Charles Moses

Australian public servant (1900–1988)

Over the next few years, Moses became well known as a sport caster, calling the rugby and The Ashes matches of the Australian cricket team in England in 1934 from telegraphed despatches as if the commentary was live from the venue. He became the ABC's Sporting Editor in Sydney in January 1933, the Federal Controller of Talks in September 1934, the Federal Liaison Officer in August 1935, and finally, in November 1935, the general manager. His predecessor, Walter Conder, had been in conflict with the chairman of the ABC, William James Cleary. Conder had wanted to give the listeners what he thought they wanted: sports and entertainment; Cleary wanted to give them what he thought they should have: discussion and high culture. Inevitably, Cleary won the argument. Cleary and Moses fostered Australian talent and promoted original content, but they also brought out overseas artists like Elisabeth Rethberg, Ezio Pinza, Malcolm Sargent, Lotte Lehman, and Arthur Rubinstein. Concert organisers charged that the ABC had no right to break monopolies by producing its own concerts. A compromise was reached, whereby the ABC was permitted to broadcast any concert for which admission was charged. Access to news produced a similar problem, with the ABC confronting Keith Murdoch's powerful News Limited, which had great influence over conservative politicians like Joseph Lyons and Robert Menzies. Without its own news gathering organisation, the ABC was dependent on News Limited. When war broke out in September 1939, Moses decided to broadcast the news independent of News Limited. Menzies refused to back the ABC. As liaison officer to the 11th Indian Division, Moses twice narrowly escaped ambushes.

While he was in hospital recovering from malaria, Moses received a personal letter from the Prime Minister of Australia, John Curtin. His Australian Labor Party had always been treated roughly by the newspapers, particularly the Murdoch press, and when it had come to power in 1941, it had instructed the ABC to ignore its agreements with the news agencies, and to gather its own news. Curtin feared that unless Moses was at the helm, the ABC would revert to sourcing all its news from the agencies. Moreover, Curtin wanted the ABC to develop a sense of national identity, and to provide the workers and service personnel with more entertainment. This last task inevitably set Moses up for a clash with Cleary, but now it was the general manager who held the cards, and Cleary resigned on 30 March 1945. and was knighted in the 1961 Birthday Honours. From 1965 to 1977, he served as the first Secretary General of the Asian Broadcasting Union (now known as the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union), a non profit professional association of broadcasters. He had a son named Tom; his daughter Kathleen had died in 1960.