Arthur Tange, page 39
Koonaroo was also important in strengthening Tange’s relationships with his children and grandchildren. Jenny, who had inherited much of her father’s appearance, organisational drive and love of the countryside as well as her mother’s vivacity, built a successful career as a kindergarten director in Adelaide, where Angus was a principal architect for Flinders University before resuming private practice. Jenny was always proud to be her father’s daughter, remaining as close as geographical distance would permit, and the family pride was continued by the Moir children, Alice and Nicholas, born in 1978 and 1980 respectively.
Arthur’s relationship with his son was more turbulent. Arthur had been delighted when Chris had married Jennifer Smithers in 1978, especially when they discovered that Jennifer’s grandfather had been a respected local doctor in Gosford at the same time as Chris’s grandfather, Charles Tange, had been practising law there. (The marriage meant that there were now three Jenny Tanges in the same generation—Arthur’s daughter, daughter-in-law and niece, Jack’s daughter—which inevitably led to occasional confusion and misunderstandings.) After two children were born, Jessica in 1979 and Michael in 1981, strains emerged, which led to an amicable divorce in the late 1980s. Around the same time, Chris was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (previously known as manic depression). Chris attributed this to his maternal grandfather, Edward Shann, cheerfully asserting: ‘I inherited the old boy’s MD but not his brains’. Chris knew that, unlike Shann, he was lucky to live at a time when the therapeutic qualities of lithium had been discovered. Much of the latter part of his career was spent as a fundraiser for a major charity, The Open Family. A shared love of rugby, particularly in support of the ACT Brumbies, strengthened the bond between father and son. Arthur was also a willing dogsitter for Chris’s terrier, Sadie, who particularly liked to sleep on an old dressing-gown in Arthur’s bedroom. Arthur added a codicil to his will, bequeathing his dressing-gown to Sadie.
Tange’s interest in family history coincided with the obligation to attend the funerals, and sometimes to arrange the estates, of his older siblings. Younger members of the family had long heard stories of Ruth, a fiercely independent woman who never married, but were a little surprised to hear of Nellie. She had been living with a man whose wife had been committed to an institution for the mentally incapable but who, as a devout Catholic, would not contemplate divorce. Only after the wife’s death were Nellie and her partner married. In the circumstances, few even in the mid-twentieth century would have considered this to be ‘living in sin’, but her circumstances were such that references to her very existence were avoided for some years.
In the 1990s Marjorie suffered a stroke. After years of being noted for her vivacity, intelligence and sometimes acerbic wit, her communication with the rest of the world became intermittent and unpredictable. She moved to Morling Lodge, a nursing home in the Canberra suburb of Red Hill, where Arthur visited her every day, often not knowing whether she was conscious of her visitor. After decades of relying on women for domestic support, the octogenarian Arthur learned to cook, taking some pride in discovering new recipes and bargains at the fish markets.
In the family, all assumed that Marjorie would be the first to go, especially after she suffered a second major stroke in 1998. It was therefore a surprise when Arthur was diagnosed in 1999 with leukaemia. His principal resentment, typically, was directed towards the hours that he was required to spend undergoing blood transfusions. To the last, he placed a high value on his time. Much of late 2000 and early 2001 was spent in hospital, where his visitors included Malcolm and Tammy Fraser. The two men sparred over defence policy and relations with the United States, as they had done since they were minister and permanent head thirty years earlier. Tange was, at least outwardly, matter-of-fact in facing his doctors’ advice that he would be lucky to survive the next winter. Even that soon proved optimistic. He was reluctant to admit that his body was not responding well to chemotherapy but, in early May 2001, Chris and Jenny, who had come over from Adelaide, realised that he required emergency attention. He was admitted to the Canberra Hospital, where he died on 10 May. He was cremated at a small private service on the 15th, before his passing was publicly marked by the memorial service on the 24th.
Marjorie was taken into his hospital room soon after his death. She also attended the cremation and memorial services. No-one knew whether she understood what was happening, but those close to her wondered whether there were levels of communication beyond those that are obvious. Her physical condition in May 2001 seemed much the same as it had been for years, but on 6 July she peacefully passed away—in this case, the familiar euphemism seemed appropriate. After sixty years of marriage, even death had separated Arthur and Marjorie by less than two months.
Epilogue
The Legends and the Legacies
Arthur Tange was never a well-known figure throughout Australia. Apart from Nugget Coombs, few public servants of his generation were. Discretion was an essential part of their business; headlines were left to the politicians, especially the ministers whom they served. But among public servants, military officers, politicians, journalists and others in and around Canberra’s corridors, Tange was remembered long after his retirement and even his death, as the stories that circulated in his prime turned into myths and legends. Some references were kind. By the 1990s the Canberra Times, which had not hesitated to portray him as tough and abrasive during his career, was referring to Tange as ‘the grand old man of the public service’.536 In a feature to mark the Centenary of Federation in 2001, the Sydney Morning Herald listed Tange among the 100 most influential Australians of the twentieth century, noting that influence was quite different from fame.537 Some public servants, especially those associated with defence or foreign policy, long continued to speak with awe of his intellectual capacity, his force of personality, and his ability to give frank and fearless advice to ministers of any political complexion.
Other recollections were far from sympathetic. Some public servants, especially civilians who had worked with and for the military, refused to see him as anything more than an irascible autocrat and egocentric bully. Some in the military preserved and embellished the legend of the power-hungry civilian bureaucrat, ruthlessly stripping the armed services of their rightful place in making Australian strategic and defence policies. Some conservatives, both civilian and military, saw him as a principal progenitor of an Australian national security policy that undervalued the American alliance and favoured a narrowly continental view of Australian interests. Certain circles on the left, by contrast, held firmly to the picture of a diehard conservative, who was more loyal to the United States and its intelligence agencies than to elected Australian governments, and who plotted to conceal Australian complicity in the murder by Indonesian troops of Australia-based journalists in East Timor.
All of these could not be true; most were at best exaggerations; some were groundless. But the contradictions and the complexities illustrate the difficulties of making a fair and balanced assessment of the contribution of someone who spent nearly four decades close to the centre of Australian policy-making. For what, then, should Arthur Tange be remembered?
His principal legacy lies in the capacity of Australia’s institutions of national security. The era of the great mandarins of the public service coincided, not by chance, with the era of important developments in the size and nature of the major departments of state.
After his retirement, Tange’s name was most often recalled in connection with the ‘Tange report’ and the subsequent ‘Tange reforms’ in the Defence group of departments. Since 1973, numerous reviews and reports have prompted adjustments in one part or another of what Shedden liked to call ‘the higher Defence machinery’, but the basic framework established in the mid-1970s has remained intact. In particular, the diarchy—the division of the management of Defence, under the minister, between the Chief of the Defence Force and a civilian secretary—has remained in place. Civilians and military continue to contribute to advice on strategic and international policies and to decisions on force structure. Notwithstanding some complaints from within the military and their sympathisers, no government has indicated that it wanted to receive advice on its strategic and higher defence policies solely from military channels. The wiser heads in the military have generally recognised, however reluctantly, that if a government were to insist on a single source of top-level advice, that channel might well be the civilian secretary rather than the four-star officer. Curtin, for example, had Shedden at his right hand while keeping Blamey at a considerable distance. Since 1945, whether in peacetime or during conflicts with a strong political and diplomatic element, ministers have continued to seek a blend of military and civilian advice on strategic policies.
Since the 1970s the balance of power between the civilians and the military within the Defence structure has probably shifted towards the military. This makes some of Tange’s former civilian colleagues uncomfortable but it should not be seen as invalidating or undermining the Tange reforms. Ever since his time in External Affairs, Tange had hoped to see the creation of a generation of senior officers who could rise above the military issues confronting a single service and contribute constructively to the development of a broadly based strategic and defence policy. He regarded the performance of military leaders such as General John Baker, Chief of the Defence Force from 1995 to 1998, as indicating that his hopes were bearing fruit. Moreover, he saw the emphasis on a broad and liberal education of officers, especially at the Australian Defence Force Academy, as an assurance of future progress.
In the decades since the Tange reforms, the administration of Defence has given rise to numerous problems and recurrent controversies. Some suggest that Tange should take his share of the blame for creating an organisation than was too big for any one person, no matter how able, to manage. Certainly Defence is the largest and most complex agency in the public sector. The chief executives of the few Australian corporations of comparable size are remunerated with sums unimaginable for any public servant. But the problems that afflict Defence from time to time arise not only from size and complexity but also from the multiple cultures that coexist within the one body. Even after decades of ‘jointery’, three single-service cultures continue to exist, alongside a generic military culture and a civilian public service culture, with both affected by the conflicting demands of established traditions and new managerial approaches. No administrative or structural reform could, by itself, eliminate these tensions or prevent the recurrence of problems and controversies. The structures that Tange devised—subject, as always, to constant revision—remain as sound a basis as any for advising on, and implementing, a defence policy that takes account of all the relevant military and non-military considerations.
In the institutional sphere, Tange’s contribution to foreign affairs, although less controversial and therefore less well known, was no less significant than that to defence. Tange did more than any other individual to ensure that Australia had, by the mid-1960s, a foreign office and a diplomatic service worthy of a middle power, with an internationally respected degree of expertise on regional affairs and with growing skills in handling relationships with major allies. Even after the merger in 1987 with its former rival, Trade, the department’s capacities in these areas have owed much to his work in the 1950s and 1960s. Tange has the unusual distinction of being a principal architect of two major departments of state.
Tange’s critics often alleged or implied that his reforms in both foreign affairs and defence were driven largely by his own ambition and ego. They overlooked the higher purpose—to ensure that Australia shaped and implemented its national security policies with the greatest possible degree of national independence and self-reliance. It was easy to assert, as many have for at least half a century, that Australia should have an independent foreign policy, influenced but not dictated by its alliance arrangements. Tange saw that that goal would only be achieved if the nation had an effective and respected foreign office and diplomatic service, giving sound advice to government based on its own collection and assessment of information and implementing the government’s policies with high professional skills. Similarly, he was long frustrated by Australia’s reluctance to develop and to implement an effective defence policy, with an emphasis on ‘self-reliance’ and substantial independence. Towards that end, he did more than any single person to organise the Defence Department and associated agencies to meld insights from civilian and military officers into coherent advice on strategic and defence policies based on Australia’s national interests. Moreover, he sought to have these policies implemented by a defence force that would operate in a coordinated fashion by sea, land and air, rather than by three autonomous services, each operating more closely with its overseas counterparts than with its Australian colleagues. These goals underpinned Tange’s work for a quarter of a century.
At the heart of his advice on foreign and defence policies and their administration was what George Orwell called patriotism (to distinguish it from the dangerously aggressive forms of nationalism of the 1930s and 1940s). Tange placed independence alongside security as the fundamental goals of defence policy. His advocacy of self-reliance and a defence policy based on protection of the homeland and its immediate interests was based not only on a hard-headed assessment of strategic realities and Australia’s financial capacity, but also on a conviction that this was the appropriate stance for a self-respecting, independent nation.
This fundamental nationalism underlay Tange’s attitude towards the alliance with the United States, although the outward and visible signs of that attitude may have seemed contradictory amid the political changes of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Tange was always in favour of keeping the alliance, but as a support for a defence posture that was based on the greatest possible measure of self-reliance. He reacted strongly against the view, prominent in the coalition governments of the 1950s and 1960s, that Australia should comply obsequiously with American policies, in order to preserve an alliance that was a talisman against all potential threats. From the 1950s Tange pressed the case for Australia to act as a member of its own region. He emphasised that its great power allies did not have to live in this part of the world and could conceivably take positions unwelcome to Australia (as, for example, the United States did on the question of West New Guinea). In the 1960s he repeatedly urged Australian officials and ministers to make their own critical assessments of the constant flow of intelligence reports and policy advice received from the Americans, rather than accepting Washington’s word without challenge.
Tange liked to remind official subordinates and ministerial superiors that the United States would react, in the event of some threat to Australia, in the light of its own commitments and responsibilities at the time. He also refused to regard measures to increase the degree of self-reliance in Australian defence as ‘downgrading ANZUS’. He knew that, well before the Nixon doctrine was promulgated, senior figures in both Democrat and Republican administrations had repeatedly called on Australia to strengthen its independent as well as its joint capabilities, in accordance with Article II of the ANZUS Treaty. Maintaining the alliance, and ensuring that it operated to Australia’s benefit, required constant vigilance and attention. It was not enough, in his view, simply to rely on what Menzies had called ‘the utmost goodwill, the utmost good faith and unqualified friendship’.
His defence of Australian sovereign interests during the critical meeting with the American ambassador in February 1973, discussed in chapter 11, reflected that basic patriotism. In the mid-1970s Tange certainly understood that maintenance of the alliance required Australia to respect American concerns over the security of Pine Gap and the other joint facilities. Nevertheless it was inconceivable that he would have placed those concerns ahead of his loyalty to the elected Australian government in November 1975. It was not obsequious compliance but this balance of robust self-reliance with self-respecting cooperation that the Pentagon recognised with its Medal for Distinguished Public Service.
As Secretary of External Affairs during Indonesia’s Confrontation of Malaysia, Tange was one of the principal architects of the policy that Australia should seek the best possible relationship with the government in effective control of the archipelago, even when Australia disapproved of some of that government’s policies. This should not be interpreted to mean that he was a founding member of what has come to be described pejoratively as the ‘pro-Jakarta lobby’. As conceived and implemented by Barwick, Tange and their colleagues, the policy was sound. Tange and his contemporaries maintained a robust resistance, including the use of military force, to Indonesian actions that contravened both international order and Australian interests. Maintaining a nuanced policy, that balanced resolute resistance to hostile acts while keeping diplomatic, military and aid channels open, was a constructive and innovative approach, which proved to be in Australia’s long-term interests.
The skills that Tange brought to advising ministers on foreign and defence policies included judgment and confidence backed, as the decades passed, with an extraordinary range and depth of experience. Much of what he did in Defence in the 1970s, for example, was based to a large degree on his experience in External Affairs, including membership of the Defence Committee, in the 1950s and 1960s. Based on their depth of experience, Tange and other public servants could also anticipate the less obvious and longer-term ramifications of current crises and policy proposals, while their ministers were necessarily more concerned with a three-year electoral cycle. Although this was less of a problem in foreign affairs and defence, ministers were also more preoccupied than public servants with the immediate demands of the media’s deadlines.
