A response to John Stone.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)

SIR: John Stone's comment on my address to the National Archives on the 1976 Cabinet Papers and his reply to my response lead me to note the following points for the record:

* Stone has not attempted to defend the inaccurate advice which Treasury provided to the government in 1976 that the devaluation would have a very large inflationary impact;

* Stone regards the refusal of the departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet and Treasury to respond at the time to the requests of the Prime Minister to prepare a parliamentary statement as a "trivial' matter;

* Stone fails to comprehend the damage his inflated rhetoric did to the credibility of his own and Treasury advice at the time, including to the Treasurer's credibility.

On the puzzling matter of the "misquotation" to which I referred, my reference was to the actual text of the paper I prepared for the National Archives, which was also the reference provided at the end of John Stone's comment in Quadrant. The printed text has always contained within it the words "Stone told me". This text was provided to ...