Arthur Tange, page 16
External Affairs was, in many respects, well placed to strengthen its influence and prestige in the 1950s and 1960s, but Tange was acutely conscious that it lacked advantages possessed by several departments that had already established a place in Australia’s relations with the rest of the world. Departments like Trade, the Defence group—Defence, Navy, Army, Air, Supply, and, until 1958, Defence Production—Immigration and Civil Aviation enjoyed a generally sympathetic public opinion and some had politically influential domestic constituencies. By contrast, External Affairs had no natural base of political support, making diplomats an easy target for journalists and parliamentarians. Tange made much of the fact that some rival departments had legislative backing for their activities. The Trade Commissioner Service, for example, was established by an Act of Parliament in the 1930s. This was initially attached to the Department of Commerce and Agriculture but in a reshuffle of economic departments in 1956 it became the overseas arm of a reinforced Department of Trade.
Trade was certainly a formidable force in Canberra politics but this owed as much to coalition politics and powerful personalities as to legislative backing. John McEwen, leader of the Country Party and Deputy Prime Minister from early 1958, was its minister, while John Crawford, one of the most intellectually powerful of the ‘seven dwarfs’, was departmental secretary until 1960, when he was succeeded by Alan Westerman. McEwen was far more effective than Casey in Cabinet, and both Crawford and Westerman were formidable departmental heads. Trade’s strength was especially apparent in the negotiation of the Australia—Japan Commerce Agreement of 1957, in which External Affairs was largely sidelined. Although Tange himself signed the formal agreement, policy towards Japan henceforth became virtually the prerogative of Trade rather than of External Affairs.
While Tange resented the strength that Trade derived from having an overseas service with statutory backing, he nevertheless opposed suggestions that External Affairs should seek a similar statute for its diplomatic service. His judgment was that such an Act would only lead to more, rather than less, control by the Treasury and the Public Service Board. In Tange’s early years as Secretary, this was probably an accurate assessment. Whether it was equally true by the early 1960s could be questioned, but Tange by then had other preoccupations.
In any case, Tange felt that External Affairs simply had to accept the facts of political life in this area. He urged his diplomats to handle McEwen with extreme care during overseas visits, as the minister was quick to take offence when well-meaning ambassadors arranged dinners or cocktail parties in his honour, without consulting him.232 Tange hoped that Westerman would prove more cooperative with External Affairs than Crawford had been, but was generally disappointed.233 In the early 1960s Tange sought to use various interdepartmental arrangements to insert a degree of External Affairs influence into the relationship with Japan, but he could do little to reduce Trade’s domination.
Similarly, Tange was not able—nor did he seriously aspire—to reduce the Treasury’s hegemony in the financial areas of international economic policy. Despite his intentions and his own background, economics remained a relatively weak area in External Affairs in Tange’s time. Good economists in the public service generally gravitated towards either the protectionists in Trade or the rationalists in Treasury, enabling those departments to concentrate on competing with each other, while scornfully dismissing any claims by External Affairs to become involved.
Tange had a little more success with Immigration. That department resisted the pressures Tange had created in 1954 and 1955, but between 1956 and 1958 Cabinet made several minor modifications to the White Australia Policy. They included the creation of a new category of ‘distinguished and highly qualified’ non-Europeans who would be permitted to stay for renewable periods of seven years. It was a tiny gesture towards External Affairs’ concerns (only 73 individuals and their dependants entered Australia under this category during the next eight years), but this and other amendments were nonetheless seen by the Menzies government as the first departures from the principles of their immigration policy.234
Tange and his department were far from satisfied, especially because some of the changes had not been publicised. After the meeting of heads of Asian missions in Bangkok in 1959, Tange told the Secretary of Immigration, Tasman Heyes, that Asians still believed that ‘Australian policy is basically an anti-Asian racial policy’ and resented their exclusion on those grounds. Heyes resisted further liberalisation, but in November 1961 he retired. His successor was Peter Heydon, by this time Tange’s deputy in External Affairs. Heydon’s understandable ambition was to head External Affairs but, as Tange showed no signs of relinquishing his post, he accepted the offer of Immigration. A former High Commissioner to India, Heydon entirely shared Tange’s views on the importance of race in international relations. Both men knew that in India and elsewhere in Asia Australia’s racial attitudes were often compared with those behind the apartheid system in South Africa.
In the following years Tange and Heydon worked on parallel lines but could achieve little without ministerial support. The auguries improved when Hubert Opperman succeeded Alexander Downer as Minister for Immigration in December 1963, but the real obstacle to change was only removed when Menzies retired in January 1966. Two months later the first major breaches in the White Australia Policy were endorsed by Parliament. By this time Tange had left Canberra to become High Commissioner to India, but these changes, like the modest concessions made between 1956 and 1964, owed much to the long battle that he and his colleagues in External Affairs had waged. The story of the dismantling of the White Australia Policy cannot be told without acknowledging the role of both Tange and Heydon. It is a classic tale of what permanent heads of departments could, and could not, achieve in the face of ministerial indifference or opposition.235
The Prime Minister’s Department posed its own peculiar—in both senses of the word—challenges to External Affairs. Tange could not challenge the longstanding orthodoxy that relations with Britain were intrinsically different from those with any other country and had to be handled by the Prime Minister rather than the Minister for External Affairs. Thus the British High Commissioner, unlike every other head of mission in Canberra, had access to the Prime Minister (and by extension his department). To Tange’s intense chagrin, the Australian High Commission in London was always headed by a former Cabinet minister, who insisted that only he, not his subordinates, would see British ministers. For Tange to raise a policy matter with Britain was therefore an extraordinarily cumbersome process. He had to advise his minister to ask the Prime Minister to instruct the Australian High Commissioner to see the relevant minister at the Foreign Office, not forgetting that Whitehall had a separate Commonwealth Relations Office to deal with Australia and other Commonwealth members and a Colonial Office to deal with the affairs of its colonies, which were often at the heart of Australian concerns and representations. In making his calls the High Commissioner might or might not choose to take with him the head of the External Affairs Office in London, probably the only Australian official who actually understood the issue under discussion. Tange fought constantly to give the External Affairs Office higher standing within the loose collection of departmental offices that constituted the High Commission at Australia House in London. Despite frustrations posed by personalities and power structures, he pushed External Affairs up the pecking order but it was not until 1970 that relations with Britain were brought within the department’s responsibilities.
Although the Prime Minister’s Department was much smaller and less powerful, especially in foreign policy, than it later became under Prime Ministers Whitlam and Fraser, Tange and his colleagues were wary of the influence wielded by its officers, especially the Secretary, Sir Allen Brown. Early in his time Tange told a colleague of his tactics:
I have decided that the best course is one of non-recognition—the bureaucratic response, but it is founded on principle and also on the facts of life in the bureaucratic jungle. I forbid his [Brown’s] underlings to meddle in our affairs and, in consequence, it is EA who in 90% of cases, carry views to the PM and Cabinet. The 10% matters: but it is not disastrous.236
These tactics were not as successful as Tange claimed. Brown’s proximity to Menzies gave him a degree of influence that gave Tange continuing concern, especially as his interests included foreign policy. Only his wife’s reluctance dissuaded Brown from putting himself forward for the post of Ambassador in Jakarta, which was left vacant for a long period in the 1950s.237Tange was especially annoyed when Brown arranged for diplomatic telegrams to be passed directly to Menzies. This meant that Menzies often reacted immediately to the views expressed by a minister or senior official in London or Washington before External Affairs had time to note that, for example, there might be implications for Australia’s relations with Asian countries in the issue under discussion. Tange’s concerns continued even after Brown left the Prime Minister’s Department, for he took the position of Deputy High Commissioner in London. He thus undermined Tange’s contention that public servants of his and Brown’s rank should only accept diplomatic appointments as heads of mission.
Tange had fewer concerns about Brown’s successor as Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Department, John Bunting, but he may have underestimated the extent to which Bunting and his officers were able to influence Cabinet decisions on foreign policy. The briefing notes that they gave to Menzies on each Cabinet submission, just before Cabinet met, were thought to be merely prompts to help Menzies ask penetrating questions of the minister who initiated the submission. From the 1960s, however, one departmental officer, Allan Griffith, used these notes to give policy advice that Tange would have thought improper. Even the cautious Bunting sometimes ventured into foreign affairs, not least on a major issue on which the Prime Minister and the Minister for External Affairs were at odds. The importance of these divisions during the Indonesian Confrontation of 1963–66 will be considered in the next chapter.
The most important departmental rival to External Affairs was undoubtedly Defence. Relations between the two departments had reached a nadir in the late 1940s, with their respective secretaries, Sir Frederick Shedden and Dr John Burton, personifying opposing approaches to Australia’s external policies. Shedden looked to London for leadership and gloried in his wartime association with MacArthur, while Burton inspired much of Evatt’s enthusiasm for the United Nations, sympathised with the radical nationalists of Asia, and challenged the wisdom of Western policies in the early years of the Cold War. Moreover Burton was clearly hostile to the security measures, such as the creation of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), put in place by the Chifley and Menzies governments in reaction to the leaking by External Affairs officers of classified documents to the Soviet Union. The replacement of Burton by Watt in 1950 had helped to improve relations, but there was still considerable wariness on both sides by the time Tange became head.
During Tange’s decade in office, the combination of the Cold War and the decolonisation of the European empires opened up a new field of Australia’s international relations—the effort to establish stable, anti-communist governments in post-colonial South-East Asia. Australia needed a foreign policy in this area and only External Affairs could take the lead. Defence could have proved a major rival but, in Tange’s experience, it was ill-equipped under Shedden’s leadership to handle these issues. As noted in the previous chapter, Shedden was conspicuously absent from the meetings of ministers and permanent heads convened by Menzies in his Parliament House office, while requests for Defence advice produced only long recitations of past events and policies, with no useful guidance for the current crisis. When the government eventually eased Shedden out of the position in 1956, Tange was only marginally more impressed by his successor, Edwin Hicks. Tange doubted that he would ‘inject the … intelligence, imagination and instinct for action’ that Defence needed.238 The move of the Defence group of departments from Melbourne to Canberra, the planning and implementation of which took a decade from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, eventually led to some improvement in Defence’s ability to respond to ministerial needs.
A particularly important channel for Tange to exert influence was the Defence Committee, the most important grouping of official advisers in this field at the time. Chaired by the Secretary of Defence, the committee included the chiefs of staff of the three services, the chairman of the chiefs of staffs committee (after that position was created in 1957), and the secretaries of the Prime Minister’s Department and the Treasury (the latter usually represented by his deputy). Tange inherited the status granted to Watt in 1951 when Cabinet decided that External Affairs ‘should be represented either by the Secretary or an Assistant Secretary at all meetings of the Defence Committee at which matters involving strategy are likely to be discussed’.239 The department’s increasing influence was marked by his being made an ex officio member in 1957. Tange recognised the importance of this committee in shaping the government’s policies. Members of External Affairs, especially the Defence Liaison Branch, which became one of the centres of departmental influence, were left in no doubt that his briefs for Defence Committee meetings had to be comprehensive, accurate and timely. Although, as always, he restricted his discussion of the subject matter to those with a ‘need to know’, he was frank in discussing the outcome of the meetings with senior External Affairs officers. Despite his frustration over the length of meetings, the time spent travelling between Canberra and Melbourne, and the triviality of many of the topics discussed, he seized every opportunity to press the views of External Affairs upon the committee, and thus the government.
Early in his term as Secretary of External Affairs, Tange lost one major battle with Defence—the battle not to have responsibility for the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).240 This agency was established in 1952 in order to emulate its British model, the Secret Intelligence Service (also known as MI6), by gathering secret information and conducting covert operations in foreign countries. Its chief ministerial patron was Casey, who had developed an enthusiasm for what he called ‘the “dirt” boys’ stuff’ as a member of the British War Cabinet, based in the Middle East, during the Second World War. Although ASIS operatives would operate under the cover of posts in Australian diplomatic missions, the agency was initially placed within the Department of Defence. By 1954 resentment in Defence was so strong over the high salaries and other resources devoted to ASIS that it had to be transferred to another department. Overriding Tange’s strong objections, Menzies and Casey insisted that ASIS come under the wing of External Affairs through a directive that made the director responsible directly to the minister, and thus able to circumvent the permanent head.
Tange and his colleagues found it intensely distasteful to have departmental responsibility for ASIS without the power to oversee it. They felt sure the value of the intelligence gathered would be far outweighed by the risks incurred by agents of an ethnically European country seeking information, and more especially conducting covert operations, in Asian countries. The ‘diplomatic cover’, they believed, would inevitably be blown from time to time. On such occasions the embarrassment would be felt most acutely by External Affairs and the mission concerned, who would have to try to repair the damage done to a bilateral relationship by an agency they could not control. Tange particularly regarded the first Director of ASIS, Alfred Brookes, as a loose cannon. Brookes, a charming and well-connected young Melburnian, named after his grandfather Alfred Deakin, enjoyed direct access to Casey. The diplomats were particularly concerned when he set out to establish a close relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency and its head, Allen Dulles. They took this as a sign that he wanted to conduct what almost amounted to an independent foreign policy. Tange was pressed by numerous reports from diplomats in Australian missions, criticising the personal and intellectual qualities of the ASIS officers, casting suspicions on their actions and their secret reports to Canberra, and fearing the impact of ASIS activities on Australia’s relations with Asian countries. By 1956 Tange and his senior colleagues were even more opposed to ASIS than they had been two years earlier, but they had reluctantly concluded that, as Crocker noted in his journal, ‘since both RGC [Casey] and RGM [Menzies] love the idea they have to live with it. Policy is therefore to get it enmeshed with the Dept & Service and to control it.’241
By 1957 Casey had—to the shock and dismay of Brookes, who thought his ministerial patron had ‘lost his judgement’242—accepted Tange’s argument that the risks of using diplomatic cover for ASIS were too great. A meeting of ministers and senior officials, including Tange, decided that ASIS should be disbanded. After representations of dismay from London and Washington, the decision was modified. ASIS survived, but Brookes was sacked. He was replaced by Ralph Harry, a senior External Affairs officer, in whose orthodoxy and competence Tange had much greater faith. Tange’s was the principal hand in writing a new directive for ASIS in 1958, which created what its unofficial historians have called a ‘quagmire’ of ambiguities in its lines of control, especially with respect to the triangular relationship between the Director of ASIS, the Secretary of External Affairs, and the minister.243 The director was granted direct access to the minister and discretion to shape the agency’s operations, but was also required to consult the secretaries of External Affairs and Defence on matters affecting their departments. The Secretary of External Affairs oversaw all senior appointments and budget estimates.
