Dennis Argall

Dennis Walter Argall (7 July 1943 – 13 June 2023) was an Australian diplomat and senior career officer with the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade. He was Australia’s Ambassador to China from 1984 until 1985. A tribute in John Menadue's, public commentator, and formerly a senior public servant and diplomat, journal of public policy, Pearls and Irritations described him as "curious, funny, fiercely intelligent, committed to social justice, and fairly often the world had to catch up with him. He didn’t laugh at sexist and racist jokes, he didn’t find them funny. He was a career diplomat, a former Ambassador to China, and he wrote the first speech in the Australian Parliament that talked about human rights."

Biography Argall was born in Newcastle, New South Wales. His father worked for the Commonwealth Bank and he grew up in Newcastle, Sydney, and Maryborough before returning to Sydney. He attended Newington College (1955–1959) on a scholarship and completed a Bachelor of Arts degree with honours in anthropology at the University of Sydney.

Argall died in Nowra on 13 June 2023, at the age of 79.

His papers, from the period 1984 until 1988, are held by the National Library of Australia. These include writing on the 1980 Cabinet decision that gave direction to Australia's modern relationship with China and the complex of issues at the end of 1975, during turbulent last days of the Whitlam Government concerning the 'Korean Question' at the United Nations and the sudden departure of all of the staff of the embassy of the DPRK from Canberra.