Arthur Tange, page 17
Many years later, Justice Robert Hope, conducting a Royal Commission on the intelligence agencies, found the 1958 Directive ‘a bizarre mixture of great and small constraints’.244 In retirement, Tange chuckled at the implied criticism, which he took as a compliment and a comment on Hope’s naivety. Tange had deliberately created the constraints so that he would have as much control as possible over the agency while remaining able to distance himself from any scandals to which its activities might give rise. He had also ensured that, under Harry and his successors, ASIS would concentrate on seeking information rather than on covert operations, which were more likely to lead to political and diplomatic embarrassment. If External Affairs had to accept the existence of ASIS, it would be thus ‘enmeshed’.
In addition to overseeing ASIS, External Affairs had to carry two additional functions which absorbed many of the department’s human and material resources, although they did not fit into Tange’s vision of the role and functions of a foreign office. The first of these was responsibility for Australia’s actions under the Colombo Plan, to which Tange had drawn attention in his 1955 ‘Administrative Review’. Despite his close association with the plan’s inauguration, Tange shared the view—widespread among his senior colleagues—that its implementation demanded far too much of the department’s limited resources, especially in missions in Asian countries. Moreover, Tange felt keenly that a foreign office and diplomatic service existed to give advice on, and to implement, the government’s foreign policy, not to conduct aid projects, a task for which most diplomats were neither trained nor suited. Tange sought to off-load the problem to another department but none was willing to accept it. In any case, there was an overriding obstacle: Casey’s deep personal interest in the scheme. As a politician, he loved a scheme which offered public relations opportunities and, as a former engineer, he was constantly bringing forward what he thought were practical proposals for new aid projects.
Tange therefore told his colleagues that they simply had to accept the task, while trying to steer Casey away from his sillier proposals and to avoid adverse publicity of whatever origin. (Tange was grateful to be spared comment on a decision to bring out officials from the Indian railway system, the second biggest in the world, on the assumption that they could learn from their counterparts running the far smaller, and notoriously inefficient, system in New South Wales.) In 1965, after Casey had left Australian politics, Tange conducted a major review of aid policy, which led among other things to Australian involvement in the Asian Development Bank and the establishment of an Aid Policy section in External Affairs. The department’s role in what was emerging as an important strand in foreign policy was thus strengthened, but it was not until 1974 that Australia established a semi-autonomous aid agency, separate from the department but within the same minister’s portfolio.
Somewhat similarly, Tange had to tolerate the inclusion of the Antarctic Division in External Affairs, although a group dedicated to scientific research was an anomaly in a foreign office.245 The division was a legacy of Australia’s territorial ambitions in the 1940s, when Evatt had had to accept it into External Affairs because no other department would. In the early 1950s there was some logic in the inclusion, as nations conducted research expeditions in order to justify their competing territorial claims. But during the International Geophysical Year of 1957–58, the idea took hold that all nations would do better to set aside their territorial claims and accept an international, cooperative framework. This became international law by the Antarctic Treaty, negotiated in 1959 and signed in 1961. The negotiation of this treaty, despite Cold War and other rivalries, was among the major achievements of Casey and his department.
Throughout this time, there were tensions between the forceful head of the Antarctic Division, Phillip Law, and the senior diplomats in External Affairs. Waller, Plimsoll and others resented the demands made by Law for resources and his willingness to stretch public service practice to gain publicity for himself and his division. But Tange knew that, like ASIS and the Colombo Plan, the Antarctic Division had a special place in Casey’s heart. Casey had been associated with Antarctic exploration since 1929 and, as a keen pilot, was fascinated by the Australians’ ability to fly in an Antarctic winter. The Antarctic Division was based in Melbourne, allowing Law to have easy access to his ministerial patron, to the chagrin of the departmental hierarchy in Canberra.
Once more, therefore, Tange had to accept the situation, which required him to adjudicate disputes. At times he came down heavily on Law, especially over publicity and budgets, and he was apparently ungracious in forwarding a prestigious medal awarded to Law with a curt, almost churlish, note of congratulations. But Law knew that he was pushing the boundaries in his claims and he generally regarded Tange as a fair arbiter in his disputes with Waller and others. It was Law, in his capacity as Chair of the Australian Antarctic Place Names Committee, who recommended that a geographical feature within the Australian-claimed territory be named after Tange. Thus maps of Antarctica now show Tange Promontory, next to Casey Bay. In making this proposal, Law had no idea that tange was Danish for a small promontory, and that the feature might thus be known in Danish as Tange Tange.246
Tange’s severe admonitions were not popular, but they were effective. Month by month, year by year, not without setbacks and false steps, External Affairs advanced towards Tange’s goal of a well-run foreign office and diplomatic service that carried weight with ministers and bureaucratic rivals. Despite the difficulty of acquiring enough recruits of the required standard, the department and its overseas missions, especially in Asia, grew in reputation as well as in size. It was undoubtedly a better run and better resourced department by the mid-1960s than it had been in the mid-1950s. This was a major achievement in institution-building, no less significant than the reorganisation of Defence in the 1970s for which Tange has been better remembered.
Many of those who served under Tange felt that he was the principal creator of an effective foreign office and diplomatic service. In the 1950s, External Affairs, like the government as a whole, relied heavily on information and policy guidance from Britain and the United States. By the 1960s, however, British and American officials were turning to the Australians for intelligence and advice, especially on South-East Asia. This reflected a wider pattern. While policy and administration were constantly interacting, it is broadly true to say that Tange’s principal achievements in the 1950s were administrative, turning External Affairs into a more effective machine for the formulation and implementation of foreign policy. The policy outcomes of this process would become most obvious in the early 1960s, to be discussed in the next chapter. But first it is appropriate to look at Tange’s relations with his political masters, Menzies and Casey, during the institution-building phase of his Secretaryship.
At least until Casey’s retirement in early 1960, there is every indication that Tange was highly regarded by both men. Like many of his colleagues, Tange was frustrated by many aspects of Casey’s ministerial performance. His naivety and weakness as a Cabinet minister saw him ‘rolled’ time after time, not least on the size of the foreign aid budget. Casey had long developed and maintained an extraordinarily extensive network of friends in high places around the world but he seemed incapable of using these contacts to serve Australia’s diplomatic interests. His correspondence with foreign dignitaries often lacked clear purpose and his fondness for international travel seemed to lead to nowhere in particular, while he resented being required to attend the United Nations General Assembly and other arenas of multilateral diplomacy. Casey’s devotion to, and close personal interest in, the Colombo Plan, in ASIS and in the Antarctic Division all cut across Tange’s view of the structure and functions of a professional foreign office.
Despite all these frustrations, Tange and his colleagues in External Affairs cared for Casey as a man, largely because he so obviously cared for them. He was constantly taking steps, and urging Tange and the department to take steps, to ensure that diplomats in overseas missions did not feel neglected or uninformed. Moreover, he was concerned for their personal welfare, even to ensure that they looked the part. He noted, for example, that one senior officer had a wandering eye—quite literally, his morals were unsullied—and ensured that he had the appropriate ocular operation. On such matters, Casey sometimes reached discreetly into his pocket. On other matters, large and small, he supported the allocation of government funds. At a time when housing, especially housing suitable for official entertaining, was in severely short supply in Canberra, Casey supported the proposal that an appropriate house should be built for the Secretary of External Affairs. Watt had strongly recommended this measure as he left the position, as well as a permanent residence for the minister,247 but Roland Wilson and the Treasury had little difficulty in vetoing that idea.
During the period of nearly six years that Casey and Tange worked together as minister and departmental head, they became as close as two men, a generation apart in age and both highly reserved in their personal relationships, could be.248 Unhappy and lonely in Canberra, where he spent as little time as possible, Casey often asked if he could visit the Tanges and persuade Marjorie to cook a lamb chop. He would read bedtime stories to Jenny and Chris, although when told by her mother to kiss Mr Casey goodnight, Jenny objected that she did not like kissing men with moustaches. The Caseys became, as it were, honorary grandparents to the young Tanges. Maie Casey took a particular interest in Jenny, in later years helping her with her kindergarten-teaching studies and giving her an opal brooch to accompany a dress that Jenny had chosen for a formal ball. For years, however, Casey could not overcome his traditional reluctance to use first names outside his family. ‘I say, Tange,’ he would say, ‘you don’t mind if I call you “Tange”, do you, Tange?’ Marjorie found that, even in such homely circumstances, when Tange was out of the room Casey would refer awkwardly to ‘him’, rather than permit Arthur’s first name to cross his lips. In later years, when the Tanges were in India, the Caseys would visit them, as a break during their annual trip to attend the House of Lords in London. Only then did the Caseys and the Tanges become literally on first-name terms.
Other boundaries could not be crossed. When visiting Casey’s home in Berwick, outside Melbourne, whether on business or socially, Tange consistently declined Casey’s invitations of a flight with either Casey or another guest as pilot. Casey’s typically Edwardian phrase, ‘come for a spin’, did nothing to reassure Tange, who pointed out that he did not have sufficient wealth or insurance to provide for his children in the event of an untimely demise. Marjorie, by contrast, boldly accepted an invitation to a long flight over Port Phillip Bay in a glider, mischievously commenting afterwards that the pilot was ‘a goodlooking Irishman’.
Tange’s own view was that Casey had a strained relationship with his own children, especially his son, and that the department became a substitute family.249 Casey, born in 1890, was ageing, while many of the External Affairs officers, a generation younger, were precisely the sort of men he would have been delighted to have as sons. There was no doubt who was the favourite son. Immediately after Casey retired, he amazed Tange with an extraordinary present—a magnificent silver cigar box. It was engraved:
Sir Arthur Tange
with appreciation and best wishes
from R.G. Casey 4–2-60
The date did not mark a birthday or any other obvious occasion, but was simply the day after Casey’s retirement as minister. In short, this was a personal gift, not one from a serving minister to a public servant, which would have transgressed both men’s ethical standards. The cigar box had been a present to Casey from his father; now he was passing it on, not to his own son, but to Arthur Tange. The symbolism could hardly have been stronger. In the late 1940s many in and around External Affairs observed that Evatt and Burton had developed an almost father-son relationship, but few recognised that Casey and Tange had become equally close.
For at least the first five or six years of his term as Secretary of External Affairs, Tange also enjoyed Menzies’ support, albeit not expressed in such personal terms. In part this reflected Menzies’ general attitude to the public service.250 After winning his fifth successive election in 1958, Menzies told the first meeting of the new ministry that all ministers ‘should obtain and heed departmental advice on official matters’. The Cabinet record continued:
This is not to exclude the Minister’s own responsibility to bring his own judgment including his political judgment to bear and to make decisions as he believes best. But the Ministers should understand that their departments are staffed by experienced and able public servants whose advice is to be given the fullest possible weight. Each Minister should know his department and use it—but at the same time remain in control.251
Menzies evidently had more confidence in his senior public servants than in some of the less ‘experienced and able’ members of his ministry.
But beyond his general respect for the public service, and despite his former reluctance to see a dominion like Australia embark on creating and implementing a separate foreign policy, Menzies was now clearly enjoying the fact that Australia was establishing a foreign office and diplomatic service that commanded respect. Early in 1958 Menzies told a confidant of some dissatisfaction with Tange, without further detail, but that attitude seems not to have lasted.252 There were several subsequent signs of Menzies’ benevolence towards Tange and External Affairs, of which two were particularly significant.
The first was the question of salaries. In the late 1950s, when Tange pressed the Public Service Board to approve higher salaries for the large number of senior officers in the department or overseas missions, the Board countered that it was constrained by the relatively low salary accorded to the Secretary. The salaries of departmental heads were a matter for the Higher Salaries Committee of Cabinet, which by this time had established two levels. The heads of a small number of major departments—the Prime Minister’s, the Treasury, Defence, the Attorney-General’s and Trade—enjoyed the higher level. External Affairs was on the lower level, alongside not only substantial middle-ranking departments like Immigration, Labour and National Service, and Civil Aviation, but also the tailenders, such as Interior, Works, and the lesser departments in the Defence group (Navy, Army, Air, Supply and Defence Production). Tange found it especially galling to be equated with the heads of the single-service departments, whom he considered to be more like chief accounting officers for the services than policy-advising permanent heads. (In the early 1950s, Watt had been on the middle of five salary levels, with ten on the higher levels, seven others on the same level, and only six, including the three service departments, on the two lower levels.253) To aggravate the wound, the chiefs of the three armed services were on a separate salary level, between the two levels of permanent heads. Thus, when he became a permanent member of the Defence Committee, Tange was on a lower salary level than either the other civilians (the heads of Defence, the Prime Minister’s and the Treasury) or the uniformed chiefs (who were members of the committee, while the secretaries of the service departments were not). It was a matter of departmental status, personal prestige, his own remuneration, and that of his senior subordinates—all of which were close to Tange’s heart.
He drew his concerns to Casey’s attention, evidently in the hope that something might be achieved when the Higher Salaries Committee next reported to the full Cabinet, initially to no avail.254 In 1957 the Cabinet granted a pay rise to both levels of permanent head, but External Affairs remained on the lower level.255 The great breakthrough came on 3 February 1960, Casey’s last day as a minister. Not only was another substantial pay increase approved for both levels of permanent head, but External Affairs was raised to the higher level.256 The combined effect was to raise Tange’s salary by 38 per cent (from £5000 to £6900), but he was as much pleased by the symbolism of putting External Affairs on the same grade as Defence, the Prime Minister’s and the Treasury.
The other classic marker of Menzies’ attitude was the honours list, especially the award of knighthoods. Menzies believed that senior public servants should be so honoured, unlike his New Zealand opposite number, Sidney Holland,257 but Casey and Tange felt that the number and level of honours granted to Australian diplomats in the imperial system of honours was demeaning. As Tange put it, a senior ambassador was made to look ‘like the fire chief of Leeds’. There was more than mere amour propre at stake. Tange had a study done of the honours held by British and Australian heads of missions and their deputies in various posts.258 His argument was that, in a post like Jakarta, where Australian interests were greater than those of Britain, the host country might note that the British ambassador held a KBE or KCMG, while the Australian ambassador only had a CBE or CMG. It would look as if the Briton were the senior diplomat of the two, and thus the Australian would be taken less seriously. Menzies, as Tange recalled, saw the point and ensured that External Affairs received a more generous allocation of honours, asking Tange only to ensure that ‘you don’t make me honour someone who turns out to have led a life of undiscovered crime’. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was generally one knighthood awarded each year to a senior diplomat in External Affairs.
An early beneficiary of the new dispensation was Tange himself. He was promoted from Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) to Commander in the same order (CBE) in 1955. But the most important elevation came in June 1959, when Tange was knighted. He was still remarkably young for such an honour. The announcement came before he had turned 45. He was invested on the same day as John Crawford, who was four years older and had been a permanent head since 1950. Tange had thus caught up with one of the most respected of the ‘seven dwarfs’. When Tange, Crawford and the Commissioner of Taxation, Patrick McGovern, were invested by the Governor-General, Sir William Slim, in November 1959, Tange wore a tail suit while the others wore lounge suits.259
