Pearls and Irritations

We then had troops (and others) deployed within a day, people vested with unprecedented authority, and a confident and capable public service used great imagination to perform, at lowish cost and in quick time the major job of national reconstruction – rebuilding the ruined city of Darwin after it was levelled by a cyclone.

The cyclone flattened the city. Almost all of the entire population of more than 50,000 people – was evacuated by air within a week – a shorter period than the full deployment of army resources to north-eastern NSW this week.

The two military officers in charge of organising initial emergency relief were General Alan Streeton and his deputy Colonel Van Vardenega, and they found out about the disaster at about the same time I did, early on Christmas morning. We compared notes of sketchy reports from different sources. Strictly, they were detached from the ADF. The National Disaster Organisation ran out of a smallish office on Northbourne Avenue.

But their military rank helped enormously in quickly cobbling together some emergency materials, loading them on to a Hercules and setting off, with general Streeton on board, for Darwin in the early afternoon. As a very young acting chief of staff (for a tiny Boxing Day edition) I sent a young reporter to interview Streeton as he was supervising the loading. He told the reporter, whose name I forget, that he could come along if he wanted. To our mortification, the reporter demurred; he had to get the car back to the office!

During Christmas morning, I spoke on several occasions to both Streeton and Vardanega, and over the next month or two to Vardenega almost every day. Their numbers – home and at the office – were both in the book and the Commonwealth Directory, and both thought it part of their duty to explain to reporters and the public what they were doing, and thinking, and why.

They did not behave, as does the massive, cumbersome and almost entirely useless modern successor, as if speaking to a reptile of the press was a prima facie breach of the Crimes Act. Nor did they hold back until anything they said had been cleared with the minister’s office.  Or demand questions in writing or use a thick screen – and separate empire – of public relations people to obscure the truth and promote the minister’s view of the world.

The old arrangements, far more subtle and accountable, could involve far more Commonwealth people than were deployed even during the 2019-20 bushfires. They were far more effective, and many times cheaper than anything the Commonwealth manages these days. In theory the current body coordinates matters between Commonwealth agencies, and sometimes, whole-of- Commonwealth arrangements with individual states. The former task – once accompanied far more effectively by ad hoc arrangements between relevant public servants and the minister, now consumes whole battalions of Commonwealth officials writing memos to each other, and is done badly, as anyone watching could see while questions of emergency money distribution and entitlement got caught in the spin cycle this week. We also had the spectacle of the relevant minister calling on homeless and possession-less people to contact Centrelink via the Internet, or by the notoriously incompetent, inhuman and inhumane phone service.

Back in 1974, senior public servants began arriving at work, unbidden, by lunchtime on Christmas Day, and began meeting and advising their ministers. Even junior public servants drifted in, recognising that the victims needed help. The prime minister, Gough Whitlam, was in Greece inspecting other ruins (though he got to Darwin and spoke to victims a jolly sight more quickly than Morrison) and the acting prime minister was Dr Jim Cairns, who was for the next few months the most popular man in Australia, particularly for his calm, compassionate and empathetic management.

Cabinet met while Stretton was still in the air to Darwin, and over the aircraft radio, Cairns promised him and his deputy, all the authority they needed to plan and implement a massive relief effort. That involved more than making decisions about what to do – which soon included, after advice from folk on the ground – the evacuation of the city. It involved planning, organising and implementing everything, finding out who had supplies, and where, and if or how they could be commandeered. Ships were chartered; by nightfall Admiral Tony Synott had organised a navy ship to set off from Sydney with emergency items, including food and tarpaulins. This was organised by nightfall on Christmas Day – a holiday of holidays – with most sailors on leave. And while communications with Darwin were completely shut off. No one was saying that they couldn’t move with all deliberate speed.

It was soon discovered that the department of manufacturing industry had many of the resources needed, and in Tom Lawrence, its deputy secretary, one of the world’s champion scroungers and organisers. If Stretton was running Darwin, Vardenega was in effect running the whole country.

Cyclone Tracey caused the biggest peacetime diversion of resources before or since. By comparison the 2019-20 bushfires were a doddle for defence

Vardanega was organising the most massive peacetime diversion of resources Australia had achieved before (or since). Ordinary government continued but extraordinary government was being performed by Vardenega and a small, impromptu and ad hoc team of public servants. Ministers were kept informed, and their views – or at least those of Cairns and Whitlam in particular — were incorporated into decisions. But no one was sitting around waiting for authority to do things which were necessary, for ministerial signatures, or press statements to be checked by the media managers. There were few demarcation disputes. Many tasks – including recording the city of arrival of evacuees, their preliminary places of shelter, emergency dispensation of cash, counselling arrangements, and communications, were organised by public servants, social workers and volunteers, mostly from the department of social security and the social welfare commission.

A treasury official, Roy Daniels, sat close to Vardenega recording decisions that involved expenditure (there was no department of finance then). All decisions were recorded. Spending decisions had proper, if novel, signing off arrangements. Later, they would be subject to inspection by the Auditor-General as well as parliamentary committees. Public servants and military — and the ministers at a distance – were focused on making things happen, not in obstructing anything.

Every man and his dog wanted to help. Many got in the way. Vardenega brought in his young daughter to create a switchboard and divert some of the timewasters.

No minister had his own personal photographer on official visits to Darwin. No-one claimed the right to exclude the media, and no one – least of all Whitlam – used back exits to avoid members of the public likely to be critical.

Van Vardenega thought that communications was a primary part of the operation. Not public relations. Not political spin. Information. Facts. And informed opinion and background detail.

And he did not concede control over the public’s right to be informed by any of the political or bureaucratic empire builders who offered to take the burden away from him.

“I made it clear from the outset that, first, we would always tell the truth as far as we knew it, and secondly (18 years before FOI legislation) the media had free access to National Disaster Organisation areas and any papers involved in the disaster,’’ Vardenega said. “In turn, I expected a fair go. … they never let us down. No event in Australian history was ever so widely or accurately reported.’’

Perhaps there’s a lesson in that for Scott Morrison. And, perhaps, also for the public relations embuggerances at the department of defence, and the people doing heaven knows what, at Emergency Management Australia and the National Recovery and Resilience Agency. Supposedly the latter combines its “expertise” in natural disaster response, recovery and resilience, working with affected communities and all levels of government and industry. I’m awaiting their references from the people of Cobargo, many now into their third year of learning self-reliance from the Commonwealth, perhaps for want of a handshake.

It should be remembered that the Commonwealth does not do anything, as such, to fight bushfires, rescue people from floods etc, except in extremis when the ADF is invited. That may explain why states who actually fight fires, or perform emergency services are somewhat reluctant to accord leadership to the Commonwealth.

That does not greatly trouble people at the very ambitious department of home affairs, since it seems to be by paperwork, not results, that the organisation judges itself. Maybe there’s also a lesson in that for Morrison.

In my autobiogaphy, Things You learn Along the Way, I recounted the start of the Darwin recovery and rebuild. I had then been Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet for only a few months.

The Darwin cyclone hit on Christmas Eve. Whitlam was as the newspapers described it, surveying the ruins of the Mediterranean when he should have been surveying the ruins of Darwin. Actually on Christmas Eve he was listening to Christmas carols in King’s College, Cambridge. On Christmas Day 1974, I went with Jim Cairns to Darwin. He was the acting Prime Minister. We got into Darwin at about 1.00 in the afternoon. It shocked me before we landed to see the awful power of nature. Galvanised-iron roofing sheets were strewn all over or wrapped around telegraph poles like crumpled silver foil. From England, Whitlam spoke to Cairns and me about whether he should return from overseas. The emphatic and unanimous advice of everyone he spoke to was that he should come back urgently. I awaited his arrival in Alice Springs on 28 December, by RAAF plane from Perth. At the Alice Springs airport he received a very hostile response. It shook him. The extent of the animosity at his being overseas when Darwin was shattered was palpable. The next day we went up to Darwin. Brigadier Stretton was in charge of the restoration and did a very good job, although he was frustrated by the many Federal ministers who came to Darwin making decisions in their own portfolio areas. Stretton complained and I recall Whitlam saying to him, ‘Well, they give me the shits as well. Do what you have to do. If you have any problems give me a ring and I will fix it’. The evacuation and the restoration of Darwin went very well. Towards the end of the emergency Stretton wanted a ceremony to hand back his authority. I consulted the Attorney-General’s Department which advised me that there was no authority to hand back. People cooperated because of the emergency and Stretton did not hold any emergency powers at all. ( John Menadue)