Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd, 1920-1952

Component identifier:

Series 31

Content Summary:

Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd (AWA) was formed in 1913. Following a parliamentary enquiry in 1922, the Hughes Government bought a majority of its shares and transferred to it all the radio services conducted until then by the Post Office. Its controlling board consisted of three government appointed directors and three nominated by AWA, and incredibly, Hughes himself was the seventh and independent director. He remained a director for the rest of his life and was also a director of a subsidiary, the Amalgamated Wireless Value Company Pty Ltd. He was also a member of at least one Cabinet subcommittee on radio communications and AWA. More than once Hughes was obliged to defend his position and other AWA matters in Parliament.

With the exception of some letters to Hughes in 1932 while in Britain and Geneva by AWA's London representative, A. Longstaff, all of the papers in the collection that Hughes received as an AWA director and as a participant in various related government activities are in this series. It consists principally of letters, circulars and memoranda received as a director, 1922-1952. There are, however, some reports, Cabinet papers, letters requesting work with AWA, copies of some of the correspondence of AWA's Chairman and Managing Director, Sir Ernest Fisk, some speech notes, statistics, and cuttings.

The main correspondents are Sir George Knowles, L. A. Hooke, I. F. Wilson, George McLeay, John Curtin, and Fisk himself. Some of the topics dealt with in the series are the 1922 enquiry on the proposed merger with the Government, the 1930 agreement between AWA and the Imperial and International Communications Ltd, the 1927 Royal Commission, the building of beam wireless stations in the 1920s, proposals in the early 1940s involving Cable and Wireless Ltd and AWA's relinquishing of its overseas telecommunications functions, and the sale of the Government's shares in 1956.

Immediate source of acquisition:

The W. M. Hughes Papers were presented to the National Library of Australia by Dame Mary Hughes in 1953. The collection was received in two consignments. One consisted of papers taken from the Perpetual Trustee Company comprising material from Hughes' Lindfield home and from his office rooms at the Commonwealth Offices, Sydney; the other came directly from Lindfield. Lists of the contents of both consignments are held in the Library's Manuscript Branch. With the agreement of the executors and the Library, much of the collection, was for a time, held at the Australian National University by Fitzhardinge. He was permitted sole access to the collection while writing the biography Hughes commissioned in 1951. Fitzhardinge's own papers documenting the writing of the biography are also held by the Library (MS 5400). The papers transferred to the Library in 1953 are by no means the total collection of Hughes' personal papers, although it is impossible to say what proportion has survived. (see Fitzhardinge, p.936).

Names:

Hughes, W. M. (1862-1952)

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