Charles Moses

Later life

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.