Sir Arthur Harold Tange (18 August 1914 – 10 May 2001) was a prominent Australian senior public servant of the middle to late 20th century. A considerable intellect, he was one of the most influential people in the government of Australia for nearly 30 years, earning him respect and disdain in equal measure. He was best known for his controversial role in reforming the organisation of the administration of the Australian

Department of Defence Department of Defence or Department of Defense may refer to: Current departments of defence * Department of Defence (Australia) * Department of National Defence (Canada) * Department of Defence (Ireland) * Department of National Defense (Philipp ...

in the 1970s. He is also less well known for having laid the foundations of the modern Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in his time at the then

Department of External Affairs In many countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the government department responsible for the state's diplomacy, bilateral, and multilateral relations affairs as well as for providing support for a country's citizens who are abroad. The entit ...

Early life

Arthur Tange was of Danish descent; his grandfather Anton Tange emigrated in 1854 from

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. Anton Tange & Sons became a major Sydney trading house, mainly in the tea trade. However, lack of business acumen in the following generation and the circumstances of the Depression greatly diminished the family fortune. Arthur attended

Gosford High School , motto_translation = Judge me by what I do , location = Gosford, Central Coast, New South Wales , country = Australia , coordinates = , pushpin_map = Australia New South Wa ...

, and later the

University of Western Australia The University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Perth, the state capital, with a secondary campus in Albany and various other facilitie ...

. He played rugby for Western Australia.

Department of External Affairs

Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi with Sir Arthur Tange and a koala

Tange joined the public service during

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, having previously worked for the

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1931–42. He was a member of the small Australian contingent at the

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in 1944. Having rapidly risen from

research assistant A research assistant (RA) is a researcher employed, often on a temporary contract, by a university, a research institute or a privately held organization, for the purpose of assisting in academic or private research. Research assistants are not in ...

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.

Secretary, Department of Defence

In 1970 he returned to Australia to become Secretary of the Department of Defence – the most senior public servant therein, and effective executive head of the civilian side of the Department of Defence, reporting to the Minister, then

John Gorton Sir John Grey Gorton (9 September 1911 – 19 May 2002) was an Australian politician who served as the nineteenth Prime Minister of Australia, in office from 1968 to 1971. He led the Liberal Party during that time, having previously been a l ...

. At that time the Department of Defence was of relatively little consequence in the Commonwealth government; each service (Navy, Army and Air Force) had its own separate department with its own minister. Further, the Ministry of Supply, responsible for military logistics, was also a separate portfolio with yet another minister. The respective services and departments were in competition, each group jealously guarding its own budget and powers against the others.

Rationalising departments

With his career background in diplomacy and

international affairs International relations (IR), sometimes referred to as international studies and international affairs, is the scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities between states—such a ...

, 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 International relations (IR), sometimes referred to as international studies and international affairs, is the scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities between states—such a ...

was needed. To this end he spent the bulk of his time as Secretary of the Department of Defence (1970 to his retirement in 1979) working towards the merging of the departments of the Army, Navy, Air, Supply and Defence into one. He advocated a wider view of defence policy than 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 Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the la ...

government, the proposed changes were enacted and since then the uniformed services have been known as the Australian Defence Force (ADF), the civilian arms as the

, and the whole as the

Australian Defence Organisation The Australian Defence Organisation (ADO), also known as simply Defence, is an Australian Government organisation that consists of both the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and the Department of Defence (DoD). The ADO's collective aims are to "de ...

(ADO). The

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and Minister for Defence are now advised by both the uniformed Chief of the Defence Force (CDF) and the civilian Secretary of the Department of Defence (SECDEF), in a unique (in Australia) arrangement known as "the

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", with overall defence policy being developed and enacted co-operatively between the uniformed and civilian staffs.

Tri-service co-operation

Another aspect of Tange's work was a desire that the three services should work together in the Defence of Australia at all levels, rather than as feuding tribes. 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, known as the

Australian Defence Force Academy The Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) is a tri-service military Academy that provides military and academic education for junior officers of the Australian Defence Force in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), Australian Army and Royal Aus ...

. A further motive for developing the academy (which is an affiliated academic college of the

University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensiv ...

) was to equip the future leaders of the defence forces with a broader humanistic perspective, as well as a

technical education In the United States, a technical school is a type of two-year college that covers specialized fields such as business, finance, hospitality, tourism, construction, engineering, visual arts, information technology and community work. Asso ...

, to enable them to eventually make the wider contributions to defence policy that Tange felt was lacking in the senior uniformed officers of his generation. The

(ADFA) was opened in 1983, in Canberra, and most military officers since then have received their tertiary education and

basic military training Military recruit training, commonly known as basic training or boot camp, refers to the initial instruction of new military personnel. It is a physically and psychologically intensive process, which resocializes its subjects for the unique deman ...

in its tri-service environment.

Reputation

Neither of these reforms was easy and they were both accompanied by enormous resistance and press clamour. Tradition within the old service departments led to 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 as displaying arrogance and ignorance and being zealously committed to secrecy. 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

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in the universities, unions and

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saw 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.

Retirement and legacy

Tange retired in 1979 and lived until 2001, when he died of

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. His wife of 60 years, Marjorie, died two months later after a series of

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. In 2002, the Department of Defence, in conjunction with the

Strategic and Defence Studies Centre The Strategic and Defence Studies Centre (SDSC) is a university-based institute that is situated in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University. It is Australia's oldest-established centre for the study of ...

(SDSC) at the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies an ...

(ANU), established an ongoing PhD scholarship in honour of Tange. The first of these scholarships was awarded in 2003, and another in 2007. The first independent biography of Tange, ''Arthur Tange: Last of the Mandarins'' by Peter Edwards, was published in 2006. Edwards has also edited and published Tange's personal memoirs in ''Defence Policy-Making: A Close-up View, 1950–1980'', released in 2008. In 2009, a street in the Canberra suburb of Casey was named Arthur Tange Street in Tange's honour.