Are nearly all dead now, more’s the pity. Certainly, they have all long retired.
These are the people who made the self-serving, short-sighted, foolish and out-of-touch decisions in Cabinet 30 years ago. Under the 30-year rule, the ministerial Cabinet submissions of 1963 were made public on January 1, 1994.
We learn of a Minister outlining the electoral advantage for the Menzies Government if Aborigines were counted at census time as ultimately came about in the 1967 referendum. By counting them, the conservative states of Western Australia and Queensland might each get an extra seat. We learn that Cabinet rejected a ban on tobacco advertising despite the obvious evidence of tobacco’s dangers because Australian tobacco growers would lose. We learn of a pompous plan to put a 100-metre Westminster-style tower on the shore of Lake Burley Griffin. We see how the Menzies Government knew that Australia would be made a nuclear target by allowing the joint-US North-West Cape naval communications base to be built, but agreed anyway. And we see how none of the sycophantic Cabinet raised a word of protest before Menzies announced that the new unit of decimal currency would be called the Royal. Only when it was laughed out court, so to speak, in the pubs and cafes did anyone come back to Cabinet with something more in touch with popular sentiment.
And so it goes on.
Thirty years is far too long to keep the heart of government decision-making secret. The reason for keeping Cabinet submissions secret for a period should only be the public interest; not the interest of the individuals who drafted the submissions or those in Cabinet who made decisions on them. The public interest would only require a sufficient period not to prejudice current policy pursuits, say 15 years, or perhaps only 10.
With a 30-year period the people who made the decisions will escape public embarrassment, through death or old age. The irony is that the very people who set the 30-year period are the very ones who might be embarrassed if the period were shortened. A further irony is that we will have to wait a couple of decades yet until we know the reasons why the 30-year period was retained at the time the Freedom of Information Act was passed. Under the FOI Act Cabinet submissions are virtually exempt, as my colleague Jack Waterford and this newspaper found in a long and costly case that ended in the High Court several years ago.
There is a good argument that the public interest would be better served by a shorter period. With the fear of the cleansing draught of publicity just 10 or 15 years away, those making Cabinet submissions might put expediency, political advantage and self-aggrandisement aside.
Perhaps a shorter period would allow for more learning from mistakes. Most Cabinet members are in their late 40s or early 50s. The events uncovered by the 30-year rule relate to issues that were hot when they were in their teens or early 20s _ events that would mean little to them. A 15-year rule would provide much more salient lessons. Bear in mind that the Cabinet submissions of former Governments are closed even unto members of new Governments.
We will have to wait another four years before the early Vietnam Cabinet submissions are made public, for example. Would Australia have toadied so readily to the US in the Gulf War if Bob Hawke had seen the Vietnam material or, more pertinently, seen the egg on the faces of those who had made those decisions?
At present we get a history lesson every January 1, much of which is of academic interest and out of memory range for most. We should get a lesson governmental decision-making. We should have a lesson about events in recent memory so that we can compare what we remember them as saying in public then with what they were saying in private.
There is no reason, other than the irrelevant embarrassment of some people still in the public eye, why the public could not see the Cabinet submissions of 10 or 15 years ago.
Do we have to wait until 2005 to get the full story on the Loans Affair? Or till 2013 to get the story on the spy flights over the Tasmanian damsite? Or till 2002 to see the original Medibank submissions?
These would reveal far more salient lessons in governance than whether any Cabinet Minister dared offer resistance to the pompous old brontosaurus Menzies wanting to call the currency the Royal.