new aluminum smelter near Dunedin.

Members of the newly empowered ALP, some of whom actively protested the Vietnam War, voice strong criticism of the three secret major US bases on Australian soil—Pine Gap, Nurrungar and North-West Cape—and begin to demand an official explanation for their presence.

In 1973, Australian Attorney general Lionel Murphy conducts a surprise investigation of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) offices in Melbourne.

CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton reportedly complains to an Australian television interviewer about the “Attorney General moving in, barging in…” “…we were deeply concerned as to the sanctity of this information which could compromise sources and methods and compromise human life.” The CIA, says Angleton, seriously considered breaking intelligence relations with Australia.

Sydney’s Opera House, the spectacular shell structure designed by Danish architect Jorn Utzon, is completed in 1973.

Australian novelist and playwright Patrick White, who writes of the spiritual truths sometimes available to the lonely and dispossessed, is awarded the 1973 Nobel prize for literature.