Australia’s secret history on display
Filmmaker Haydn Keenan has spent the past five years pouring through secret files that ASIO kept on potential enemies of the state in the 1960s and 1970s. His obsession began after his friend, a political land rights activist, showed him his own file.
“It was the most extraordinary thing I had ever seen; it was completely banal, filled with bureaucratic detail and then every now and again there would be a plot to commit an act of terrorism, plans to blow up buildings with gelignite … it had the most outrageous plots that you would read in a movie.” Keenan said.
The exhibition, Persons of interest: the ASIO files at the Justice and Police Museum in Circular Quay, focuses on Sydney-based persons of interest such as novelist and journalist Frank Hardy, Bruce Milliss, a prominent member of the Labor party, and member of the communist party, as well as his son Roger.
Apart from some of the ‘dark biographies’ ASIO accumulated, the exhibition also includes secret video footage taken by ASIO in suburban locations around Sydney such as Bondi Junction, Coogee and Bronte Beach as well as Sydney’s CBD.
Despite its legality, Communism was ASIO’s biggest threat at this time and potential communists flooded the files. ASIO also kept files ranging from university students who attended a single anti-apartheid or African slavery protest, to individuals who were members of organisations that advocated Indigenous or Women’s rights – all of which were seen as part of a communist plot to take over Australia.
Keenan is quick to point out that from 1949 till 1989, ASIO caught only two spies from the half a million files on Australians monitored in this era. Four ASIO files will be the subjects of a four-part documentary to be aired on SBS later this year, with the person of interest deconstructing the legitimacy of the document.
Keenan describes ASIO in the 1960 and 1970s as “out of control” and hopes the historical exhibition will provoke debates on contemporary issues such as civil liberties, as well as keeping secret service organizations like ASIO in check as their powers have escalated since the9/11 terrorist attacks.
Keenan said, “When you see some of the stuff Julian Assange and the Wikileaks crew have released, I have the grandfather of those documents. I hope that people will connect some of these documents and draw the threads out and see that if it was going on then how can we check them from say, deciding to target anyone of middle eastern appearance and hounding them. The concern I have is that ASIO has a history gradually running off the rails.”
Persons of interest: the ASIO files will be on display at the Justice and Police Museum until 29 April 2012.
By Kate Horowitz
