Umback, Rick
Description
This study is focused on the origins of the 1922 agreement
between the Commonwealth government and Amalgamated Wireless
(Australasia) to establish a wireless communications service
between Australia and Britain. This agreement, which saw a
partnership between the government and Australia’s principal
wireless firm, represented a dramatic departure from the
preceding history of Australian communications, which had
hitherto been organised around the principle of...[Show more] government
monopoly. The thesis explores the causes of this paradigmatic
shift in policy through an analysis of wireless’ history in
Australia from its origins to the enactment of the 1922
agreement. It is principally based on analysis of primary
documents from the collections of the Postmaster-General’s,
Prime Minister’s, and Navy departments held by the National
Archives of Australia.
The thesis finds that the 1922 agreement reflected the complex
interaction of large, underlying structural forces and small,
immediate factors. In relation to the former category, there were
strong and constant international influences on domestic
policymaking, related to the geopolitical dimensions of wireless
and Australia’s place in the British Empire. The 1922 agreement
also bore the indelible imprint of the Great War. One wartime
development was the power accumulated by Prime Minister Hughes
during the conflict, who became the leading advocate of the
agreement within the government. Another was the economic
disruption unleashed by the conflict, which spurred a rise in
economic nationalism and efforts to promote the development of
industries of strategic significance within Australia. In
addition to its consideration of structural influences, the
thesis uses Multiple Streams Analysis to examine the process
through which the agreement became enacted as policy. Multiple
Streams Analysis is a model of policymaking which shows how the
actions of individuals and groups, political conditions, and
timing combine to produce policy outcomes.
Overall, the thesis argues that major shifts in policy cannot be
solely attributed to the actions of interested groups or other
powerful actors, and that it is necessary to situate those
actions within a dynamic process of policymaking that is given
shape by a wider context, and in which other factors such as
framing and timing are pivotal to the outcome. It also
demonstrates the value of policymaking theory, such as Multiple
Streams Analysis, to understanding major historical policy
decisions.
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