Paul Hasluck
Sir Paul Meernaa Caedwalla Hasluck was an Australian statesman who served as the 17th governor-general of Australia, in office from 1969 to 1974. Prior to that, he was a Liberal Party politician, holding ministerial office continuously from 1951 to 1969.
Hasluck was born in Fremantle, Western Australia, and attended Perth Modern School and the University of Western Australia. After graduation he joined the university as a faculty member, eventually becoming a reader in history. Hasluck joined the Department of External Affairs during World War II, and served as Australia's first Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 1946 to 1947. He would later contribute two volumes to Australia in the War of 1939–1945, the official history of Australia's involvement in the war.
In 1949, Hasluck was elected to federal parliament for the Liberal Party, winning the Division of Curtin. In 1951, less than two years after entering politics, he was made Minister for Territories in the Menzies government. In his twelve years in the position, he initiated transitions toward self-government in Australia's territories, including Nauru, Papua New Guinea, and the Northern Territory.
Following the re-election of the Menzies in 1963, Hasluck was appointed Minister for Defence. In April 1964 he was appointed Minister for External Affairs. His tenure in those positions covered Australia's involvement in the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation and the first years of the Vietnam War.
After the disappearance of Harold Holt, Hasluck unsuccessfully stood in the resulting Liberal leadership election. He initially stayed on in cabinet under the new prime minister, John Gorton, but in 1969 Gorton instead nominated him to replace Lord Casey as governor-general. In his five years in the position, Hasluck saw two previous political adversaries become prime minister; he maintained good working relationships with both. In retirement, he was a prolific author, publishing an autobiography, several volumes of poetry, and multiple works on Australian history.
Early life and education
Paul Meernaa Caedwalla Hasluck was born on 1 April 1905 in Fremantle, Western Australia, one of five children born to Patience Eliza and E'thel Meernaa Caedwalla Hasluck. His father was born in England and arrived in Australia in 1876 as a small child. He obtained a position in the colonial postal service and was postmaster in Coolgardie and on the Great Southern Railway, but later resigned to work full-time for the Salvation Army. His mother was born in England and came to Western Australia to work as a domestic servant, also becoming a devout Salvationist, where she met her future husband.Hasluck grew up in relative poverty, with the family often in financial distress as his parents undertook full-time missionary work. He had a "strict religious upbringing" in line with the beliefs and tenets of the Salvation Army, but became estranged from the movement at a young age. As a small child Hasluck spent periods in North Fremantle and in locations around regional Western Australia, including York, Kalgoorlie and Collie. The family lived in Collie for four years, where Hasluck's father ran a boys' home for child migrants, before moving back to Perth in 1916 where he ran the Aged Men's Retreat at Guildford.
After a brief period at the Guildford State School, Hasluck won a scholarship to Perth Modern School, which he attended between 1918 and 1922. He was president of the school debating society but later recalled that he lacked in confidence and did not consider going on to further studies. He eventually enrolled in the University of Western Australia six years after leaving school, completing a diploma in journalism on a part-time basis in 1932 and graduating Bachelor of Arts in 1937.
Journalism and academia
In 1922, after leaving school, Hasluck joined the staff of The West Australian as a probationary cadet. He was offered a full-time position in 1925 and covered a wide range of areas, including court and police reporting, sporting events, finance and drama and politics. He was eventually placed in charge of the newspaper's press gallery staff at Parliament House and wrote a weekly political column covering state politics. He cultivated a close relationship with the Perth Trades Hall and the union movement, developing a friendship with Westralian Worker editor and future prime minister John Curtin.While at The West Australian, Hasluck also began to publish articles on the history of the state. After he had obtained his MA, he worked as a tutor in the UWA's history department, and in 1939 he was promoted to a lectureship in history. By that time he had been married for seven years to Alexandra Darker, with whom he had two sons. Alexandra Hasluck became a distinguished writer and historian in her own right, and was the first woman to be appointed a Dame of the Order of Australia. Also in 1939, Hasluck established Freshwater Bay Press, through which he released his first book, Into the Desert. The advent of the Second World War, however, saw the publishing company go into hiatus. The Freshwater Bay Press was later revived by his son Nicholas, and among its subsequent publications it issued a second book of Paul Hasluck's poetry, Dark Cottage in 1984.
In 1941 Hasluck was recruited to the staff of the Department of External Affairs, and served on Australian delegations to several international conferences, including the San Francisco Conference which founded the United Nations. Here he came into close contact with the Minister for External Affairs in the Labor government, H.V. Evatt, towards whom he conceived a permanent aversion, fully reciprocated by Evatt's attitude to him.
After the war Hasluck returned to UWA as a Reader in History, and was commissioned to write two volumes of Australia in the War of 1939–1945, a 22-volume official history of Australia's involvement in World War II. These volumes were published as The Government and the People 1939–1941 in 1951 and The Government and the People 1941–1945 in 1970. This work was interrupted by his decision to enter politics, a decision motivated partly by his disapproval of Evatt's foreign policy.
Political career
At the 1949 election Hasluck won Liberal preselection for the newly created Perth-area seat of Curtin. Although it was notionally a Labor seat, it was located in natural Liberal territory in Perth's wealthy beachside suburbs, and Hasluck won it with a resounding swing of almost 14 percent as part of the Coalition's large victory that year.Minister for Territories
In 1951, Prime Minister, Robert Menzies appointed Hasluck as Minister for Territories, a post that he held for twelve years. It gave him responsibility for Australia's colonial possession, Papua New Guinea, and also the Northern Territory, home to Australia's largest population of Aboriginal Australians.Michael Somare, who became Papua New Guinea's first Prime Minister, said that his country had been able to enter self-government without fear of having to argue with an Ian Smith "simply because of Paul Hasluck".
Aboriginal welfare
Hasluck instigated a new policy towards Aboriginal people, who had until this time been kept separated from the White population of the NT in Aboriginal reserves. He was responsible for the drafting of the bill that became the Welfare Ordinance 1953, which superseded the previous legislation controlling the lives of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory, the Aboriginals Ordinance 1918. There was no explicit reference to race in the Welfare Ordinance, but it made Aboriginal people wards of the state. Wards were defined as those who did not have the right to vote, which only applied to Aboriginal people, and also implemented a policy of cultural assimilation. Hasluck appointed Harry Giese as Director of Welfare, who also supported the government's expansion of commercial activity in Arnhem Land.Gove Peninsula bauxite mining
In 1952, after geological exploration was carried out on the Gove Peninsula in Arnhem Land, NT, discovering large deposits of bauxite, Hasluck announced a change in policy, to allow mining there. In 1958, the Comalco was issued a mining lease to prospect land at Melville Bay, adjacent to Yirrkala mission. In 1960, the mining lease had been transferred to the British Aluminium Company. Hasluck granted additional prospecting rights to Duval Holdings, which then brought in French company Pechiney, which created an Australian subsidiary, GOMINCO, who were granted three new leases to the area around the mission, encroaching on its land. After GOMINCO started staking out its claims around the Yirrkala mission in early 1963, the Gumatj and Rirratjiŋu clans of Yolngu peoples challenged the development, as they had not been consulted. This led to the creation of the Yirrkala bark petitions, two of which were presented to Parliament in August 1963. The petitions asked for the right to use the land over which they had had sovereignty for thousands of years. Hasluck moved for rejection of the first petition. He argued that outside influences had influenced the Yirrkala people. His aims had been publicly endorsed by Cecil Gribble, a senior Methodist minister who lived in Sydney, who had signed off on SML1 in 1958, but fiercely opposed by Yirrkala mission superintendent Edgar Wells, who had come to know the mission residents very well. Hasluck's dismissal of the petition was strongly criticised by Labor politician Gordon Bryant. After the second petition was presented, a select committee was formed to investigate the Yolngu's grievances, which recommended that their sacred sites be protected, as well as giving compensation and land. However, this was not satisfactorily fulfilled, leading to the 1971 Gove Land Rights Case.Defence and External Affairs
On 18 December 1963, Hasluck moved on to more senior ministries, and Charles Barnes, of the Country Party, was appointed Minister for Territories by Menzies.Hasluck was briefly Minister for Defence, and then became Minister for External Affairs. He held the office during the height of Australia's commitment to the Vietnam War, of which he was a passionate supporter. He worked to strengthen Australia's relationship with the United States and with anti-Communist governments in South-East Asia, and opposed Australian recognition of the People's Republic of China.