Arthur Tange, page 33
In the euphoric early days of the Whitlam government, the new Prime Minister’s sympathies were mainly with those who had helped his party come to office. Whitlam gave an instruction that the staff in his own office were not to be subjected to the usual ASIO security check. It was, as Freudenberg put it, an ‘imprudent gesture’, intended to indicate that he would personally take responsibility to ensure the staff did not see highly classified documents.465 While this was primarily a concern for ASIO and thus the Attorney-General’s Department, it also affected the handling of material created by the two intelligence agencies within Defence. Some of Tange’s subordinates in those agencies, especially those responsible for the security of intelligence agencies, were concerned by what they regarded as the new government’s cavalier attitudes to security clearances. Their views were assumed to be shared, if not directed, by Tange. In the atmosphere of late 1972 and early 1973, even mild references to the importance of observing proper security procedures, not least in maintaining the confidence of Australia’s allies, were interpreted in some quarters as reactionary and obstructive.
Tange was not opposed in principle to the idea of strengthening ministerial staffs. On the contrary, he welcomed anything that would improve the capacity of ministers to make decisions. He could see the value of overtly political staff who could bring into ministerial decisions an element that was necessary, but not always easy for public servants to provide. What offended him, and many colleagues in the public service, at this time was not only the arrogance and incompetence of some newly appointed minders but also, and more importantly, the lack of clear guidelines to indicate the respective rights and responsibilities of the ministerial and departmental officers. He later recalled that he had put this to Whitlam but had been brushed off with a dismissive, ‘Oh, you will work it out’.466 Not until late 1974 was an attempt made to issue some guidelines, and it was a considerable time before a firm administrative and legislative basis was established for ministerial staff. The reputation of the Whitlam government suffered from some ministerial staff appointments that appeared to be based on personal or family relationships more than political or administrative ability. Questions surrounding the accountability of ministerial staff arose from time to time in subsequent years but did not become a major political issue until the episode known officially as ‘a certain maritime incident’, and more popularly as the ‘children overboard affair’, during and after the 2001 general election. But the substantial tensions that arose in 1972–73 between the departmental officers and the minders undermined the policy-making process and would prove especially damaging for Tange’s reputation.
Clem Lloyd and Brian Toohey
The tenure of two minders who came into office with Barnard, Clem Lloyd and Brian Toohey, was short but significant.467 A man of considerable intellectual, political and physical substance, Lloyd had for several years been nominally Barnard’s press secretary, but in fact his principal policy adviser. In the long years in Opposition he had drafted Barnard’s policy statements and had done more than any other individual to ensure Labor came to government with a credible defence policy. Barnard, whose father had been Minister for Repatriation (much later renamed Veterans’ Affairs) in the Chifley government, had a profound interest in repatriation benefits but on almost all other aspects of defence policy relied heavily upon his adviser. Lloyd was popular and respected in Labor Party, academic and media circles, but even before the 1972 election he was becoming weary of his role as Barnard’s principal prop. He sensed that Barnard was similarly tiring of the relationship, although willing to offer him an attractive salary to retain his services. Tange later discovered that Barnard, a correct and almost prudish man personally, had some reservations about Lloyd’s personal life, but at the time Tange knew little or nothing of this background. Focused as always on ministers, he had sought to develop a good rapport with Whitlam and Barnard but had made no effort to establish a working relationship with Lloyd. The thought that such an effort might be useful had simply not occurred to him.
Brian Toohey was a young journalist whose principal interest was economics, but who was offered a post in Barnard’s office rather than, as he had initially hoped, that of the new Treasurer. Conflict between Tange and Toohey was probably inevitable, with two issues at its core. Toohey’s instincts were those of an investigative journalist, keen to get interesting information into the public domain, and all the more encouraged if the information were sensitive and classified. Tange, as already seen, had taken initiatives to improve the provision of information to the media and the public, including the creation of the Public Information Office in External Affairs and the production of the Defence Review of 1972. As an experienced public servant, however, he wanted information on national security policy to be promulgated in an orderly way, without endangering diplomatic and defence secrets, especially those that impinged on relations with the United States and other allies. The number of leaks of Defence information in the early weeks of the new government was acutely embarrassing to Tange. He suspected, but could not prove, that Toohey had a hand in them. Even more important, Tange discovered that departmental submissions to the minister sometimes got no further than the desks of the minders. They apparently took it upon themselves to decide whether it was politically appropriate for the minister even to consider the topic raised. Tange asserted that, after Toohey’s departure, a substantial collection of departmental submissions was found in his office safe, never having been brought before Barnard.468 This, in Tange’s view, rendered relations between the minister and the department impossible to administer. When Tange later said that he could see a useful role for non-departmental officers in a ministerial office, but wanted clear guidelines on their role and responsibilities, these were his two principal concerns.
These specific issues were exacerbated by the personal attitudes of many of the minders, who were determined to assert their influence over the traditional bureaucracy. Within days of the election, the staff in Barnard’s office grew even more confident after what they saw as an important victory. The Labor Party wanted an immediate end to the controversial system of selective national service. The public servants took the view, on legal advice, that this required legislative action but were trumped by a device on which Senator Lionel Murphy (about to become the Attorney-General) had advised the minders. Under the existing legislation, the Minister had the right to grant leave to national servicemen, so Barnard simply granted indefinite leave to all national servicemen with immediate effect. The administration of the national service system was the responsibility of the Department of Labour and National Service (DLNS) and, to a lesser extent, the Department of the Army, rather than Defence. Moreover, under the duumvirate Barnard was Minister for Labour and National Service as well as all the armed services, so the crucial meeting on Monday 4 December involved Barnard’s minders and senior officials of DLNS and Army, not Defence. When the proposal was raised with Tange beforehand, he said that he was not a lawyer and made no comment on the implications.469 Nevertheless Toohey and others saw this as an important, early victory over Tange.
In early February 1973 Lord Carrington, Britain’s Secretary of State for Defence, visited Canberra for talks on Anglo-Australian defence relations in South-East Asia. Although he was pleased to renew contact with the man he had first known as the youthful British High Commissioner to Australia in the 1950s, Tange had questioned the wisdom of having such a meeting so soon after the new government’s election. Whitlam nevertheless insisted that it proceed. On 30 January the departmental official who would be the secretary for the ministerial talks, Douglas Hort, spoke to Tange about the seating and other arrangements. He mentioned that Clem Lloyd expected to be included in the Australian team. Tange immediately demurred. He telephoned Barnard, told him that the presence of ministerial staff was not usual, referred to the inclusion in the talks of topics requiring special clearances (which Lloyd, although cleared to Top Secret, had not yet had time to acquire), and asked if the Minister thought Lloyd’s presence necessary. After being assured that a departmental officer would take a record of the meeting, Barnard agreed that there was no need for ministerial staff to attend. Tange then directed Hort to tell Lloyd that Barnard—not Tange himself—had decided not to include him.
For Lloyd, this was evidently the last straw. He told Barnard in blunt terms that he had decided to resign, but he remained in the office for a few days. Assuming that it was perfectly obvious, he did not tell Barnard or Tange in as many words that his resignation was in protest at being excluded from the Carrington talks. By this time Toohey had already left to write for a Fairfax newspaper, The Australian Financial Review. Lloyd blamed Barnard rather than Tange for Toohey’s departure, but noted that Tange had always been far more abrasive towards Toohey than towards himself.470
The Barnard-Carrington talks duly took place, with Barnard having in the meantime included another member of his ministerial staff, Derek Woolner. This may have been a move by Barnard and Tange to counter the argument that, under the protocol of such meetings, it was appropriate to have a staff member on the Australian side as the counterpart to a member of Carrington’s private office. About a month later, when Barnard spoke to the Tasmanian state conference of the ALP, he sought to counter those within his party who were critical of the departure of Lloyd and Toohey and who saw Tange as a sinister influence. In the course of his speech Barnard said that Tange had told him it was not true that Lloyd had resigned because of exclusion from the Carrington talks. Lloyd, enraged, posted his version of events on a noticeboard in the Parliament House press gallery. The press, strongly sympathetic to Lloyd, was hostile towards Barnard on his first days in Parliament as Deputy Prime Minister. Under heavy pressure Barnard indicated that he thought Tange’s account of the dealings with Lloyd had been less than fully honest. He demanded and received a statement from Tange, which Barnard tabled in the House of Representatives on 6 March. In this Tange included an apology if his actions had misled Barnard. Press reports were full of this backdown by the man generally recognised as the proudest and strongest of the mandarins. Whitlam and Barnard both made statements in Parliament affirming their confidence in Tange but it was a tremendous blow to his pride that such statements should be considered necessary.471
To the end of his days, Tange resented this public humiliation. He always asserted—in correspondence, for example, with Whitlam at the time of Barnards death in 1998’472—that he had done nothing requiring an apology. He took his stand on the literal truth of his statements, that he personally had not ordered Lloyd’s exclusion from the talks but had merely disseminated Barnard’s decision to that effect; and that he did not know what specifically had prompted Lloyd’s resignation. The brewing tension between Barnard and Lloyd and the nature of the communications between the principals justified this defence, although Lloyd’s many friends and supporters inevitably saw Tange as the victor in an unscrupulous power play. It was Tange, after all, who had questioned the inclusion of Lloyd in the Carrington talks and few thought that Barnard would have excluded Lloyd unless under pressure from his departmental secretary. The episode was in fact an early round in the battle between the traditional bureaucracy and the new class of ministerial minders. Lloyd apparently recognised this as his subsequent account, while far from sympathetic towards Tange, was much more critical of Barnard and included a degree of grudging respect towards the public servant. For his part Tange, while defending his own actions, conceded that Lloyd was a man worthy of some respect. He did not make the same concession towards Toohey; their reciprocal detestation was undisguised.
In the short term, Tange seemed to have survived this episode with unpleasant memories of being the focus of critical attention in the national parliament and press but with a strengthening of his reputation as a dominant public servant. Around Canberra, many departmental officials and military officers were quietly delighted to see that two of the most prominent minders had been ejected from their minister’s office within weeks of appointment, and gave Tange full credit. The harshest public criticism was directed at Barnard, of whom a typical press report said that he did not ‘appear strong enough to stand up to public servants like Sir Arthur Tange, who have grown used to captive ministers becoming a prisoner of the departments’.473
In the longer term the effects were more serious for Tange. Some, especially those on the left wing of the Labor Party, confused the battle over ‘turf’—the struggle for the minister’s ear—with a battle over policy. The Lloyd episode, coming soon after the revelation of the DSD unit in Singapore and the decisions affecting national servicemen mentioned in chapter 11, was wrongly seen as confirming the pre-election suspicions that Tange and other permanent heads were ideologically committed to the policies of the defeated conservative coalition.
The full effect of these stronger suspicions would not emerge until the downfall of the Whitlam government, but there were some immediate signs of the new political contest. After Tange’s apology to Barnard was tabled in the House of Representatives, press accounts pointed to the alleged power of the departmental heads, especially those who were known to lunch at the Commonwealth Club. Tange’s name was always prominent in such stories, as were those of Bunting (at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet), Fred Wheeler (the Treasury) and Alan Cooley (the Public Service Board). The general theme was indicated by the headline of one such account: ‘Are These the Men who Rule Australia?’474 In addition to the above four, this story also referred to Keith Waller (Foreign Affairs) and Lenox Hewitt (Minerals and Energy). Thus, while Tange was whole-heartedly implementing Labor policy on strategic doctrine and defence reorganisation and being subjected to public criticism from political and military conservatives, he was simultaneously being portrayed by the Labor left and other radicals as a relic of the Menzies era, blocking the new reform agenda.
According to John Menadue, by 1974 Whitlam himself shared the suspicions over the loyalty of ‘the clique that lunched at the Commonwealth Club’. To establish a Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet that was more overtly responsive and activist, Whitlam in late 1974 designated Menadue to replace Bunting. (Menadue was 39, the same age as Tange had been when elevated to the First Division.) Wheeler was not moved although he was a principal target of Labor’s, not least Whitlam’s, distrust in 1974–75, when the government’s disregard for Treasury advice on overseas loans contributed substantially to its downfall. Of the four usually cited as the leaders of the ‘culturally, if not politically, conservative’ departmental heads—Tange, Bunting, Wheeler and Cooley—only Tange retained both his position and the confidence of the Prime Minister throughout Whitlam’s tenure of office.475
The Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration
The vehicle through which Whitlam sought to give coherent form to the numerous radical and reformist ideas on Australian public administration was the Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration (RCAGA). Chaired by the public servant whom Tange had admired since the 1940s, Nugget Coombs, the RCAGA was one of the numerous inquiries commissioned by Whitlam that presented their reports to his successor. Tange’s own report on the reorganisation of Defence was one of the few that were concluded, with its major recommendations at least partly implemented, before Labor lost office.
The essential goal of the RCAGA, especially in the minds of Coombs and Wilenski (who was special adviser to the Commission from June to November 1974), was a public service that was more ‘responsive’ to the government of the day. Tange was not regarded as a particular target of the commissioners, who probably saw the Public Service Board, the Treasury and some individuals in other departments (including Bunting) as the bastions of administrative conservatism. Tange’s views on several central issues were requested by the Commission. At this time he began to develop a reputation, that would endure the rest of his life, as an exponent of a particular vision of the public service. This view included support for reforms that would make for better governance (a term little used until very late in Tange’s lifetime), but hostility to those that conflicted with the essential principles of the Westminster system.
Tange put considerable effort into his four written submissions to the RCAGA, which were subsequently published, together with a summary of his oral evidence, as a booklet.476 The first was an account and explanation of the Defence reorganisation. He set out the ways in which the newly expanded Defence Department would make use of the skills of two types of servants of the Crown, those in uniform and the traditional departmental public servant. He presented a formidable case for the new organisation, backed with supporting documents, most of which Tange had also had a major role in writing. One was the paper, mentioned in the previous chapter, that he had given to an academic seminar on 1 October 1974.477 If the ‘Tange harangue’ given to Army officers the previous year had been like a commando unit or squadron of fighter aircraft, provocatively harassing the enemy, this paper and the RCAGA submission it accompanied were more like an armoured division or a carrier fleet. Slowly and deliberately, with few excursions into wit or sarcasm, they moved inexorably through the argument, using Tange’s command of the historical and current evidence to dominate the field, while leaving few undefended openings for his opponents to exploit.
