The Seven Dwarfs and the Age of the Mandarins AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATION in the POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION ERA
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The Seven Dwarfs and the Age of the Mandarins AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATION IN THE POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION ERA The Seven Dwarfs and the Age of the Mandarins AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATION IN THE POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION ERA EDITED BY SAMUEL FURPHY Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at http://press.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: The seven dwarfs and the age of the mandarins : Australian government administration in the post-war reconstruction era / editor Samuel Furphy. ISBN: 9781925022322 (paperback) 9781925022339 (ebook) Subjects: Government executives--Australia--Biography. Civil service--Australia--History. Public administration--Australia--History. Reconstruction (1939–1951)--Australia--History. Postwar reconstruction--Australia--History. Federal government--Australia--History. Australia--Officials and employees--Biography. Australia--Politics and government--1945– . Other Creators/Contributors: Furphy, Samuel, editor. Dewey Number: 352.30994 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. The ANU.Lives Series in Biography is an initiative of the National Centre of Biography at The Australian National University, http://ncb.anu.edu.au/. Cover design by ANU Press Layout by ANU Press Printed by Griffin Press This edition © 2015 ANU Press Contents Illustrations . .vii Contributors . ix Acknowledgements . xiii Preface . xv J.R. Nethercote and Samuel Furphy Part I 1 . The Seven Dwarfs: A Team of Rivals . 3 Nicholas Brown 2 . The Post-War Reconstruction Project . 31 Stuart Macintyre 3 . Australia and the Keynesian Revolution . 53 Alex Millmow 4 . An Age of the Mandarins? Government in New Zealand, 1940–51 . 81 John R. Martin Part II 5 . Sir Frederick Shedden: The Forerunner . 113 David Horner 6 . Sir Roland Wilson – Primus Inter Pares . 125 Selwyn Cornish 7 . Coombs the Keynesian . 143 Tim Rowse 8 . Sir John Crawford and Agriculture and Trade . 169 David Lee 9 . Sir Allen Brown: An Exemplary Public Servant . 183 Sir Peter Lawler 10 . Sir Frederick Wheeler: Public Servant . 191 Ian Hancock 11 . Paul Hasluck with Dr Evatt at the United Nations . 209 Geoffrey Bolton 12 . John Burton: Forgotten Mandarin? . 219 Adam Hughes Henry 13 . Sir Arthur Tange: Departmental Reformer . 233 Peter Edwards 14 . Sir James Plimsoll: Mandarin Abroad . 241 Jeremy Hearder Illustrations Sir Robert Garran, c1930 xvii J.B. (Ben) Chifley, c1949 10 Robert Menzies, c1950 17 Sir Henry Bland, 1966 25 Sir Richard Randall, 1966 27 H.C. Coombs with Prime Minister Ben Chifley in London, 1946 35 John Dedman, 1941 37 Dr H.C. (Nugget) Coombs, 1942 41 Sir Douglas Berry Copland, 1951 54 Professor L.F. Giblin, portrait by Sir William Dobell, c1945 56 Peter Fraser, c1940 82 B.C. (Sir Bernard) Ashwin, c1955 86 Sir Frederick Shedden with Prime Minister John Curtin and 115 Mrs Curtin, 1944 Sir Roland Wilson, 1965 134 Dr H.C. (Nugget) Coombs, 1950 146 Sir John Crawford, 1967 171 Sir Allen Brown, 1958 184 Frederick Wheeler, 1959 194 Paul Hasluck, 1954 211 Dr H.V. Evatt at the United Nations, 1949 215 Dr John Wear Burton, c1951 222 Sir Arthur Tange, 1965 237 Sir James Plimsoll, 1965 243 vii Contributors Geoffrey Bolton is senior scholar in residence at Murdoch University (Chancellor 2002–06) and an emeritus professor at Edith Cowan University. He continues to research and write on Australian history, British Commonwealth history, and eighteenth and early nineteenth-century British and Irish history. His most recent book is Paul Hasluck: A Life (2014). Nicholas Brown is a professor of history in the Research School of Social Sciences at The Australian National University. He is the author of several books including Governing Prosperity: Social Analysis and Social Change in Australia in the 1950s (1995) and A History of Canberra (2014). He is currently working on a collaborative study of Sir John Crawford with Stuart McIntyre, David Lee, Frank Bongiorno, and Dennis Blight. Selwyn Cornish is an adjunct associate professor in the Research School of Economics at The Australian National University, and the official historian of the Reserve Bank of Australia. He is the author of The Evolution of Central Banking in Australia (2010), and (with William Coleman and Alf Hagger) Giblin’s Platoon: The Trials and Triumphs of the Economist in Australian Public Life (2006). Peter Edwards is an historian and biographer, who has published extensively on Australian and international history and politics. He is the author of Arthur Tange: Last of the Mandarins (2006), which won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for history and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award for non-fiction. Samuel Furphy is a research fellow in the National Centre of Biography at The Australian National University, where he has worked as a research editor for the Australian Dictionary of Biography since 2010. His most recent book is Edward M. Curr and the Tide of History (2013), based on his doctoral research at the University of Melbourne. He is currently the recipient of an Australian Research Council early career research award. Ian Hancock is an historian and biographer and a former lecturer at Monash University and The Australian National University. A leading historian of the Liberal Party in Australia, he is the author of several political biographies and is currently completing a biography of a former Attorney General and leading barrister, Tom Hughes. He is also working with Nicholas Brown on a biography of Sir Frederick Wheeler. ix The Seven Dwarfs and the Age of the Mandarins Jeremy Hearder studied at Melbourne and Stanford universities before serving as an Australian diplomat for 38 years. His postings abroad were Vientiane, Dar es Salaam, Bangkok, Nairobi, Brussels, Harare (as High Commissioner), Suva (as High Commissioner), Chicago (as Consul General), and Wellington (as Deputy High Commissioner). He is the author of Jim Plim Ambassador Extraordinary: A Biography of Sir James Plimsoll (2015). Adam Hughes Henry completed a PhD thesis in the School of History, Research School of Social Sciences, at The Australian National University in 2012. A book based on his thesis, The Gatekeepers and Australian Foreign Policy, will be published in 2015. He is currently a visiting fellow in the ANU College of Asia & the Pacific, and a research associate in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra. David Horner is an emeritus professor in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University, where he has worked since 1990. Earlier he served for 25 years in the Australian Army. He is the author or editor of 32 books, including Defence Supremo: Sir Frederick Shedden and the Making of Australian Defence Policy (2000) and The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO, Volume I: 1949–1963 (2014). Sir Peter Lawler joined the Department of Post-War Reconstruction in 1944 and transferred to the Prime Minister’s Department in 1950. He was deputy secretary from 1964 before serving as secretary of the departments of the Special Minister of State (1972–75) then Administrative Services (1975–83). From 1983, until his retirement in 1986, he was Ambassador to the Republic of Ireland and Ambassador to the Holy See. David Lee is director of the Historical Publications and Information Section of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He has published several books on the history of Australian foreign policy, international history, and the history of the British Empire and Commonwealth. He is currently writing a history of mining in Australia after 1960, and working on a collaborative study of Sir John Crawford. Stuart Macintyre is an emeritus laureate professor of the University of Melbourne. He is the author of many books, including The History Wars (2003, with Anna Clark) and a co-editor (with Alison Bashford) of The Cambridge History of Australia (2013). His history of post-war reconstruction, Australia’s Boldest Experiment: War and Reconstruction, will be published in 2015. John R. Martin was a public servant for over 30 years in New Zealand, serving in the Department of Island Territories, the Treasury, the Department of Health, and the New Zealand Planning Council. He has also taught public policy at the School of Government at Victoria University of Wellington. x Contributors Alex Millmow is an associate professor of economics at Federation University, Ballarat, and a former officer of the Commonwealth Treasury. He has published extensively on Keynesian economics and is a founder and co-editor of the Journal of Economic and Social Policy. J.R. Nethercote is an adjunct professor at the Australian Catholic University, Canberra Campus. At different times he worked for the Public Service Board, the Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration, the Public Service Commission of Canada, and the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration. He edited the Canberra Bulletin of Public Administration for 20 years. Among the books he has edited or jointly edited are Parliament and Bureaucracy (1982), The Menzies Era (1995), The House on Capital Hill (1996) and Liberalism and the Australian Federation (2001). Tim Rowse is a professorial fellow at the University of Western Sydney. He has worked mainly within the history discipline, but his formal training is in government, sociology and anthropology. He is the author or editor of many books, including two on H.C. Coombs: Nugget Coombs: A Reforming Life (2002) and Obliged to be Difficult: Nugget Coombs’ Legacy in Indigenous Affairs (2000). xi Acknowledgements This book, and the conference that preceded it, was made possible by the generous support of several organisations, including the Public Policy Institute at the Australian Catholic University, the Australia and New Zealand School of Government, the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, the Economic Society of Australia, and the Museum of Australian Democracy.