effectiveness. Nor is it true that they were opposed to authority in all its forms. While Australians oppose authoritarians on principle, they are relatively accepting of authoritative individuals or experts. This is well demonstrated in the case of the Australian fighting soldiers in the First World War.
Known collectively as the Australian Imperial Force, it was created from nothing: no history, no elite regiments and no martial tradition. But the diggers created a tradition of their own: unsurpassed courage in fighting; indiscipline on the parade ground; riotous behaviour on rest and recreation leave; constant swearing; heavy drinking; fiercely independent and opportunistic behaviour; and masterful use of irony and sardonic humour. Away from the battlefield their discipline was lax to the point of anarchic.
General William Birdwood dined out many times on the following story of his inspection of an Australian camp. Leaning against a gate was a sentry, gun yards away, who showed no interest in the general with a plumed hat. He neither moved nor saluted. The general was furious. Briskly he marched up to the sentry.
‘Soldier’, he said, ‘You didn’t salute me’.
‘That’s right’, agreed the sentry.
‘Why not?’ demanded the general. The soldier shrugged away the absurdity of such a question.
‘Do you know who I am?’ asked an increasingly furious British general.
The soldier surveyed him from his shining boots to the feathered plume in his hat.
‘No idea,’ he answered.
‘I’m General Birdwood, your commander-in-chief’, the furious officer told him.
‘Well, in that case,’ replied the soldier flatly, ‘why don’t you shove your feathers up your arse and fly away, like any other bird would’. 8
In The Myth of the Digger, Jane Ross argues that the diggers recognised the general legitimacy of the army system (as they did bureaucracies generally). But in granting legitimacy to each officer his formal role was of relatively little importance. Legitimacy was granted on a limited and revocable basis. If an officer proved incompetent or did not care for his men, his influence was severely circumscribed. This didn’t matter much to the diggers, since they had no need of leaders anyway. Ross argued that these restrictions on the granting of legitimacy should not be construed to mean that the diggers were ‘anti- authority’. The diggers believed they were entitled to receive reasons to support the orders they were expected to carry out. And it was reasons they demanded and received. For the diggers, the legitimacy of a power relationship depended on the personal qualities of the officer rather than on his formal claims to power as a holder of a commission. While the diggers were not generally hostile to officers, they were irritated by those who claimed more than their due in respect of privileges, or who gained commissions for the wrong reasons. They reserved the right to rely on their judgement, expected officers to be fair and to issue orders in a particular way. Australian officers had high standards set for them by subordinates who were more critical of those who wielded power than were their colleagues in more deferential armies. But what did the diggers require of their officers?
Australians expected not only military skills from their officers, but also courage and common sense. If the officers didn’t measure up, they should be sent back to base. Believing that fighting was a straightforward task which most Australians could undertake with little effort, the diggers resisted training. If almost anyone can fight, there was no need to defer to officers since any fighting man could be an officer. An officer was obeyed if he explained why his orders should be followed. If diggers were satisfied that the orders given by the officer were necessary and accorded with common sense, they carried them out with vigour and courage. If the orders made no sense to them, the officer had a problem. If the digger was given an order he wanted to know what it was all about. If he was satisfied that it was necessary and that it was common sense he would carry out that order through all the fires of hell.
While the battlefield abounded with good officers, the base camps had the worst bureaucratic characteristics. Camp officers were obese, lazy, incompetent soldiers who were obsessed with army rituals and regulations. The diggers called them captains of flatulence and treated them with disdain. According to Jane Ross, they were ‘broken dolls’ and ‘staff drones’ who lacked courage, initiative, decisiveness, independence, irreverence and common sense. In short, fighting was valued far more highly than administrative skills. Bureaucrats have never had an easy time of it in Australia.
Australians have long understood the inadequacies of action, even though they enjoy action. They know how to be heroes without a cause and strive to suffer ordeals sardonically. Dogmatic pronouncements about Australians being anti-authority are, therefore, unwarranted and probably derive from confusing power with authority. Australians recognise the value of authority when they want to know why they should do what is asked of them. Their language might have been mutinous but they dismissed mutineers contemptuously as ‘fucking no-hopers’, ‘fellers who ought to have their heads read’, ‘bloody fools who had gone completely off their rockers’. As Jane Ross noted, they were rebels against hierarchy but obeyed orders if it was reasonable to do so.
According to historian W.K. Hancock in his 1930 book, Australia, the locals are not content merely to attack privilege or social status. Rather, they are inclined to ignore capacities in their preoccupation with needs. Australian democracy favours equality of enjoyment over equality of opportunity. Hancock argues that Australian democracy has done much to equalise opportunities, but it has also done something to narrow them. Australians are anxious that everybody should run a fair race. But they are resentful if anybody runs a fast race. Indeed, they dislike altogether the idea of a race, because in a race, victory is to the strong. Their sympathy is for the underdog, and their will is to make merit take a place in the queue.
While they are supposed to be matter-of-fact folk who distrust politicians and their rhetoric, Australians have been incurably romantic in their faith in the power of government to fulfil their needs. They have been too prepared to water good wine so that there may be enough for everybody, even though many males prefer beer.
Hancock saw in this volatile mixture of romantic sentiments a challenge for Australians to create their own values and sweep away the old quarrels of the day before yesterday. If the values of the old world were to be rejected, new values would be needed. It is unsurprising, therefore, that several artists of a century ago were attracted to the philosophy of Nietzsche, who called for a revaluation of all values. But by the 1930s, Australians had compromised their romantic idealism and settled for everything that Nietzsche loathed – a ‘middling standard’. Nietzsche proved too demanding, too aristocratic and too contemptuous of the average Australian.
The fierce nationalism promoted by the ‘bohemians of the Bulletin’ in Sydney expressed itself as a vindication of equality and democracy and an assertion of the supreme worth of the common man. Such a philosophy is hardly Nietzschean. Democratic nationalism reinforced with Henry Lawson’s gospel of mateship and the romanticising of the bushman by the Bulletin school of writers, produced the legendary Australian ambivalence to authority.
Australian attitudes to authority are paradoxical: the quest for equality has been satisfied to a large extent by the establishment of bureaucratic institutions. During the colonial era, each of the six colonies developed a complex system for dealing with domestic problems, while the British government retained responsibility for defence, external relations and other central government functions. These were transferred to the Commonwealth government at federation, but the states retained many of the most important powers, including taxation, until the Second World War. These peculiar historical circumstances have resulted in the complaint that Australia is one of the most over-governed countries in the world, with many functions duplicated at state, federal and local government levels.
