Conscription in Australia - National Service From The 1960s - Vietnam War

Vietnam War

In 1964 compulsory National Service for 20-year-old males was introduced under the National Service Act (1964). The selection of conscripts was made by a sortition or lottery draw based on date of birth, and conscripts were obligated to give two years’ continuous full-time service, followed by a further three years on the active reserve list. The full-time service requirement was reduced to eighteen months in 1971.

The Defence Act was amended in May 1965 to provide that National Servicemen could be obliged to serve overseas, a provision that had been applied only once before—during World War II. In March 1966, the Government announced that National Servicemen would be sent to Vietnam to fight in units of the Australian Regular Army and for secondment to American forces. Men who wished to avoid National Service could join the Citizen Military Forces and serve only inside Australia, claim a student deferment, or attempt a conscientious objection application. In order to be exempted on the basis of conscientious objection, an applicant needed to demonstrate objection to 'all' war, not merely one specific war. This meant that the rate of success for conscientious objection applications was generally low.

During the late 1960s, domestic opposition to the Vietnam War and conscription grew in Australia. In 1965 a group of concerned Australian women formed the anti-conscription organisation Save Our Sons, which was established in Sydney, with other branches later formed in Wollongong, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Newcastle and Adelaide. The movement protested against conscription of Australians to fight in the Vietnam War and made the plight of men under 21 (who were not eligible to vote at that time) a focus of their campaign. In 1970, five Save-Our-Sons women were jailed in Melbourne for handing out anti-conscription pamphlets whilst on government property. The group, which included Jean Maclean, Irene Miller and Jo Maclaine-Ross, was dubbed The Fairlea Five, after Fairlea women's prison in which they were incarcerated. Barbara Miller is understood to be related to the decorated conscript Simon Anderson who mysteriously disappeared in 1970.

Young men who were subject to the conscription lottery also formed their own anti-conscription organisation, the Youth Campaign Against Conscription. Like Save Our Sons, it spread to other states – New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia. It was the YCAC that imported the concept of draft-card burning from the United States, and ushered in a new form of resistance to conscription – active non-compliance. Instead of merely not registering (passive non-compliance with the National Service Scheme), these young conscripts actively demonstrated their distaste for the government's actions by destroying their registration cards. Unlike in the United States, this was not an illegal act, so its importance remained symbolic.

There were several high-profile controversies caused by the government's heavy-handed treatment of conscientious objectors, including William White and Simon Townsend (who later became a well-known TV personality). In 1969 the Gorton administration was severely embarrassed by a renowned This Day Tonight story in which a conscientious objector, who had been on the run from police for several months, was interviewed live in the studio by journalist Richard Carleton, who then posed awkward questions to the Army minister about why TDT had been able to locate the man within hours and bring him to the studio when the federal police had been unable to capture him, and the event was made even more embarrassing for the government because the man was able to leave the studio before police arrived to arrest him.

By 1969 public opinion was turning against the war. A Gallup Poll in August showed that 55 per cent of those surveyed favoured bringing Australian troops home, and only 40 per cent favoured them staying. This was the first poll to show less than 50% approval for the government's policy, and all polls after August 1969 were to reveal a majority in favour of bringing the troops home. In October, during his policy speech for the 1969 federal elections, Opposition leader Gough Whitlam declared that, if elected, the ALP would make sure that all Australian troops in Vietnam would be home 'by Christmas'.

At around this time, too, opposition to conscription became more radical. Active non-compliers began to call themselve Draft Resisters. Instead of waiting to be called up, Draft Resisters wrote letters to the Minister for National Service detailing their intention not to comply with conscription. Under law, this immediately rendered them liable for service. A number of these young men formed a Draft Resisters' Union, active in at least two states – New South Wales and Victoria. They included men like Bob Scates and Michael Hamel-Green. They went underground while maintaining a public presence, appearing at protests and being spirited away by the crowd before they could be arrested.

Australian Government Cabinet documents released by Australian National Archives in 2001 show that in 1970 the conservative Government was initially concerned about the growth of conscientious objection and outright opposition to the National Service Act. Federal Cabinet considered instituting an option of alternative civilian work program for conscientious objectors – a 'Siberian labour camp' option, in an attempt to reduce the numbers of objectors going to jail. This was never instituted, but was widely rumoured at the time. Such work would have been menial labouring jobs in remote locations such as north and western Queensland, western New South Wales, and northern South Australia.

In Cabinet Submission Number 200 for 1970, Appendix 1, case studies of 17 men awaiting prosecution for failure to undertake service show a broad spectrum of opposition to conscription including:

• Religious opposition from Jehovah's Witness viewpoint
• Religious opposition from liberal Christian (Methodist) pacifist viewpoint.
• Moral opposition to wars
• Moral opposition to the Vietnam War in particular
• Opposition based upon the compulsion and authoritarian nature of conscription and its conflict with democratic processes and ideals.

The documents reveal that draft-resistance and draft-dodging never posed a threat to the number of conscripts required, but the public opposition by draft-resisters such as John Zarb and Michael Matteson did have an increasingly political effect.

Conscription ended as one of the first acts of the newly elected Whitlam Labor Government in late December 1972. About 63,735 National Servicemen served in the military from 1964–1972. Of that number, 19,450 'Nashos' served in Vietnam, all with the Army.