Developing the North,Defending the Nation? The Northern Australia Development Committee, 1945–1949*

The Northern Australia Development Committee (NADC) was established in late 1945 to coordinate the efforts of the Commonwealth, Queensland and Western Australian governments in developing the north of the continent. At the outset, defence considerations were uppermost. However, the NADC soon became entangled in disputes among Commonwealth departments and personalities over the relevance of northern development to national defence. Some — notably the Department of Defence — insisted that northern Australia no longer possessed special strategic significance. Others — notably the Department of External Affairs — argued that northern development must be conceived within a broader geo‐political context. This paper examines the NADC's entanglement in these disputes, and explains how this entanglement contributed crucially to the committee's ineffectualness and early demise.     

Comalco's Development of Queensland Bauxite, 1955–1975

In 1954 Australia mined little bauxite and did not produce alumina, but by the end of the 1970s Australian industry accounted for more than one third of the western world's bauxite production and about one fifth of its alumina. This article examines the development of Comalco, the company which mined Australia's largest bauxite deposits in Queensland and was an essential part of Australia's entry into the world‐wide aluminium industry from the 1960s to the 1980s. Fundamental to Comalco's success was government‐industry co‐operation. The Australian government established an aluminium smelter for defence purposes in Tasmania that it sold to Comalco on favourable terms and then protected with tariffs and import restrictions. Moreover, federal government‐industry co‐operation stimulated the discovery of bauxite, the main source of aluminium, in northern Australia. Even more important to Comalco's success was the Queensland government which gave the company access to the best of the state's newly‐discovered bauxite deposits in return for the company's commitment to industrial development in the state on the back of mining. Using its relationships with state and national governments in Australasia, Comalco was able to harness competing aluminium companies in the building of the largest alumina plant in the world at Gladstone in central Queensland and, in doing so, set itself on the path to becoming a multinational company in its own right.     

Post‐War Reconstruction and the New World Order: The Origins Of Gough Whitlam's Democratic Citizen*

Gough Whitlam's father was one of Australia's most significant public servants. Deputy Crown Solicitor and Crown Solicitor at a time of great constitutional and international change, Frederick Whitlam maintained an unusually advanced perspective on the use of international instruments to protect rights and to expand powers of nationhood. Gough Whitlam's war‐time experiences in the Air Force, in particular during the referendum campaign to expand Commonwealth Powers to aid post‐war reconstruction, cemented these aspects as central to his developing notions of democratic citizenship. In his 1973 Sir Robert Garran Memorial lecture, fourteen years after his father had delivered the inaugural oration, Gough Whitlam acknowledged the influence of his father as a “great public servant” committed to public service and the developing institutions of internationalism: “I am Australia's first Prime Minister with that particular background”. This paper explores “that particular background”. I have never wavered from my fundamental belief that until the national government became involved in great matters like schools and cities, this nation would never fulfil its real capabilities. ¹ 1 E.G. Whitlam, Sir Robert Garran Memorial Oration, “Australian Public Administration under a Labor Government”, Royal Australian Institute of Public Administration, 12 November 1973, < http://www.whitlam.org/collection/1973/ > accessed 31 October 2006.
     

German Assessments of British-Australian Relations, 1901–1914

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Abstract

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