Authors

John Webb¹; Thomas Spurling¹; Greg Simpson¹;  ¹ Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

Discussion

The federation of what had been independent British colonies within Australia in 1901 marked the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia as an independent nation state. A growing appreciation of the importance of intelligence gathering concerning science and technology for the development of the new nation state led, inter alia, to the establishment of a national science organization, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research,(CSIR), later Commonwealth Industrial and Scientific Research Organization (CSIRO) with a focus on supporting Australian industry, mainly agricultural. Following an external review of CSIR in 1926, the roles and responsibilities of the new organization (CSIRO) included liaison with the international science community, primarily through establishing a science liaison office in London, in 1927. The first officer appointed, McDougal, departed for London with these words of advice from the Prime Minister Bruce: “in your more uplifted moments you can call yourself the confidential representative of the Australian Prime Minister; when less inflated, a secret service agent”. McDougal and Bruce maintained a regular and extensive correspondence outside of official communications (these letters were available to this project). Intelligence gathering included trade and economic matters, agricultural issues and the future development of the British Empire. By the late 1970s, CSIRO operated offices in London, Washington (from WWII), Tokyo (from 1971) and Moscow (from 1976); the officers had diplomatic status and were counted as Australia’s representatives of all civil science excluding nuclear energy.