Later that year Menzies led the Liberal Party to its first term in government, ushering in a lengthy era of conservatism. Menzies, a former constitutional lawyer, was a fatherly figure, with his shock of white hair, his beetle-brow, his tall and well-built frame and his double-breasted suits. Revisionists have since portrayed his politics as opportunistic, relying upon Cold War fears to shore up his support, but during his stately, 16-year second prime ministership, mainstream Australia mostly viewed him as solid and safe.
The Liberal Party of Australia was formed in 1945. Menzies had previously been prime minister between 1939 and 1941 when he headed the soon-to-be-defunct United Australia Party. His short and unhappy two years as a wartime prime minister taught him valuable lessons. Keeping tight control of national security matters came naturally to him, and his distrust of the media had a long history. His second prime ministership came at a time of pervasive anti-communism in Western countries, set in motion in part by the aggressive pursuit of atomic weapons by the Soviet Union. Menzies was elected to his first postwar term on a national security platform and a pledge to outlaw the Communist Party. The government passed anti-communist legislation, but its bill was struck down by the High Court. A referendum intended to give the Australian parliament the power to ban the Communist Party was narrowly defeated in 1951.
Despite this failure, Menzies gained great political capital out of defence and security issues throughout his long tenure, which spanned seven general elections, until his retirement in January 1966. In his autobiography, Menzies wrote about tightening national security with the advent of ASIO, noting that his predecessor Ben Chifley ‘laid down a rule, which I subsequently strictly observed, that ASIO must work in secret (since it was trying to counter an enemy who worked in secret), and that the details of its activities should not be exposed in Parliament or to the public at large’.
ASIO’s role, roughly equivalent to that of Britain’s MI5, was to deal with internal security issues. The Australian Secret Intelligence Service, a new (and for many years totally secret) external security organisation equating to Britain’s MI6, was established in 1952, although the government did not acknowledge the service publicly until the 1980s. It remains subject to a (notional) D-notice to this day, despite some controversial breaches by the Australian media over the years.
Fear was in the air and the world seemed more dangerous than ever. The atomic arms race escalated, along with international political tensions. Britain had been testing long-range guided missiles since 1946 at Woomera in the South Australian desert, and, apart from the brief cessation in the late 1940s because of security scandals, the Woomera test range was used until 1980. In fact, Australia hosted a large proportion of the UK’s postwar weapons testing program. Given this central involvement in the weapons testing activities of another nation, initiating an Australian D-notice system to manage media information now looks as inevitable as establishing a spy service.
The British Government needed Australia’s geographic assets and its distance from the British electorate but was not convinced of Australia’s soundness in managing security issues. These doubts were not helped by the Petrov spy scandal that began in April 1954, on the eve of a federal election, when Vladimir Petrov, a Canberra-based junior Soviet diplomat, defected to Australia. Petrov claimed there was a communist spy ring in Australia that included diplomats, journalists, academics and even Labor Party staff members. This quintessential Cold War saga was sparked by the disruption in the Soviet Union after the death in March 1953 of the cruel dictator Joseph Stalin. Petrov feared for his life if he returned home. His wife, Evdokia Petrova, taken forcibly by armed Soviet escorts and on her way back to Russia, was rescued by ASIO agents at Darwin airport on Menzies’ direct orders. A famous photograph of her being manhandled by KGB operatives on the tarmac evokes the paranoid atmosphere of that time. The drama led to an Australian Royal Commission on Espionage and the severing of diplomatic relations with the USSR until 1959. In fractious and paranoid times, Menzies brought security issues to the top of the political agenda.
When its security record caused significant damage to its international relationships, Australia had some fence-mending to do. The Americans in particular were extremely wary of Australia’s approach to security, and the British became hypersensitive about lax secret keeping, particularly as they developed their plans to test nuclear weaponry. In fact, evidence suggests that the British even used Australian security slackness as an excuse. An official from the CRO, the authority that liaised between the British Government and members of the Commonwealth, wrote in April 1952, ‘By explaining to the Australians the [security] measures we consider satisfactory, we shall deprive ourselves of the easiest excuse for withholding from them information about atomic matters in the future’. The perception of slack Australian security could be valuable to the Brits.
Democratic governments have to tread carefully when they seek to manage the media. Media culture (if not the daily reality) adheres strongly to the idea of the fourth estate, which demands that journalists hold power structures to account. This idea arose during the Enlightenment and forms a backdrop to media in democratic countries. Limiting the media by legislation is politically unwise because the backlash can be brutal. How, then, to achieve control? In Australia, for a short while, as the insecurities and heightened patriotism of the Cold War played out, D-notices became the favoured mechanism. These new directives particularly influenced the coverage of the early atomic tests.
The D-notice system, guided by a secret committee that numbered senior media representatives, politicians, bureaucrats and military leaders among its ranks, set up a dynamic between the British nuclear test authorities, the Australian Government and the Australian media. It proved an effective way to get the media to report officially vetted information and to dissuade them from seeking other sources for their stories. The media were in effect ‘trained’ not to step into the realm of independent inquiry in relation to the British nuclear tests. The D-notice system was important in establishing this relationship.
The British system of D-notices, short for Defence notices, dates back to 1912. That system was set up following the proclamation of its famous Official Secrets Act 1911 and has been used extensively since. It has never had any legal authority, since legislation aimed at media censorship would cause unproductive outrage among media organisations and the general public alike. Also, for the UK authorities D-notices were a way of ensuring ‘prior restraint’ – in other words, media self-censorship. Convincing media practitioners not to publish national security information was less hazardous and more effective than pursuing media outlets if and when they did so. Australia has never had an exact equivalent of the Official Secrets Act, although the Crimes Act 1914 does cover aspects of unauthorised disclosure of Commonwealth classified information.