On 29 April 1965, Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies announced that the government had received a request for further military assistance from South Vietnam. "We have decided...in close consultation with the Government of the United States—to provide an infantry battalion for service in Vietnam." He argued that a communist victory in South Vietnam would be a direct military threat to Australia. "It must be seen as part of a thrust by Communist China between the Indian and Pacific Oceans" he added. The issue of whether a formal request was made by the South Vietnamese government at this time has been disputed. Although the South Vietnamese Prime Minister, Trần Văn Hương, made a request in December 1964, Hương's replacement, Phan Huy Quát, had to be "coerced into accepting an Australian battalion" and stopped short of formally requesting the commitment in writing, simply sending an acceptance of the offer to Canberra the day before Menzies announced it to the Australian parliament. In this regard it has been argued that the decision was made by Australian politicians against advice of the Department of Defence, to coincide with the commitment of US combat troops earlier in the year, and that the decision would have been made regardless of the wishes of the South Vietnamese government.