Richard Arthur Woolcott AC was an Australian public servant, diplomat, author, and commentator who was born on June 11, 1927, and died on February 2, 2023.
Woolcott attended Geelong Grammar School and the University of Melbourne before joining the Australian Diplomatic Service.
Woolcott’s first diplomatic assignment was as Third Secretary at the Australian Embassy in Moscow. Woolcott married Danish-born Birgit Christensen in July 1952 in London, England, and the couple moved to Moscow shortly afterward. Joseph Stalin died in March 1953, during his posting, which lasted until 1954.
In 1967, Woolcott drafted a speech for Prime Minister Harold Holt that said Australia was geographically part of Asia and that it was “a basic tenet of our national policy to live in friendship and understanding with our Asian neighbors”.
Woolcott served as Australia’s High Commissioner to Ghana from 1967 to 1970. In that capacity, he traveled to Ouagadougou, Nouakchott, Dakar, Libreville, Monrovia, Abidjan, Lomé, Conakry, and Bamako on a regular basis. He served as Australia’s Ambassador to Indonesia from 1975 to 1978, during the Indonesian invasion of East Timor.
Throughout his ambassadorship, he urged his country to take a ‘pragmatic’ or ‘Kissingerian’ approach to Indonesian incorporation of East Timor, owing largely to the importance of the Suharto regime to Australia’s strategic and foreign policy goals, as well as its relations with ASEAN and the region, but also to the undersea oil resources that Australia claimed close to Timor. Woolcott was later named Australia’s Ambassador to the Philippines (between 1978 and 1982).
Richard Woolcott’s Net Worth At Time Of Death
Richard Woolcott’s net worth was $1.4 million at the time of his death.