Australia has often been a striking and fertile ground for experiments in social democracy. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) is one of the oldest members of the centre-left party family, although it is often overlooked in broader accounts of social democracy. This chapter considers the record of the ALP from 2016 to 2025, under two leaders: Bill Shorten (2013–2019) and Anthony Albanese (2019–). Under Bill Shorten, the party’s agenda can be described as ‘technocratic social democracy’. It developed a wide-ranging, redistributive, policy-rich approach, albeit often using indirect or ‘technocratic’ fixes to existing policy settings. It was an ambitious agenda that was, however, soundly rejected at the 2019 federal election. Following this defeat, the party began a policy reset under Antony Albanese, which is best captured as ‘thin’ or ‘new’ labourism. Albanese’s agenda was focussed on labourist goals, seeking material gains for specific sectors of the labour force. It undertook a range of practical measures, often with little fanfare or overarching narrative. Overall, these varieties of practical social democracy have entailed significant trade-offs, and the ALP faces future structural threats as it continues to redefine its historic mission.

So deep was Aotearoa in the watery world of the Pacific that it remained for a long time unknown to Europeans, other than as a part of the mythical great southern land, Terra Australis. Surely there had to be a continent in the South Pacific to balance the weight of land in the Northern Hemisphere? As it proved, there was not. New Zealand is immersed in the Pacific, surrounded by 2000 kilometres of ocean, a fact that is reflected in Māori waka (canoe) traditions. Only in the late eighteenth century did its full outline register in European consciousness through the process of physical discovery.

Struggles for land have swirled around the Treaty of Waitangi ever since it was first signed, on 6 February 1840. An instrument unique less in its making than in what it has become, as a constitutional document and guarantee of indigenous rights, it met grand goals at minimal cost. Beforehand, on 30 January, Captain William Hobson, who had landed in the Bay of Islands the previous day, read three announcements at the Anglican Church in Kororāreka (Russell). The first extended the boundaries of New South Wales to include New Zealand, the second declared him lieutenant-governor, and the third established that land titles would derive from the Crown. To secure annexation to the British Empire by consent Hobson next drafted a treaty, as instructed by the Colonial Office.

‘In New Zealand more than in any country in the world we find justification for the words of the Bible, “All flesh is as grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field”’. So began the issue on pasture land of the Making New Zealand pictorial survey to mark New Zealand’s centennial, in 1940. This biblical phrase had multiple meanings for New Zealanders, in relation to ‘ecological imperialism’, feeding Britain, and the sacrifice of its best young men in war.

The Australian Army’s commitment to the war in South Vietnam unfolded gradually over several years. It commenced with the deployment of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV) in 1962, followed by the arrival of a small Australian force headquarters in Saigon and the 1 RAR battle group in 1965, and completed with the establishment of the 1st Australian Task Force (1ATF) in 1966. The task force initially consisted of two infantry battalions with supporting arms and services, deployed to Nui Dat in Phuoc Tuy province under the operational control of the US II Field Force Vietnam (IIFFV), and a logistic element at the nearby port of Vung Tau. As 1ATF operated separately from the established Australian Army divisional structure, it received additional intelligence resources that would not usually form part of a task force, including a detachment of the Divisional Intelligence Unit and a small signals intelligence capability. In addition, the headquarters of 1ATF had assigned a senior intelligence officer of major rank, a captain intelligence officer, and a small battle intelligence, or order of battle staff.

Journalist and historian Mark Dapin argues that ‘every stage of Australia’s Vietnam War has been misremembered and obscured by myth'. This is not unusual. Much of Australia’s military history is coloured by storytelling and the perpetuation of legends. Several myths, legends and falsehoods have also grown around the conduct of operations of the Australian Army’s intelligence personnel during the war in South Vietnam. These range from simple fabrications and ‘storytelling’ to an attempt to deflect criticism from those responsible. One of these relates to a particular allegation of torture and the mistreatment of a prisoner by Australians during the Vietnam War.

At the end of January 1968, the VC and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) launched their Tet Offensive, a series of coordinated attacks on more than one hundred towns and outposts in South Vietnam. These attacks aimed to foment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population so that they would revolt against the corrupt South Vietnamese regime and break the United States’ resolve before peace talks. In response to this offensive, the US and South Vietnamese forces commenced a massive operation, Toan Thang (Complete Victory), which aimed to destroy the remaining enemy involved in the Tet Offensive and prevent fresh enemy forces from moving towards the capital, Saigon. In these objectives neither side obtained complete success. In April 1ATF became part of this operation with its infantry battalions conducting ‘reconnaissance-in-force’ operations to block enemy infiltration routes. In May, the task force changed its concept of operations by deploying several units outside Phuoc Tuy province into Area of Operations (AO) Surfers, which had been sub-divided into battalion areas of operation Manly, Newport and Bondi. Artillery located at Fire Support Bases Coral and Balmoral would support these tactical areas.

The action at the Long Tan plantation on 18 August 1966, about six kilometres east of the Australian base at Nui Dat, was the Australian Army’s most significant and costliest single-day battle during the Vietnam War. Eighteen Australians died in action, and 24 were wounded. Over the years, several myths and accusations have emerged about the battle. This includes the role of some senior officers, the number of enemies that faced the Australians and the number killed, and even the timings of the battle. Some of these myths were reinforced, and new ones were created through the Danger Close feature film. Among the myths and accusations are claims of an ‘intelligence failure’ and post-war statements by the task force commander, Brigadier Oliver Jackson, that he did not have good intelligence. From an intelligence perspective, the various claims related to how a large enemy force could have approached within a few kilometres of the 1ATF base at Nui Dat without the task force’s intelligence detecting it.

There can be little doubt, and it is arguably conventional wisdom, that the role of intelligence in the Malayan Emergency was critical to the success of the British counterinsurgency campaign against the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). Indeed, according to the author and unaccredited ‘official historian’ for the Emergency, Anthony Short, ‘intelligence was the key that locked counterinsurgency in place’. This view is endorsed by Lieutenant-General Harold Briggs, the Director of Operations (1950–51). He emphasised the importance of intelligence in his plan for the counterinsurgency in Malaya, known as the Briggs Plan. Briggs’s replacement was General Sir Gerald Templer, a former British Army Director of Military Intelligence (1946–48). Templer was well versed in intelligence processes and understood that an integrated and efficient intelligence system was ‘undoubtedly one of the greatest battle-winning factors in counterinsurgency warfare’. More recent authors argued that the Emergency had a far-reaching influence on the development of military intelligence. Historian Rory Cormac, for example, concluded that the Malayan experience marked the beginning of the need for coordinated intelligence assessment by integrating all intelligence resources, civil and military, and ensuring all sources were exploited.

On 18 August 1971, the Australian Prime Minister, William McMahon, announced that Australian forces would commence a phased withdrawal from Vietnam. In effect, this phased withdrawal had already started. When 8 RAR completed its tour in October 1970, the Australian Government decided not to replace it. By then, Phuoc Tuy province was quiet, and the enemy was close to being defeated. The two VC battalions that had operated in Phuoc Tuy, D440 and D445 Provincial Mobile Battalions, were significantly understrength and had either left the province or become inactive; highway 15, the main supply route through Phuoc Tuy from Saigon to Vung Tau, was open to unescorted traffic; the people increasingly separated from the VC; and both VC and NVA were suffering from low morale and severe food shortages, and had difficulty recruiting from within the province. The task force’s intelligence teams reinforced this picture through analysis of captured enemy documents and the interrogation of prisoners, which ‘told of shortages of men, key cadre, food, medical supplies, ammunition and weapons’.

The Korean War has been called the quiet war fought by a silent generation. Perhaps, more correctly, it should be described as the most remembered ‘forgotten’ war in history, with Google listing about 18,600,000 results. Indeed, aspects of the conflict have been forgotten. Even 70 years on, the literature is quiet on intelligence, with few historians or authors even discussing intelligence's role. Battlefield intelligence has been almost entirely neglected, except for the occasional mention in some American and British regimental histories. As Australia played a minor role in the Korean War, it is unsurprising that the part played by the Australian Army’s battlefield intelligence has hardly been mentioned.

There were two fundamental problems that the commander of 1ATF, Brigadier Oliver Jackson, had to deal with when the task force was established at Nui Dat. The first was the presence of main force enemy in Phuoc Tuy province. The second was the VCI: ‘the extortionists, the terrorists, the standover men, [and] the tax men’. This infrastructure provided a shadow government and support network for the North Vietnamese military and VC local forces in the south. Most villages and towns had representatives of this network – men, women, and children – who provided a recruitment base for the VC, an intelligence network, a supply service and various other forms of support. The VCI enabled the enemy to conduct operations in the south. While it was the National Police, ARVN and associated paramilitary forces that were responsible for its destruction, this proved to be beyond the capability of the Saigon government.

Psychological and civil affairs operations in Vietnam, while very different in scope, resource requirements and primary objectives, were also of specific interest to the intelligence staff of 1ATF. The former had the dual aims of countering VC propaganda while appealing to the ‘attitudes, vulnerabilities and susceptibilities’ of the local population to persuade them to accept and assist the South Vietnamese authorities and Australian forces. In this way, it aimed to attack the enemy’s morale and induce them to surrender. The latter sought to complement the former and support the Australian Government’s foreign policy objectives in Vietnam. From an intelligence perspective, both aided in what is now called the Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace, which built an extensive database on each operational area’s environment, including people, terrain, infrastructure and the level of VC support in each village. The information collected also covered ‘sociological, political and economic aspects which when related to the enemy can indicate his strengths and weaknesses’.

Historians, academics and military officers have viewed the Malayan Emergency as an exemplar of how counterinsurgency warfare should be conducted. Numerous studies and authors dissected British operations in Malaya during and in the aftermath of the war in South Vietnam. They looked for parallels with Vietnam and why Vietnam failed while Malaya was a success. In recent years, some authors have compared the Emergency with British and American operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, British troops studied the Malayan insurgency of the 1950s before deploying to Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in 2006. According to Australian historian Professor David Horner, the Confrontation with Indonesia was ‘one of the most successful applications of military force in a low-level conflict since the Second World War’ but has been largely ignored and has attracted a dearth of scholarly interest. This has been particularly evident in the role of the Australian forces generally, and especially the Australian Army’s intelligence services.

This book evaluates and defines the contribution made by the Australian Army’s combat intelligence services in supporting the force commander during operations in the Cold War (1945–1975). Its primary focus is on the Australian Intelligence Corps, with a secondary emphasis on the intelligence teams and staff attached to the infantry battalions and on the headquarters of deployed army formations. It focuses on the roles, organisation, administration, training, doctrine and performance of the army’s tactical intelligence in the field to achieve this. It also explores the ability of intelligence systems to mature, adapt to technological change, and work within a coalition force. It also examines some of the more prevalent myths and criticisms of battlefield intelligence services during service in South Vietnam. It argues and explains why the various intelligence teams and systems were imperfect. Their members made mistakes, and, at times, their prejudices and biases unduly influenced their analysis. They were also generally understaffed, poorly prepared, trained and equipped for their duties. However, this study shows how they proved resilient, adaptable and capable of providing a high level of support to the force commander, whether the commanding officers of the Australian battalions in Korea, Malaya or Borneo or the task force commanders in South Vietnam.

From 1945 to 1975, the Australian Army always served overseas as a junior partner in a coalition, usually as part of a British Commonwealth force. This was the case during the occupation of Japan and the Korean War and under British command in Malaya and Borneo. However, the Vietnam War highlighted several problems for the junior partner in an American-dominated alliance. Relations remained cordial throughout the war in South Vietnam, especially at the individual level. However, stress points soon emerged that had the potential to damage the relationship and adversely affect intelligence collection, analysis and sharing.