Arthur Tange

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Sir Arthur Tange (18 August 1914 – 10 May 2001) was a prominent Australian senior public servant of the middle to late 20th century.

A considerable intellect, with a way with words, he was one of the most influential people in the government of Australia for nearly 30 years, earning him considerable respect and intense dislike in equal measure. He was best known for his major but controversial role in reforming the organisation of the administration of the defence of Australia in the 1970s. He is also less well known for having laid the foundations of the modern, professional, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in his time at the then Department of External Affairs.

Born on 18 August 1914, Arthur Harold Tange ultimately became known as one of the most formidable 'mandarins' of the Australian Public Service in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. He joined the public service during World War II. Having rapidly risen from research assistant to departmental secretary in the Department of External Affairs (forerunner to the modern Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) from 1954 to 1965, he then took up the position of High Commissioner to India from 1965 to 1969.

In 1970 he returned to Australia to become Secretary of Defence - the most senior public servant therein, and effective executive effective head of the civilian Defence Department, reporting to the Minister. At that time the Department of Defence was of little consequence in the commonwealth government. Each service (Navy, Army and Air Force) had their own separate departments, each with its own minister. Further, the Ministry of Supply, responsible for military supply matters was also separate with yet another minister. The respective services and departments were known to dislike, even despise each other. Each group spent much of its time jealously guarding its own budget and powers against the others.

With his career background in diplomacy and international affairs, Tange felt that a co-ordinated administration of the defence of Australia, integrating strictly military matters, supply and material acquisition, intelligence, defence related economic affairs and international relations was desperately needed. To this end he spent the bulk of his time as secretary of defence (1970 to his retirement in 1979) working towards the merging of the departments of the army, navy, air force, supply and defence into one. He desired a wider view of defence policy from the civilian members of the defence department and the uniformed members of the armed services.

His work culminated in a 1973 report, formally titled 'Australian Defence: Report on the Reorganisation of the Defence Group of Departments' but widely known in the press and in government circles as 'the Tange Report'. With the support of the Whitlam Labor government the changes proposed were enacted and the various services have since then been more widely known as the Australian Defence Force. The Prime Minister and Minister of Defence are now advised by both the uniformed Chairman of the Defence Staffs and the civilian Secretary of Defence, with overall defence policy being developed and enacted co-operatively between the uniformed and civilian staffs.

Another aspect of Tange's work was a desire that the three services should work together co-operatively in the defence of Australia at all levels, rather than as the feuding tribes that they had often previously appeared. To this end he was instrumental in the decision to set up a primary tri-service college for the joint training, academic and military, of all officer recruits in the services. A further motive for developing the academy (which is an affiliated academic college of the University of New South Wales) was to equip the future leaders of the defence forces with a broader humanistic as well as technical education, to enable them to eventually make the wider contributions to defence policy that Tange felt was lacking from the senior uniformed officers of his generation. The Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) was opened in 1983, in Canberra, and most military officers since then have received their tertiary education and basic military training in its tri-service environment.

Neither of these reforms were easy and they were both accompanied by enormous resistance and press clamour. Tradition within the old service departments led to ferocious fights over these issues in the press, the ministries and the parliament in the 1970s. Tange's role in the changes saw him regarded as both a forward-looking visionary and a wrecker of Australian security on a grab for personal power. The conservative forces in the military and coalition parties in Australia often regarded him as a man bent on destroying the sensible and time-honoured traditions of the individual services whilst the political left in the universities, unions and labor movement often regarded him as a prime example of the old public service 'mandarin' who told his ministers what to do and pursued a conservative agenda no matter who was in government at the time.

Tange retired in 1979 and lived until 2001, when he died of leukemia. His wife of 60 years, Marjorie, passed away two months later after a series of strokes.

The first independent biography of Tange, 'Arthur Tange: Last of the Mandarins' by Peter Edwards was published in 2006 by Allen & Unwin.

[edit] See also

• Speech by the Hon Alexander Downer, MP, Minister for Foreign Affairs,at the memorial service for the late Sir Arthur Tange Parliament House, Canberra, 24 May 2001
• Peter Edwards, ‘Arthur Tange: Last of the Mandarins’, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2006
• image of him receiving the Order of Australia