The first meeting of the committee, to be known as the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Committee, was held on 14 July 1952 at Victoria Barracks in Melbourne. Before the meeting, the Joint Intelligence Committee (the directors of security for all branches of the Australian armed services) had devised draft D-notices for the new committee to consider. These were presented as one of the main orders of business at the meeting. McBride chaired the meeting, and Menzies, who also attended, addressed it to express ‘the Government’s appreciation of their willingness to co-operate with the Defence Authorities in the introduction and operation of a system of “D” Notices’.
In addition to the initial set of D-notices, McBride had advised in his briefing that the first meeting would ‘consider the principles upon which the organisation is based’ and ‘the procedure for its operation’. The seven principles adopted by the committee in due course emphasised the need to prevent dissemination of information ‘detrimental to national security’ and the voluntary nature of the notices, among other things. This voluntary principle has been affirmed throughout the life of the D-notice system in Australia. The most recent documentation from the D-notice committee, dating from its last meeting in 1982, stated, ‘The system is an entirely voluntary one, offering advice and guidance only. Non-observance of a request contained in a Notice carries no penalties. In the end, it is for an editor to decide whether to publish an item of information, having regard to national security requirements’.
The principles noted that the media representatives on the committee would have access to information ‘of a secret nature’, even though only information classified ‘confidential’ would appear in the official notices. This trust of participating media representatives appears to have been justified. Throughout the British tests there were no known Australian breaches of the atomic test D-notices.
A major agenda item at the inaugural meeting was Operation Hurricane, the first nuclear test in Western Australia. McBride explained that it was primarily a British operation and that Australia would play a secondary role. But while the UK Government would lay down security conditions, there were some issues around media liaison that needed clarifying, and ‘the Australian Government was consulting the United Kingdom Government in regard to the release of certain background information regarding activity in Australia in respect of which the Australian press had a special interest’. The Australian media were endlessly frustrated with the fact that the British media seemed to have privileged access to information about the British nuclear test program.
At the first meeting, this problem, which was already apparent and would become more so, came to the surface: British media were getting hold of information ahead of Australian media. The Australian government officials undertook to ensure that any release of information was simultaneous. (Issues over the perceived preferential treatment given to UK media festered throughout the British atomic test program in Australia and were never really resolved.) The media also asked to be present as observers, something of which Defence Minister McBride ‘took note’, while maintaining that under the present arrangements even he was not allowed to be present. The committee agreed on eight D-notices to be issued. These covered:
» UK atomic tests in Australia;
» aspects of naval shipbuilding;
» official ciphering;
» the number and deployment of Centurion tanks;
» troop movements in the Korean War;
» weapons and equipment information not officially released;
» aspects of air defence; and
» certain aerial photographs.
The D-notice applying to the Hurricane test at Monte Bello, originally D-notice No. 1, was ultimately designated D-notice No. 8 after being altered to take into account media objections both at the meeting and in subsequent correspondence. Shedden reported just after the meeting, ‘Everything went well except that, as expected, the arrangements for publicity in connection with the atomic test were somewhat critically discussed… [The media at the meeting were informed] that we were seeking to liberalise the United Kingdom outlook in so far as treatment of the Australian press is concerned’.
The hard line that the UK authorities took on co-operating with the media applied particularly to the Australian media. The British media – arguably because of more sophisticated reporting skills – displayed a greater depth of coverage in their stories of the tests and regularly ‘scooped’ Australian reporters, a fact that caused problems for the minister for Supply Howard Beale, who faced complaints from Australian journalists.
Following resolution of the criticisms aired at the first meeting, the revised and re-numbered D-notice No. 8 was officially distributed to the media just before the Hurricane test. In it Captain AE Buchanan, secretary and executive officer of the committee, set out a number of restrictions in reporting the Monte Bello test. These included that there be ‘no disclosure of, or speculation concerning’ information regarding the technical details of the weapon design, the precise form and date of the trials, the results to be obtained and the passage arrangements for the fissile material and for ‘the Main Force after leaving the United Kingdom, until released by the United Kingdom authorities’.
These were sweeping restrictions. The notice also spelled out what information would be made available ‘unofficially’ to the media by the navy’s public relations office, including such items as the transfer of a construction squadron of the RAAF to Monte Bello and the build-up of stores at Fremantle to the south of the test site. The statement exempted from the notice matters of ‘observable facts which must inevitably be known to foreign observers and the press’. These included arrivals and departures from ports and airfields but excluded anything taking place within the ‘prohibited area’ of the test itself.
The notice, in effect, limited the media to what they could directly observe by stationing themselves close to the test site, and to what the test authorities chose to tell them. It specifically, and not surprisingly, precluded any technical detail about the atomic device itself. Obviously, it did not restrict political speculations about the wider meaning of the bomb test and the development on Australian soil of a British nuclear deterrent, although few such broad stories appeared in the media. The primary purpose was to restrict the promulgation of technical and strategic information.
Some Australian media organisations quibbled over the delivery of information, appeals that did not go completely unheeded in Canberra. Menzies wrote to all media organisations in August 1952 to assure them that their views on media coverage of Hurricane were being taken into account. ‘As the test is of great public interest the Government expressed to the United Kingdom Government its view that any possible information that could be given to the press without prejudice to security, should be made available.’ The Defence, Press and Broadcasting Committee had discussed this issue at its first meeting the month before.
Menzies also claimed that the problem of the UK media gaining access to bomb test stories before the Australian media had been solved through his government’s representations. The Australian press should now receive the same treatment as the UK press regarding ‘the release of official information and photographs’. (Despite Menzies’ intervention, though, the Australian media continued to complain about perceived preferential treatment for the British media.) He attached the revised D-notice, which Buchanan had issued a little earlier. The first, disputed version had omitted the list of ‘background information’ items included in the final version, which gave media access to substantially more information than originally offered. The changes were reasonably well received, although the notice still had a sticking point, namely the line that restricted reporting on ‘anything on or taking place in the prohibited area’. As the editor of the West Australian newspaper EC de Burgh pointed out: