Arthur Tange, page 15
In fact, Tange had been deeply worried by the Throssell case. He had taken the view that he was bound to accept ASIO’s advice on security matters. The prestige with which ASIO had emerged from the Petrov Affair made it virtually impossible to do otherwise. But ASIO was ultra-cautious in protecting its principal source, the communications intercepts codenamed Venona, and refused to provide any hard evidence against Throssell. Tange, therefore, had to find another basis for refusing to promote him into sensitive positions. He focused on Throssell’s refusal to give an assurance that he would not associate with people of questionable political views outside the office. Throssell was active in amateur dramatics in Canberra, where many of those with whom he mixed had views considered excessively leftist in the post-Petrov climate. Other External Affairs officers participated in or frequently attended amateur theatre, without incurring disfavour, but Tange took the position that Throssell’s obstinacy cast questions on his judgment. Tange felt that ASIO’s attitude forced him into denying Throssell promotion, not for being untrustworthy, but for being pig-headed.
Only much later, in the Second Report of the Hope Royal Commission, was it made clear that a head of department had the right, and the responsibility, to take or to reject advice from ASIO on such matters. While Tange was always willing to battle with other authorities in the department’s interests, he sometimes accepted that those authorities had stronger positions than may have been the case. In a final irony in a case full of ironies, the most substantial investigation of the pro-Soviet spy ring in External Affairs left open the question whether Throssell was as innocent as he always presented himself, and as he was accepted by many. He may well have been at least an unwitting informant for the Soviets, by means of what he told both his unrepentantly communist mother and his wife.209
Tange’s approach was always hierarchical. In his early years as head of department he was careful not to cause offence to his more senior associates, particularly Plimsoll, Shaw and Waller, any one of whom might well, in his view, have been chosen ahead of him for the Secretaryship. As noted earlier, Casey urged him to ensure that heads of diplomatic missions were not allowed to feel forgotten and neglected. It was unnecessary advice, for even as assistant secretary Tange had made good use of what the British call ‘demi-official’ correspondence, the sort of private-yet-business letter that enables the diplomat in the field and the senior officer in the foreign office to understand the political and administrative context of the various memos and cables exchanged daily on specific items of business. Tange had, for example, written in this way to Walter Crocker in 1952.210
Tange developed clear views on the role of personal correspondence between the Secretary and the heads of major diplomatic missions. In 1955 he wrote to Peter Heydon, then High Commissioner in India:
Unlike one or two of your colleagues—who clutter my desk with personal letters that I cannot always find time to read—you are a model of reticence. When you have an untroubled hour, I should like to hear from you—something about how you and Naomi find the daily business of living in New Delhi, any problems you have, and what you make of the Indians.211
Heydon cheerfully responded: ‘No one is going to call me reticent and get away with it.’212 From then on, he wrote about twice a year to Tange, giving an overview of the nature and conditions of life and work in New Delhi. These letters gave Tange what he wanted, a general guide to the work of a major diplomatic mission, providing the context in which matters of policy and administration were being handled without requiring any specific action. Watt, by contrast, although a former Secretary, could not grasp what Tange needed in this demi-official correspondence. His letters combined perceptive comment on international affairs with petty complaints about staffing issues and almost paranoid concerns over supposed security threats. Tange complained that he had to spend valuable minutes literally cutting up Watt’s letters, so that individual paragraphs could be sent to departmental officers for appropriate action, without sending sensitive items to desks which did not ‘need to know’.213
In the 1990s, a woman External Affairs officer told an interviewer, who was researching the history of the department, that she had heard Tange say that no woman would become head of mission while he was Secretary. When Tange heard of this statement, he vehemently denied its accuracy and tried to prevent its publication.214 His own claim was that he judged all officers on their merits, irrespective of gender, and that he respected the ability of some women officers. He particularly admired, for example, the way that Cynthia Nelson, as chargée d’affaires in Saigon, handled a call by Tange upon President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was notorious for turning such occasions into interminable monologues. For her part, Cynthia Nelson felt that she had not been treated unfairly because of her gender.215
The real barrier to the advancement of women was the statutory requirement throughout the public service that women resign upon marriage. The ‘marriage bar’ lasted until 1966. Thus when Nelson and Max Loveday, both already counsellors in their thirties, decided to marry, Nelson inevitably had to resign. Tange sent them a cheerful telegram: ‘Two for the price of one.’216 Tange was certainly not ahead of his time in his attitude towards the advancement of women—even Marjorie, his most loyal supporter, was well aware of that217—and women officers were even more likely than men to dislike Tange’s management style. Nevertheless, he was not a misogynist by the standards of his day. Always inclined to accept rather than to challenge the laws and conventions governing the public service. Tange allowed women equal opportunities within the limits of a system that was, for a remarkably long time, biased against them. It is likely that, like many senior public servants, he came to see the marriage bar as an unnecessary and unfair restraint not only on women but more especially on the ability of the public service to attract and retain the talents of able women. In the early 1960s, it was increasingly evident that Menzies was the last obstacle to reform in this area. Within a year of Menzies’ retirement, the public service mandarins had secured the removal of the relevant provision from the Public Service Act, but by this time Tange was overseas.
There is no doubt that he could make tough demands of officers when he thought the situation so demanded. He had no hesitation in despatching officers at minimal notice for short, and sometimes not so short, missions. Even newly married officers could only be accompanied by a spouse at their own expense.218 Even for a longer-term posting, the notice could be negligible. Nicholas Parkinson was summoned by Tange on a Monday and told that he was to go to Moscow, where a vacancy had suddenly arisen. Parkinson departed at lunchtime on Tuesday.219
Inevitably demands like these were sometimes resented, just as it was inevitable that some within the department thought that some decisions on promotions and postings were based on personal prejudice. But such criticisms were less common for Tange than for almost anyone else in such a position. More common, both at the time and in retrospect, was the feeling that Tange genuinely sought to deal with individuals according to the department’s needs and to their merits as public servants. The former member of Davidson’s Kindergarten never attempted to create a ‘Tange’s kindergarten’ or a ‘fast track’ for personal favourites. Toughness was one of the characteristics he admired, and some of those he promoted were themselves unpopular. David Dexter (who thought Tange ruthless and abrasive, but ‘a pretty good Secretary on the whole’) complained that Tange was behind the advancement of one officer who would never have won a popularity contest.220 At the same time, Tange also rewarded those who displayed the classic skills of diplomacy, especially those, like Keith Shann and Tom Critchley, who could deploy those skills effectively in Asian capitals. Those who flourished under Tange were generally tough, able and urbane, but proud to be Australian public servants and not inclined to the pretensions associated with diplomacy in different continents and earlier eras. As he told a journalist after a decade as Secretary, ‘We’ve developed what can be labelled a uniquely Australian diplomatic “style”.’221
Opinions on Tange varied over time. Walter Crocker’s, for example, were consistently strong, but not consistently favourable. After working closely with Tange for nine days in 1956, he noted that he was:
impressed with Tange, he has intellect, he uses it, he has justice, he has character, and he has personality. He has the stuff of leadership—which his predecessor. Alan Watt, lacked. He will probably end up with a title, as that is now the practice for heads of the Dept, but he is the sort of man who would be in the leading half dozen of a revolution. He has stuff and stuffing, not froth & bubble.222
In subsequent years, Crocker frequently noted that Tange appeared tired and worn, with the strain of the job affecting his performance. Then, almost inevitably, the two strong-minded men fell out and exchanged vitriolic letters. In one masterpiece of malevolence (which may or may not have been sent), Crocker denounced Tange as a pompous, ill-educated bully, who had never headed a diplomatic mission, who lacked the classical education of a true diplomat, and who covered his weaknesses with bluster.223 By the last years of his century-long life, however, Crocker had returned to his earlier admiration. He contended that Tange:
was not a bully. He was bent on bringing order into a group of men who saw themselves as special and specially interesting … Heaven knows that these men needed discipline and needed true leadership. Tange’s manner was not gentle and he could give the rugby tackles as needed. The truth is he came to head the department when it was pretty feeble yet a highly pretentious organ. His nine [sic] years of leadership turned it into a worthy diplomatic body comparing not too badly with old diplomatic corps like the British or the French or the German.224
Some objects of Tange’s censure accepted his rebukes as justified; others began to describe him as a brute or a bully. Several younger officers who worked closely with Tange in External Affairs were proud and grateful to have served someone of great ability who knew what he wanted, who insisted on high standards in his subordinates, and who fought for the department against both rival departments and misguided ministers. Philip Flood, for example, worked as Tange’s executive assistant and much later became Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He regarded his early mentor’s ability and dedication with ‘awe and admiration’.225 Others who served under Tange, including people of real ability, never forgave his dominating, demanding and autocratic style. But most respected his genuine determination to raise standards without playing factions or favourites, and were prepared to accept his Draconian methods as the necessary price. He might best be compared with the captain of a naval vessel, who is expected to be a decisive autocrat, as aloof from the officers’ wardroom as from those below decks. Provided this style of leadership does not inspire a mutiny, it is generally seen as necessary and desirable, for the good of the ship and its entire company. While there were frequent mutterings among all ranks over Tange’s abrasiveness, no-one played Fletcher Christian to his Captain Bligh, and most of his crew felt that he was turning a wayward frigate of uncertain reputation into a respected and increasingly powerful battleship.
Driving himself and all around him hard. Tange gradually turned External Affairs into a department of the public service that commanded some respect. This had to be turned to advantage in the perpetual struggle with other departments, beginning with the Treasury and the Public Service Board. With the Treasury (in its role of supervisor of government expenditure, hived off in 1976 to a separate Department of Finance) progress was slow. Despite their earlier association, Tange did not get on particularly well with Roland Wilson, whom he found to be sharp-tongued and schoolmasterish in manner, but his, and the department’s, bête noire was one of Wilson’s chief lieutenants, C.L.S. (later Sir Lenox) Hewitt. As far as Tange and his officers could see, Hewitt seemed to enjoy ‘playing Russia’s role in the Security Council—the perpetual veto’.226
Other departmental heads, like John Crawford in Trade, were equally frustrated with Hewitt and the scope that he was given by Wilson, but Hewitt seemed to take particular delight in denying requests from External Affairs. According to one oft-told story, Hewitt was well aware of an occasion when a senior diplomat in a European mission signed a cheque that a subordinate had prepared carelessly, enabling the recipient to alter the figures and attempt to defraud the Commonwealth. When an External Affairs officer went to the Treasury to seek additional funding, Hewitt would reach into a desk drawer, pull out the offending cheque and wave it in the air, with the obvious implication that External Affairs was incapable of handling public money appropriately.
During a discussion with Wilson, lasting more than four hours over two days, Tange emphasised his feelings about ‘the attitude of hostility sometimes displayed by Mr. Hewitt’ and his subordinates in the Treasury. Wilson, according to Tange, was ‘conciliatory and responsive’, conceding that some of his officers might be ‘zealously pursuing’ External Affairs on matters when the time had come to reduce the pressure. Tange admitted that External Affairs had made errors, but argued that his reforms meant the department should now be regarded as competent administrators, who deserved to be treated with some flexibility.227
A longstanding bone of contention was the number of reunion visits—travel by children being educated in Australia to rejoin their parents at an overseas mission in school holidays—to be paid for by the public purse. On these and other matters, Tange gradually succeeded in wearing down Wilson and even Hewitt. Some felt that his tactics were not always wise—for example, in trying to gain salary increases for External Affairs officers instead of concentrating on their allowances.228 Many of the diplomats felt that their conditions still lagged behind those of their colleagues from comparable countries. Nevertheless, during his decade in office Tange gained concessions that raised the standard of living of diplomats, especially those in the harder posts.
Tange’s dealings with the Public Service Board were conducted mainly through his subordinates, but all parties were constantly aware of his close personal interest in postings, promotions and changes to departmental structures. When Keith Waller ended his four years as assistant secretary in charge of administration, his closest contact at the Public Service Board, Evan Collings, congratulated him on his ‘rather saintly forbearance … towards what might be described [as] a “certain power”’. Waller reflected ruefully: ‘No doubt the austere discipline of those four years refined my spirit and made me a better and nobler man but it really was rather a chore which I should not like to repeat.’229 But there was a point to the ‘austere discipline’ that Tange imposed. The department’s submissions, for example, to Promotions Appeal Committees, which played a major role in public servants’ careers, were carefully prepared and based on the officers’ assessment reports. Tange was proud of his high success rate in defending his selections for promotion. As the word spread, within the Public Service Board and throughout the public service, that Tange was running a tight ship, the department’s standing in Canberra rose.
Although Tange was sympathetic to the development of a better career structure for the administrative, or non-diplomatic, officers in the department, he insisted that the senior officials in charge of departmental management come from the diplomatic side. This, he felt, ensured the managers understood the problems experienced by those in overseas missions. Nor was a term in management detrimental to the careers of those concerned. Several of those who worked there—including Waller, his successor David Hay, and Bill Pritchett, Nicholas Parkinson and Peter Henderson at lower levels—went on to become departmental heads, in some cases as a direct result of Tange’s recommendations.230
While battling with the Treasury and the Public Service Board over resources, External Affairs also had to establish, extend and defend its position in the constant interdepartmental struggles over policy. When Tange became Secretary, the department’s reputation in Canberra was far from high. In some circles there were suspicions, which would become highly publicised by the Petrov Affair, that the department might still harbour a ‘nest of traitors’ loyal to the Soviet Union rather than to Australia and its Western allies. In other eyes the department was seen as a haven for pretentious and effete snobs who, unlike the tough negotiators in the economic departments, could contribute little to Australia’s national interests. Moreover, some public servants, like some politicians and journalists, simply did not understand what a foreign office did or why Australia needed one. Donald Anderson, for example, the formidable permanent head of the Department of Civil Aviation, was heavily engaged in negotiating agreements with several countries in the new and rapidly growing field of international aviation, but he was not being disingenuous when he asked Tange what embassies did. The idea that nations had ‘political interests’, of which note had to be taken in such negotiations, was something genuinely alien to his thinking. The process was eased when a former diplomat, Trevor Pyman, was transferred to take charge of the International Division of Anderson’s department, despite the fact that Pyman had himself fallen from Tange’s favour.231
