Arthur Tange, page 26
Tange’s concern over the position to which he might be appointed was not based on salary differentials, for he had been assured that he would receive a First Division officer’s salary wherever he was. On this score, therefore, his concern was only to ensure that any increases in First Division salaries were promptly passed on to him. In January 1969 he reminded Jim McIntyre, then Acting Secretary, that the government had recently legislated such an increase. He wanted to know when his salary would be raised and by how much. As he rightly told McIntyre, ‘I don’t joke about salaries … [P]lease be assured that I will insist on my salary contract being honoured—promptly.’378 McIntyre wrote within a week to say that the paperwork was under way to raise the salaries of the three First Division officers posted overseas—Tange, Brown and Edwin Hicks—from $17 500 to $22 750.379
Two months later Plimsoll, in New Delhi for the heads of mission conference, put another proposal before Tange, this time on behalf of Gordon Freeth, Hasluck’s newly appointed successor as minister. (Although Freeth wrote cordially to ‘My dear Arthur’ to advise him of this discussion, there was no sign that either recalled their having been contemporaries on the rugby fields of the University of Western Australia.380) Plimsoll showed Tange the terms of a proposal to raise the position of Senior External Affairs Officer in London to that of Deputy High Commissioner, equal in status to the existing position of that title. The person appointed would report to External Affairs but send copies of political reports to the Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Department. (At this time the High Commissioner and the Deputy both reported to the Prime Minister’s Department, as the High Commission remained the only diplomatic mission responsible to that department rather than to External Affairs.)
Tange had little hesitation in rejecting this awkward proposal. He told Freeth that the position was essentially that to which he had appointed subordinates when Secretary. The new title might open some more doors, but contact with ministers of the government would still be the prerogative of the High Commissioner only. He would thus have less access to his own minister and to the ministers of his host government than any Australian ambassador or high commissioner. Tange repeated to Freeth what he had told Hasluck of his desire to be appointed to Washington or London—in the senior position, not an artificially created deputy’s role. On this occasion, however, he added that he was ‘most interested’ in Japan and that his economic experience might be considered relevant when Tokyo became available. In the meantime, he would continue to serve in India.381 On his return to Canberra, Plimsoll wrote to say that Freeth ‘seemed to find [Tange’s attitude] reasonable’ and that Gorton accepted ‘that you should not be pressed to go to London’.382
A few weeks later Tange told Plimsoll of a curious variation of this rejected theme. Casey, once again staying with the Tanges en route to the House of Lords, showed Tange a letter he had written in April, as one of his last acts as Governor-General. Casey, too, had proposed the creation of the position of Deputy High Commissioner (External Affairs) in London, but with access to British ministers and the right to withhold information from the High Commissioner, even being physically separate from Australia House. As Tange observed to Plimsoll, this was essentially a reversion to the position that Casey himself had enjoyed in the 1920s, when he was ‘liaison officer’ between the Australian Prime Minister and the British Cabinet Office, operating independently of the High Commissioner and the loose congeries of departmental offices in Australia House. Tange told Casey that his proposal would be a retrograde step, provoking division and resentment when Australia needed more coordination of its representation in London. Such co-ordination would never be achieved, Tange insisted, until the administration of Australia House was removed from the Prime Minister’s Department and handed to External Affairs.383
Tange’s dismay over this proposal was heightened by the fact that Casey had made it to Lenox Hewitt. Although seen by many of his fellow senior public servants as a brusque and abrasive outsider, Hewitt was highly regarded by Gorton. By contrast, within days of his appointment in January 1968 Gorton had confirmed his view that ‘the mandarins saw themselves as partners and not subordinates in government, and … were “useless” when it came to taking decisive action’.384 Earlier, when responsible for education, he had appointed Hewitt as Chair of the Australian Universities Commission. One of his first actions on reaching The Lodge was to make Hewitt Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Department. In what many regarded as a demotion, Bunting was transferred to become Secretary of the newly created Department of the Cabinet Office. These appointments caused deep dismay in the upper ranks of the public service. Tange therefore entreated Casey not to pursue his idea further with Hewitt, as the ever well-intentioned Casey had proposed. The last thing Tange wanted was to increase the influence of any Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Department, and most especially Hewitt, on senior diplomatic appointments and his own career.
In the following months the statements and actions of Gorton and Hewitt suggested that they intended to run Australian foreign and defence policy as a duumvirate, largely excluding both the External Affairs and Defence ministers and departments. Tange was also aware of critical comments on the diplomatic performance of both men on sensitive international issues. Tange was probably lucky that he was overseas when Gorton and Hewitt came to office and was therefore not directly associated with the acrimony aroused among senior public servants by the appointment of Hewitt and the reduction in Bunting’s influence. He did not think that Gorton bore him any lasting grudge from their clash in the early 1960s, when they had been respectively Secretary and Minister Assisting in External Affairs, but he certainly had no reason to expect preferment at his hands.
It was typically unpredictable of Gorton, therefore, to invite Tange to Sunday midday drinks at The Lodge in August 1969, while Tange was in Canberra on leave and consultations, to greet him warmly and to startle him by asking if he was ‘ready to move’ to Washington. It emerged that Gorton thought that Gordon Freeth had offered Tange the Washington embassy in a meeting with Tange a few days earlier, but Freeth had been summoned to meet the Prime Minister just as he was about to tell Tange of the proposal. Once the confusion had been resolved, Tange assured Gorton that he was indeed ready and eager to go to Washington.385 Tange had declined positions of the level that other former Secretaries of External Affairs, before and after his time, would accept. (Hodgson, for example, had gone to Paris and Pretoria, Burton to Colombo, Watt to Singapore and Bonn as well as Tokyo; Plimsoll would later go to Moscow and Brussels as well as Washington.) But he had held his nerve and his opinion of his own value in the poker game and had won the richest prize in Australian diplomacy.
Over the following weeks, although Canberra did not seek formal agrément for the appointment, Tange and Waller exchanged letters discussing the minutiae of the ambassador’s post in Washington, as did Marjorie Tange and Alison Waller.386 Then, as Tange later recalled:
Early on 21st November 1969 as I was dressing for the day, the Residence Head Bearer/Major Domo (Shafiq Mohammed Ali) ascended the stairs in an excited state crying: ‘Sahib! Sahib! There is a man on telephone from Australia wanting to speak to Sahib and I am telling him it is not right time and please go away but he is angry man. I am not knowing his name because telephone is not good—something like “Gorton”.387
With shaving cream still on his face, Tange ran for the telephone, mollified his Prime Minister, and was told that the Secretary of the Department of Defence, Sir Henry Bland, had resigned unexpectedly because of his wife’s health. The Minister for Defence, Malcolm Fraser, wanted Tange as his replacement and Gorton was prepared to support this move, if Tange preferred it to Washington.
Four days later, as if in an episode of Yes Minister, a further element of farce was added. He was telephoned by William McMahon, whom Gorton had appointed to External Affairs. McMahon told Tange that he had decided to move Plimsoll on and wanted Tange to return to his former position in External Affairs. It became embarrassingly evident that McMahon, Gorton’s bitter rival, knew nothing of the Gorton-Fraser offer of Defence. Tange thus had the choice of the three most important official positions in Australian foreign and defence policy. His first reaction was to return to his former position in External Affairs but he soon realised that this would be unwise. Influenced partly by Marjorie’s preference for a return to Canberra over another diplomatic posting, and partly by his own inclination to head a department rather than a mission, he chose Defence.
Rescuing External Affairs: Advice to McMahon
The farce—or, more kindly, the unorthodox handling of senior appointments—had not ended. After a few days of being laid low by ‘one of India’s plentiful diseases’, Tange wrote to McMahon, courteously explaining why he had accepted Gorton’s offer. He also asked to speak to McMahon, on his return to Canberra, about the state of External Affairs, ‘a body of men [sic] most of whom are able but frustrated and in low morale’. Tange told McMahon that ‘External Affairs is very sick. But it would not take much to put it right’, starting with one or two basic decisions by the minister.388 He was startled to receive within a week a personal telegram—through open, public channels, without benefit of cypher or official security—asking for Tange’s immediate recommendations. It was signed ‘Bill McMahon’.389
In response to this unorthodox request, Tange sent a letter of four, closely typed foolscap pages, with a handwritten attachment.390 On policy, he said that External Affairs was doing too few long-range assessments of the international situation, relying too much on Defence and its periodic strategic surveys. This, he said, meant that Australia’s policies were too shaped by military concerns. Australia should be looking to develop its economic, political and diplomatic relations with Asia, acting in concert with departments like Trade and the Treasury. (Some of the obstacles to cooperation with Trade, he said, had ‘a foreseeable end’—presumably a reference to potential changes in both minister and permanent head.) Within External Affairs policy planning was currently handled by ‘a garrulous ass’ who, as he conceded disarmingly, was ‘one of my promotion mistakes some years ago’. Tange related Dean Rusk’s advice to Barwick in the early 1960s that discussions between policy planning officers would be a productive way in which Australia could be forewarned of possible changes in American policy. He also recorded Hasluck’s suppression of this role, on the grounds that it went beyond the proper role of public servants. It was, Tange urged McMahon, essential to have this work done by ‘a very carefully chosen man’. In looking for allies and regional partners, Australia needed to assess where countries like Japan, China and the United States would be in fifteen years. Tange also observed that Australian policy-makers did not give enough critical examination to the American assessments and opinions ‘that saturate External Affairs and Defence’. More attention should be given to ‘Australian assessments of the Americans’.
Turning to the operations and morale of the External Affairs service, Tange denounced Hasluck for crushing the enthusiasm of departmental officers. ‘Men who for years had been encouraged to apply intelligence and freshness of thought to problems … found themselves shut off, discouraged from expressing themselves and frequently rebuked’. Hasluck seemed more concerned at the presentation of submissions than on the substance of policy. Good quality men (Tange was consistently unreformed in his references to gender) were seeking to be posted abroad or to leave the service altogether. Freeth had made some improvements in his few months in office, but External Affairs fell far short of having the minister, the department and its ambassadors acting ‘as a solid unit with complete trust and complete intercommunication’. Tange attributed this not only to Hasluck’s influence but also to the inadequacies of management and decision-making at departmental level. Plimsoll as Secretary and McIntyre as Deputy Secretary, he said, ‘supplement each other’s weaknesses’.
As McMahon had already told him that he intended to remove Plimsoll, Tange attached to the typed letter an analysis—handwritten, so that it would not be seen by even a confidential steno-secretary—of the leading contenders to replace him. The ruthless assessments were based on the implicit criteria of perceptive innovation in policy and strength in administration, both within the department and in the interdepartmental ‘hurly-burly’. Respect within the department was valued above popularity. One officer was said to have a ‘fine wife’; another was disparaged as ‘indecisive and henpecked’. Tange’s firm conclusion was that Waller was ‘the only top quality man with indisputable capacity to be a good Sec. of E.A.’. Shann would be a good permanent head in a number of other departments and should not be ruled out for External Affairs, where he would certainly make a better Deputy Secretary than any other contender. Others were given equivocal assessments, described as better on policy than administration, or summarily dismissed.
Within months, Waller and Shann were appointed Secretary and Deputy Secretary respectively. Waller was conveniently due to return from Washington and McMahon was probably already aware of his abilities, but he had done nothing to push Tange in that direction. It seems likely that the decision owed much to Tange’s advice, at least as valued and independent confirmation. During the early 1970s the Waller—Shann duumvirate did much to restore the efficiency and morale of the department. Tange’s advice to McMahon might be regarded as his last significant contribution to External Affairs.
A couple of further sequels, not without ironies, to this story should be noted. In 1970 McMahon, a minister little respected by either his Prime Minister or the officials in External Affairs, nevertheless achieved two of the department’s longstanding ambitions. The department’s name was changed to Foreign Affairs and it was given administrative control of Australian—British relations, so that both Australia House in London and the British High Commissioner in Canberra dealt with Foreign Affairs, instead of the Prime Minister’s Department. Meanwhile, the appointment as ambassador in Tokyo, which Tange had told Freeth he was willing to accept, went to Freeth himself, who lost his House of Representatives seat in the October 1969 elections.
In January 1970, when Tange left New Delhi to take on his new responsibilities, the mission’s Australia-based staff held what many remembered as one of the biggest parties of their official careers. They drank to celebrate emancipation from their hard-driving chief and his peremptory buzzer. Some felt unalloyed pleasure and relief but others recognised that they had learned much from an extraordinarily gifted, as well as highly demanding, head of mission. At the formal farewell by the locally engaged staff one member of the Untouchable caste broke down while thanking Marjorie for her ministrations when he had been injured. The loyal and long-serving Shafiq was utterly distraught at losing his Sahib. Australians and Indians alike knew that they had served under a head of mission of unique qualities.
Chapter Ten
The New Secretary of Defence: Working With Fraser, Gorton And McMahon
1970–72
When he returned to Canberra in early 1970, Tange was 55, giving him just under ten years before he reached the compulsory retirement age. He would spend that decade as Secretary of the Defence Department, the focal point of major reforms which would cause him to be remembered—with admiration and respect in some quarters, and vigorously different sentiments in others—for years to come.
Defence in 1970: Tange’s inheritance
From the start, Tange had no doubt that Defence was in need of major reforms. As he passed through several Asian capitals en route to Australia, making special defence-oriented visits to Jakarta and Tokyo (and a private visit to Hong Kong, where Chris was working), he told some of his former External Affairs colleagues that he was expected to ‘sort out the generals’,391 but he had more than the uniformed sections of Defence in his sights. As Tange saw it, Defence and its associated departments (Navy, Army, Air and Supply) had done far too little to adjust themselves to the demands of the post-1945 world. In both strategic thinking and organisation he believed, with good reason, that he was inheriting the product of decades of inertia, inaction and inadequacy on the part of successive prime ministers, ministers for defence and secretaries of the Defence Department.
Since the early 1950s the Australian government had been committed to a strategy of ‘forward defence’. In practice, this meant that in the 1950s and 1960s Australia committed relatively small forces (by the standards of the world war commitments) to British-led or American-led coalitions in conflicts in Korea and South-East Asia. Tange’s attempts in 1959 to encourage the government to prepare for a greater degree of military independence and self-reliance had changed little. The government continued to insist that nothing must be said or done which the electorate might regard as weakening Australia’s links with the countries that Menzies famously called ‘our great and powerful friends’. Nothing, it was said, must be allowed to ‘downgrade ANZUS’.
In this context, advice to the government on strategic policy was weak, ill-coordinated, and dominated by the three armed services. This was institutionalised in the organisation of the Defence group of departments. Separate departments of Navy, Army and Air had been formed to cope with the mass mobilisation of the 1939–45 war, while the portfolio of Defence (for a time known as Defence Co-ordination) was held by the wartime Prime Ministers, Robert Menzies and John Curtin. The Secretary of the Defence Department, Frederick (from 1943, Sir Frederick) Shedden was also Secretary of the War Cabinet (but not the Full Cabinet). Defence was thus essentially an instrument for the Prime Minister to retain control of higher strategy, without becoming immersed in the administration of the three services, each of which was fighting separate campaigns in different theatres of conflict. During the most critical period of the war, the principal strategic issues were handled by the Prime Minister’s War Conference, the ad hoc body comprising Curtin, Shedden and the flamboyant American commander of the allies’ South-West Pacific Area Command, General Douglas MacArthur. The Prime Minister was thus advised by an Australian civilian and an American general, while the senior Australian military officers, headed by General Sir Thomas Blamey, were largely excluded.
