| Review of: | Arthur Tange: Last of the Mandarins by Peter Edwards |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | John Stone |
| Reviewed in: | Australian Journal of Public Administration |
| Date accepted online: | 25/09/2006 |
| Published in print: | Volume 65, Issue 2, Pages 110-124 |
Book Reviews
Any review of a biography needs to comprehend two appraisals: the quality of the work and that of its subject. Let me state immediately my conclusions on both aspects of Professor Peter Edwards's biography of the late Sir Arthur Tange.
Tange was not, in my opinion, 'arguably Australia's most significant public servant', as the book's dust cover claims. Roland Wilson, to name only one, towered above Tange, as above others. Nonetheless, Tange was an outstanding public servant, and a more genuinely public-spirited one than some other contenders for that accolade. He was also a remarkable man. Criticisms of him in what follows will be mere footnotes to those judgments.
Equally, Edwards's biography is a work of real scholarship. In an age beset by potboilers about passing political figures from authors often unequipped for serious writing, it is a rare pleasure to find a book about a man who really did contribute to Australia's post-War national development written by one who has taken the trouble to master his subject. Any differences from Edwards's judgments also represent footnotes to that view.
Having questioned one dust cover claim, let me wholly agree with two others. Tange's 'powerful influence and forceful personality were legendary' indeed in the Commonwealth public service of his day; and Edwards's 'elegantly written and painstakingly researched' biography does indeed reveal much 'about relations between ministers and public servants that is highly relevant to the operations of Australian government today'.
My own acquaintance with Tange was negligible. In September, 1953, when (aged 39) he became Secretary of the Department of External Affairs, I was beginning my final year at Oxford. In January, 1979, when I became Secretary to the Treasury, he had only six months left as Secretary of Defence. He was, in short, of a different generation; and as Edwards's sub-title,
In a public service career of 38 years, Tange spent 11 years as Secretary of the Department of External Affairs and almost ten years as Secretary of the Department of Defence, separated by five years 'resting' as High Commissioner to India. But before any of that he was among those who, as Edwards says, 'had a good war'. Part of that small coterie of outstanding people (Melville, Giblin, Copeland, Wheeler, Crisp, Coombs and others) who entered the top echelons of what had been a staid, even dull, public service, he served first in Wilson's recently created Department of Labour and National Service; in the new Department of Post-War Reconstruction; then (on secondment) in the still fledgling Department of External Affairs. In 1946, when aged 32 he was formally appointed to that department at today's division head level, he had never headed a diplomatic mission. Seven years later, as Secretary, that remained the case.
In his Preface, Edwards foreshadows three themes: 'policy, personality and public administration'. So, within the brief compass available, let me address them.
When Tange took over, External Affairs was a small department, rather low in Canberra's pecking order, and largely comprising intelligent but somewhat deracinated men (almost solely) who had spent too long on the diplomatic circuit losing touch with their compatriots. His policy views were shaped by his 'patriotism', emerging in a 'fundamental nationalism' which, for example, 'underlay [his] attitude towards the alliance with the US ...' (p. 266). So far, so sympathetic.
Almost from the outset Tange found himself at odds, not with his own minister (Casey), but with Prime Minister Menzies over the Suez Canal shambles. Tange was right and Menzies wrong; but as any senior public servant knows (particularly these days), moral rectitude butters no parsnips.
Tange was not, however, always so wise. In February 1951, during the Korean War, he had recommended negotiations with the Chinese to secure a unified Korea (p. 58). Since that would have meant a Chinese Communist-dominated Korea to this day, 48 million South Koreans can only be grateful that his advice was ignored. In the much more complicated case of Vietnam, his otherwise admirable opposition towards mere subservience to the US again led him, in my view, into indefensible judgments.
Thus, writing in 1966 to his External Affairs successor (Plimsoll), he "criticised the constant reference in ministerial statements to 'Communist aggression' and 'free countries"', adding that 'surely it is unnecessarily provocative to talk about the 'free' world. Free from what?' (p. 159). If Tange didn't know the answer to that question after 20 Cold War years, one can only agree with Menzies's earlier (1961) appraisal that he should not head External Affairs. Edwards's dismissal of this - 'polarisation of the world into ideological camps offended Tange's sense of how professionals should operate' - is not good enough.
That brings me to personality, where sharply differing views remain. It is hard to warm to a man possessed of 'a short and ferocious temper' (p. 89), Roden Cutler's rationalisation that, with Tange, 'rudeness = gruffness = shyness' notwithstanding. More unattractive still is Tange's reputation for often personally humiliating subordinates. True, embarked as he was in Defence on a great work of long overdue reform, the stupidity and dumb insolence that he doubtless often encountered from both the military and civilian defence establishments must have been infuriating. But sharpness, or unwillingness to suffer fools gladly, is one thing; bullying of underlings is another.
My chief conclusion about Tange personally is that, in the last analysis, he did not have a truly first-class mind, and that his achievements were based much more on personal courage and strength of character than on intellectual distinction.
That seeming heresy, which derives not from any preconception but from Edwards's book, is not based on the general lack of distinction in Tange's academic attainments, which (first-class honours in his Economics degree in Perth apart) were almost mediocre. Late developers are not unknown, and Tange may well have been one. Nor do I place undue weight on Menzies's remark (to Crocker) that Tange was 'decent enough but a dull fellow', (p. 129) although from such a source that judgment is not to be ignored.
Edwards notes (p. 31) that while, from 1942 onwards, Tange was rubbing shoulders with such giants as Wilson, Melville and Giblin, 'none of these figures had as much impact on him as Nugget Coombs', of whom Tange 'soon became a great admirer'. Coombs's other qualities notwithstanding, no one possessing a first-class mind himself could have looked up to him on grounds of intellect.[1]
In Edwards's conclusion that, 'in Coombs, Tange had found an exemplar', there may however be a pointer not only to the basis of that admiration but also to an important aspect of Tange's subsequent career - namely, how much it seems to have owed to personal relationships with influential people. In that respect, Coombs may indeed have been 'an exemplar'.
For someone seen as 'a loner, aloof rather than gregarious'(p. 43), Tange seems to have been not averse to cultivating ministers personally. Beginning with Percy Spender (who considered appointing him as his departmental secretary in 1950), Tange then enjoyed close personal relationships with Casey (who did appoint him in 1953); when in Canberra, 'Casey often asked if he could visit the Tanges and ... would read bed-time stories to the children'. (p. 109) After Casey's retirement (and an important Menzies interregnum) Barwick became Tange's Minister at end-1961. So close was their relationship that, on Barwick's appointment as Chief Justice two years later, Tange spoke of him at the departmental farewell 'with tears trickling down his cheeks' (p. 141). For an aloof, non-gregarious loner, this was all a bit rum.
When Malcolm Fraser became Minister for Defence under Gorton, however, he asked for Tange (then in India) as his Permanent Head because he 'wanted someone who could stand up to him and argue with him'.[2] It was under Fraser's ministry, but even more importantly under Whitlam's and Fraser's subsequent Prime Ministerships, that Tange undertook his great reform ofAustralia's defence force structure, basing it, for the first time, upon a coherent view (whether or not you agreed with it) of the national strategic interest. That story is well told. For it alone (which is not to diminish his earlier role in building ExternalAffairs) Tange merits his honoured place in the history of Australian public administration.
Even during his last years in it, however, and infinitely more thereafter, the Commonwealth Public Service underwent changes owing much to the activities of those (such as Peter Wilenski) whom Tange called the 'zealous reformers', whose 'vaporous abstractions' (p. 256) he rightly denounced in his 1981 Robert Garran Oration.
On 24 May, 2001, as a mark of personal respect, I drove down to Canberra especially to attend Tange's memorial service. I wish I had known as much about him then as, after reading Edwards's excellent book, I do now.
[1]See, in this connection, my review (
[2]I am aware of one other such appointment where Fraser gave an identical reason for his choice.