Radio Australia
By Helen Paterson
What is Radio Australia?
Radio Australia was a propaganda tool launched in 1939 by the government of Prime Minister Robert Menzies. It was established as part of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), with significant input from the Department of External Affairs. It was little known in Australia, but it had millions of listening in the Asia-Pacific region and throughout the world. Radio Australia began during World War II in order to explain Australia’s wartime policies to the people of neighbouring countries (which were mostly still colonies.)
Since the beginning, Radio Australia distorted the truth about what was happening for the purposes of the government. On the 19th of February, 1942, Japanese forces carried out devastating air raids on Darwin, killing about 250 people and wounding 350 more. Australian armed forces and military police took advantage of these raids, systematically looting what had been left behind by fleeing civilians. Radio Australia reported none of this in order to avoid giving the Japanese any clue as to the success of the raids. In fact, news of attack and its aftermath were so tightly suppressed, even within Australia, that the Age put the official death toll at 15.
Another key subject that Radio Australia propagandists purposefully neglected to talk about was the White Australia Policy, playing it down in order to avoid alienating its overseas listeners and its Allies. For example, Victoria’s state publicity censor, Crayton Burns, notified Radio Australia that “no reference may be made to any US soldier’s colour.” This rule was instituted at the same time that non-white people were banned from immigrating to Australia and Indigenous peoples were still classified as Fauna without any human rights. At this point in history, non-Anglo people in Australia were horrifically discriminated against., but this truth was never talked about.
How was it used as a tool of anti-communism?
After Japanese occupation of south-east Asia and Oceanian, effort was put in to contrast the “oppressive” Japanese colonisers with “enlightening” European ones. In line with Prime Minister Robert Menzies’s statement: “I can see no permanent peace in the world except for under the guardianship of the English-speaking people.” In opposition to the efforts that colonised peoples in Oceania were undertaking in order to liberate themselves, Radio Australia effectively served as propaganda for the colonisers, particularly the Dutch in Indonesia. A broadcast in 1942 went so far as to claim that Dutch control of the Indies and the freedom of Australia were “inseparable”, as the so-called “Netherlands Indies” were seen as “a great bastion defending the North of Australia.”
Of course, Radio Australia took part in the Vietnam war. It was enlisted by the Australia government as a weapon of propaganda and psychological warfare against the north. However, even during the war, the main focus of Radio Australia was Indonesia, as it was seen by the government as much more important to Australian interests. The Indonesian audience was huge, numbering in the millions. This influence was used to great effect by both Australia and the United States in Indonesia throughout the Cold War, most significantly in the events following the 13th of September, 1965.
In September 1965, President of Indonesia and hero of the anti-colonial independence movement, Sukarno, was brought down by a US backed coup. What followed was the horrific slaughter of an estimated one million civilians, eliminating the largest communist party outside of China and the Soviet Union. Under close guidance from the Australian government, Radio Australia did everything in its power to both empower the coup and the anti-communist massacres and undermine Sukarno. It propagated army talking points and demonised the communists, which contributed to the sweeping psychological warfare that encouraged civilians and militias to carry out atrocities. The victims, of course, had no recourse. Even 50 years later, the perpetrators have not been brought to justice.
What lessons can we take from Radio Australia as communists today?
Radio Australia still lives on, although only in the form of online streaming. But the institutions that controlled it, the ABC and the imperialistic Australian government, live on. It is important we are never fooled by all the talk about the mainstream media being “fair and balanced” and “telling both sides of the story.” Because if there’s one lesson that Radio Australia has left behind, its this: bourgeois media, whether private or government controlled, can only ever be trusted to spin narratives in favour of the ruling class, whether at home or abroad. They will go to extreme lengths lie and obscure, to misinform and conceal, to spin the facts for their own agenda or cover up crimes of the state. Media might be only one of the many tools that the bourgeoisie use against us, but we should never dismiss this particular instrument’s effectiveness.
It’s obvious that we can’t trust our enemy to produce our information for us. This is why as communists, its vital that we have our own ways of acquiring and disseminating news. And not just through newspapers, either. All the ways that Australians consume news; the internet, social media, television, word of mouth – we need to have a presence there also. It is the only way we can break the sometimes-deadly stranglehold the ruling class has on information. It’s important to remember that the propaganda war never ended and it remains an important front in the fight for socialism and liberation to this day.
References:
Radio Wars: Truth, Propaganda, and the Struggle for Radio Australia by Errol Hodge. 1995.
The Jakarta Method, by Vincent Bevins. 2020.
Submission to the Review of Australian Broadcasting Services in the Asia Pacific by Bradley Wood. 2018. (https://www.communications.gov.au/sites/default/files/submissions/bradley_wood.pdf)