Michael Thwaites
| Michael Thwaites | |
|---|---|
| Born |
30 May 1915 Brisbane, Queensland |
| Died | 1 November 2005 (aged 90) Canberra, ACT |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Education | Rhodes Scholar |
| Alma mater | University of Melbourne |
| Occupation | Poet and intelligence analyst |
| Employer | Australian Security Intelligence Organisation |
| Notable work | Truth Will Out: ASIO and the Petrovs |
| Title | Director of Counter-Espionage Assistant Parliamentary Librarian |
| Parent(s) | Robert Ernest, and Jessie Elizabeth, Thwaites |
| Awards | AO, The Newdigate Prize, King's Gold Medal for Poetry |
Michael Rayner Thwaites, AO (30 May 1915 – 1 November 2005) was an Australian academic, poet, and intelligence officer.
Thwaites was born in Brisbane, to Yorkshire immigrant Robert Ernest Thwaites who taught at Brisbane Grammar School and Jessie Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Hugh Nelson, a previous premier of Queensland. He was educated at Geelong Grammar School, entering Trinity College at the University of Melbourne from which he graduated in 1937. As a student he came into contact with the Oxford Group (later Moral Rearmament), whose ideas greatly influenced him. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford where he won the Newdigate Prize (1938) for poetry and the King's Gold Medal for Poetry (1940). He was the first Australian to win either of these prizes, and is still the only Australian to have won the Newdigate Prize.
Thwaites joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and served as an officer in World War II. In 1999 he published Atlantic Odyssey, an account of his war service on an anti-submarine escort trawler. After the war he returned to Oxford to complete his studies, then returned to Australia, becoming a lecturer in English at the University of Melbourne in 1947.
Despite having no background in intelligence work, Thwaites was recruited in 1950 to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) by its director-general Charles Spry. Unlike the British tradition of university recruitment, in 1950 almost all ASIO staff were from military intelligence and police operational backgrounds, and Spry had been encouraged to recruit senior staff with higher educational credentials. Thwaites proved to be a highly competent intelligence officer and encouraged more analytical recruitment policies. Despite some outside criticism that ASIO staff was an "old boys' club" (perhaps based on the assumption that ASIO was modelled on MI5), military and police backgrounds dominated ASIO staffing into the 1970s and Thwaites eventually resigned believing that the analytical resources were undervalued.
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