POLITICS OF SECRECY

BEFORE THE RETIREMENT in 1966 of Liberal Prime Minister, Robert Gordon Menzies, there was virtually no public awareness in Australia that open government and freedom of information should be considered as twin pillars of our allegedly 'representative democracy'. Yet less than two years later, Liberal Prime Minister, John Gorton, unambiguously stated that 'governments ought never to seek to suppress news or information, whether those governments feel it is for the moment to their advantage to do it or not to their advantage to do it.'
     In this fascinating book, Secrecy and Openness, substantially written while he was at the innovative Centre for the Study of Ethics at Queensland University of Technology, Greg Terrill explores the history of secrecy, openness and propaganda in Australia from the Menzies years to those of Gough Whitlam and beyond.
     As Terrill argues, one of the major lessons from Hansonism is that a main complaint of many disaffected citizens is precisely that 'secretive, unrepresentative' politicians regularly 'fail to listen' to their concerns. But, of course, this is not new. Indeed before the passage of freedom of information legislation in 1982, there was little official recognition in this country that, as Terrill puts it, 'greater public access might be justified by rights to know grounded in a sovereign people'.
     Yet prior to this, even during the Menzies years, there was one notable ministerial exception to the federal government's stress on secrecy. This was the then maverick Liberal Party Senator, John Gorton. In 1965, Gorton as Minister for the Navy employed as head of his information services the journalist Tony Eggleton who, remarkable for the times, announced that he was determined to deal openly with enquiries from the media. In 1970 Eggleton, as press secretary to Prime Minister Gorton, proposed a 'central publicity unit' within the Prime Minister's Department. This proposal was not accepted.
     1972 witnessed the publication of Jim Spigelman's path-breaking book, Secrecy: Political Censorship in Australia. Then shortly before the 1972 federal election, the ALP's Clyde Cameron, with the blessing of his leader Whitlam, committed the ALP both to the introduction of FOI legislation and to open government 'as far as practically possible'. Cameron and Whitlam were both influenced by Spigelman's progressive ideas.
     The late H.C. ('Nuggett') Coombs was fond of repeating the pithy aphorism that 'information is power'. Yet, as Max Weber and others have convincingly demonstrated, governments of whatever persuasion and all bureaucracies as institutions are inherently secretive and controlling.
     Indeed, while conducting his fascinating research, Terrill himself was often blocked by governmental secrecy, as well as by bureaucratic bafflement and 'inefficiency'. Thus he was sometimes denied access to certain governmental documents by one federal department and yet allowed entrée to the very same material by another related department.

Ross Fitzgerald is Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University and Chair, Centenary of Federation, Queensland. His most recent book isSeven Days to Remember: The World's First Labor Movement, December 1-7 1899 (UQP).

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