Constituting Australia's International Wireless Service: 1901-1922

Abstract

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 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.