Law in War: Freedom and Restriction in Australia during the Great War by Catherine Bond (review)

The Australian Federal Police's 2019 raid on News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) sent shockwaves around the nation. For a country that subscribes to the ideals of democratic liberalism, the sight of government agents forcibly entering journalists' offices and private residences called into question the national political identity. The ABC managing director David Anderson remarked it was "highly unusual for the national broadcaster to be raided in this way" and that it raised "legitimate concerns over freedom of the press and proper public scrutiny of national security and Defence matters."

The tension between civil liberties and national security in Australia, however, is far from new. Catherine Bond's Law in War shines a light on the historical origins of this contest by discussing the impact of wartime legislation in Australia during World War I. It is a topic that has inspired little historical investigation or popular interest. Bond's study therefore draws much needed attention to period in Australian legal history.

The federal government's suppression of civil freedoms in the pursuit of martial victory drew power from three key pieces of legislation, the War Precautions Act, the Trading with the Enemy Act and the Unlawful Association Act. Through this three-pronged legislative weapon, the William "Billy" Hughes-led executive was authorised to deprive the property, liberty and basic human rights of anyone it deemed a threat to the war effort. In doing so, it went beyond what was necessary to safeguard national security. "This legal regime," Bond argues, "created a deep injustice that, for the most part, remains undocumented and unacknowledged."

In order to illuminate the use of excessive power, Bond zeroes in on the experiences of individuals who suffered under the law in wartime Australia. This choice provides the reader with a window into what it was like to live under this "legal regime." Indeed, Law in War offers a very human touch to a subject mired in the formal and often impenetrable language of law. Bond opens her account by outlining how the Hughes and Solicitor-General Robert Garran erected the legal framework that governed wartime Australia. This is followed by a chapter that covers the enforcement of such laws through a Victorian police officer, Frederick Sickerdick.

After acknowledging the actions of those who wielded coercive power, Bond delves into the experience of those who struggled against, and suffered under, its excesses. These studies range from the harassment and internment of German–Australian entrepreneur Franz Wallach and the enigmatic Karl Lude, to the inspiring rebelliousness of Jennie Baines, Adela Pankhurst and Tom Barker. Any satisfactory study of early twentieth-century Australia cannot escape the distastefulness of racial and ethnic discrimination. Bond therefore explores the government's hampering of Australia's Asian and Indigenous communities, even when they sought to assist the very nation that so callously rejected their worth. Though the experiences of George Kong Meng, Harry Grant and Douglas Grant are admittedly thin on content, they reveal the manner in which authorities worked to strengthen racial dividing lines within Australian culture and society.

Bond culminates her study by recognising the important fact that wartime legislation did not work to the detriment of all. George Nicholas and Harry Woolf Shmith were but two men who benefited from wartime legislation, most notably through their patent of the word "Aspirin" under the Patents, Trade Marks and Designs Act 1914. Historical research on wartime legislation understandably tends to focus on the laws and case studies that facilitated the oppression of usually disenfranchised civilians. Yet there were a number of regulations imposed that worked to protect the people from exploitation: price controls on food, the inflation of rent on soldiers' dependants and the prohibiting of collecting patriotic funds without authority, to name a few.

However, while the topic is new, the subjects are often old. The experiences of Wallach, Barker and Pankhurst are well documented, and few surprises are to...