Thesis (MA)(Media&Comm)--University of Melbourne, School of Culture and Communication, Media and Communication Program, 2010. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-115)

This study focuses on the organisation and operation of the Australian Government’s Department of Information that operated from 1939 to 1950. Equal weighting is given to the wartime and peacetime halves of the Department’s existence, allowing a balanced assessment of the Department’s role and development from its creation through to its abolition. The central issue that the Department had to address was: what was an appropriate and acceptable role for a government information organisation in Australia’s democratic political system? The issue was not primarily one of formal restrictions on the government’s power but rather of the accepted conception of the role of government. No societal consensus had been established before the Department was thrust into dealing with this issue on a practical basis. While the application of the Department’s censorship function attracted considerable comment, the procedures were clear and accepted. Practices laid down in World War I were revived and followed, while arguments were over degree rather than kind. It was mainly in the context of its expressive functions that the Department had to confront the fundamental issue of its role. This study shows that the development of the Department was driven less by sweeping ministerial pronouncements than through a series of pragmatic incremental responses to circumstances as they arose. This Departmental approach was reinforced by its organisational weakness. The Department’s options in its relations with media organisations and other government agencies were, broadly, competition, compulsion and cooperation. Competition was never widely pursued and the limits of compulsion in regard to its expressive functions were rapidly reached and withdrawn from. Particularly through to 1943 the Department struggled when it sought to assert its position against the claims of other government agencies and commercial organisations. Notwithstanding some high profile conflicts, this study shows that the Department primarily adopted a cooperative stance, seeking to supplement rather than supplant the work of other organisations. Following the 1943 Federal elections the Department was strengthened by stable and focused leadership as well as the development of its own distribution channels and outlets whose audience was primarily overseas. While some elements, such as the film unit, remained reasonably politically neutral, the Department as a whole was increasingly employed to promote the message of the Government of the day. This led to a close identification of the Department with the Labor Party, encouraging the Department’s abolition following the Coalition parties’ victory in the 1949 Federal elections. Nevertheless in developing its role the Department had remained within the mainstream of administrative practice in Australia. While some of its staff assumed a greater public profile than had been the practice for prewar public servants, this was not unusual or exceptional at that time. Partly through the efforts of the Department, the accepted conception of the role of government had expanded sufficiently by 1950 that despite the abolition of the Department most of its functions continued within the Australian public sector.