Department of Defence Production
Australian government department, 1951-1958
The Department of Defence Production was an Australian government department that existed between May 1951 and April 1958.
Scope
Information about the department's functions and government funding allocation could be found in the Administrative Arrangements Orders, the annual Portfolio Budget Statements and in the Department's annual reports.
The Department was created with responsibility for the manufacture and supply of munitions (armaments, ammunition, weapons, machine tools, war chemicals, radar), aircraft production and defence production planning.
Structure
The Department was a Commonwealth Public Service department, staffed by officials who were responsible to the Minister for Defence Production.
“Department of Defence Production” enters the record as australian government department, 1951-1958. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Department, Defence and Production can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Department of Defence Production” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Department, Defence and Production provides the most credible route into that argument.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18164656. VIAF identifies the subject as 123779833. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1951 and 1958.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Department of Defence Production”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Department of Defence Production primary sources, Department of Defence Production archive and Department research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Department of Defence Production”?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Department of Defence Production” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.