TURNER, Ian Robert

Family Name:

Turner

Given Names:

Ian Robert

Gender:

Male

Birth-date:

16 September 1947

Death-date:

Unknown

Marital Status:

Unknown, probably single

Age:

20 years old

Location:

VIC, Highett

Occupation:

University Student

Primary Motivation:

Draft Resister- Anti-conscription, anti-Vietnam War

Reason for Court Appearance:

[1] Application for full exemption from military duties as a conscientious objector

[2] Failure to obey a call-up notice and attend court when summonsed

[3] Failure to comply with a call-up notice

Court Name and Location:

[1] Court of Petty Sessions, Melbourne

[2] Court of Petty Sessions, Melbourne

[3] Court of Petty Sessions, Melbourne

Court Hearing Date:

[1] 23 June 1970

[2] 23 September 1970

[3] 22 January 1972

Court Outcome:

[1] Application was not granted

[2] Warrant issued for arrest for failure to obey call-up

[3] Convicted and sentenced to 18 months jail

Military Event:

National Service and Vietnam War 1964-1972

Further Information:

Ian Turner was from Highett a suburb of Melbourne. He made application for full exemption from military duties as a conscientious objector. It was dismissed by Magistrate Ross in the Melbourne Court of Petty Sessions on 23 June 1970. Ian was ready to appeal but decided to adopt non-compliance with the National Service Act (NSA). He was a Secretary of the Melbourne Draft Resisters Union, He said he was finally persuaded by the Students for a Democratic Society at Monash University where he was a Mechanical Engineering graduate. Ian was a member of the Architects, Engineers, Surveyors and Draughtsman of Australia. Ian wrote to Minister Snedden about this decision and said, I have taken this course because I have come to the conclusion that a conscientious objection is not a strong enough gesture of condemnation of the foreign policy and general attitude of the Australian Government…trying to win a C.o. case…I would make my parents happy (as a result of my father’s experience in the British Army in Singapore and later as a prisoner of the Japanese on the Siam railway in WW2, he vowed he would never again have anything to do with war and the army and urged me to be a C.O. Ian also described the repugnant training recruits had to endure and the unrelenting dehumanization of the ‘enemy’ to make it easier to kill them. He also ridiculed the line of questioning experienced in the conscientious objector courts. He finished his letter to the Minister with the words…until the law is changed, I feel that I cannot act otherwise and so I must inform you of my decision not to comply with any further call-up action from the Department of National Service. He received a call-up notice for the 17 March 1970. He refused to comply. He was summonsed but refused to attend the court. A warrant was issued for his arrest. Ian had been ‘underground’ since September 1970 before his arrest on 15 January 1972. On 22 January 1972 he was convicted, after pleading guilty, and sentenced to 18 months jail for refusing to obey a call-up notice. He was imprisoned at Ararat in Victoria. His legal counsel, Phillip Cummings, indicated that Ian had lived with his parents until he was served the call-up notice on 23 June 1972. Cummings told Magistrate Caven that, My client is a person of good character and it is because of his good character that he now takes this stand. He refused to apply Act to be registered as a under (sic)the National Service conscientious objector because to do so was to acknowledge an Act which he finds morally unacceptable. Cummings further stated that Ian was a former secretary of the Draft Resisters Union and had come to the conclusion that there were more than 11,000 people not registered who should have registered and only very few of them had been prosecuted.A media report described the scene when sentence had been passed that, spectators gathered round him and several shook his hand, His mother who was present in court cried and hugged him. He was released from prison a few days after the Whitlam Labor Government were elected on 2 December 1972.

Confirmatory Sources:

Bobbie Oliver, Hell No! We Won’t Go! Resistance to Conscription in Postwar Australia, Interventions, Melbourne, 2022, esp. pp. 139-140, p.158 and p.189.

Peacemaker, January/ February 1970, p.1 and 7.; May/ June 1970, p.4; October/ November 1970, p.1 and p.6; May/ June/ July/ August 1971 p.12.

Canberra Times, 22 January 1972, p.3; 7 December 1972. p.9.

Tharunka, 3 October 1972, p.7.