Cindy Dobbin knows that her mother was an ASIO spy – what else did she lie about?

Decades after her mother’s death Cindy Dobbin harbours understandable resentment, though Mercia Masson’s propensity towards deception also made her an asset during the Cold War.

Mercia Masson at Killcare. Her daughter believes this photograph was taken in the 1940s, possibly by a newspaper photographer. Picture: Supplied

According to Cindy Dobbin, her mother “could hide things well”. It is a harsh truth for a child to have to accept about a parent who was not always honest, in addition to being unavailable emotionally.

Decades after her mother’s death in the 1970s, Dobbin harbours understandable resentment about all the lies her mother told her, though Mercia Masson’s propensity towards deception also made her an asset as an ASIO agent during the Cold War.

Although this is her story, Cindy Dobbin throughout the book is referred to in the third person. The authorial distance is not explained – perhaps it was necessary in order to cope with painful memories of maternal neglect and secrecy.

My Mother The Spy is about the double life of ASIO agent Mercia Masson

For instance, Dobbin grew up believing that her father was prominent journalist Bill Masson, when in fact he was Mercia’s previous husband, an athletics and boxing instructor from Tasmania who was several years older. Mercia did not acknowledge the first marriage, and changed Cindy’s name more than once by deed poll in order to fit with the version of the past that she wished to circulate.

A mystery to her own daughter, Masson is a somewhat enigmatic figure in history. There is no Wikipedia page for Mercia Masson nor is she included in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and yet there is a special section on her career appended to the official history of ASIO.

Her life as a spy is important not least because of the circumstances in which her cover was blown, providing as it does an object lesson in how intelligence agencies can fail to protect the identity of their agents. Masson herself seems to have been a capable, effective and willing operative, even if she was treated as expendable.

Born in 1913 – her exact age was one of the key facts about her life she concealed – Masson was a journalist by trade who for a time worked as a speechwriter for Prime Minister Ben Chifley. She was a dedicated member of the ALP who claimed she worked for ASIO because she was “a loyal Australian”.

Mercia Masson as a glamorous young woman. Her daughter remains angry about the lies she was told about her mother’s life.

Recruited by ASIO in 1948, she became friends with prominent Communist figures such as journalist Rex Chiplin, reporting on their activities to ASIO and feeding her confidents disinformation calculated to confuse the KGB. In Melbourne, Mercia met with her case officer in the back pew of St Paul’s Cathedral, opposite Flinders Street Station.

Masson’s work for ASIO was revealed publicly at the Royal Commission into Espionage set up by the Menzies government in the mid 1950s in the wake of the Petrov affair. The Commission was tasked with exposing the extent of Soviet spying in Australia.

Masson’s role as an informer on Chiplin, with whom she had a close friendship over a number of years, along with other Communist sympathisers identified as Soviet agents by Petrov, was disclosed by counsel assisting the Royal Commission in order to discredit earlier evidence Chiplin himself had given to the Commission. Chiplin, who seems to have been very fond of Masson, apparently had no idea she was spying on him.

In her evidence, Masson declared: “I am very fond of Mr Chiplin’s family. I still regard Mr Chiplin as he was, a friend. I think I have been doing the right thing by saving the people I like from thinking the wrong way.”

This book, as well as providing a way of helping her daughter come to terms with her mother’s deceit and lack of affection, is a thought-provoking exploration of the generation of Australians who lived through the Depression, World War II and the Cold War.

A snippet of a newspaper report, in which Mercia Masson, “a middle aged, native-born Australian woman”, is unmasked as a spy

We are used to regarding the so-called greatest generation as the people who endured hardship with stoicism, fortitude and strong family values. The reality, meanwhile, is that many of them were traumatised by their experiences of upheaval, loss and fear, and they often acted in ways that seem quite strange and destructive.

As justification for the social disapproval of divorce it used to be said that instability begets instability. At any rate, Dobbin’s account of her mother’s complicated marital history is certainly matched by the domestic intrigues among the members of that generation in my own family on both sides.

So many Baby Boomers had to make sense of the legacy of dislocation bequeathed by their parents, for all that they are blamed for in the fragmented world we see now.

In addition to the value this book has as the first full length account of the life of a significant Australian intelligence agent, My Mother The Spy is a moving reminder of the hurt that parents can continue causing their children long after they are gone.

Cindy, assisted by her own son Kieron, was granted some access to ASIO archives, but although she knows a substantial amount about her mother’s secret life, essential questions remain for which there will never be an explanation.

“Cindy admits Mercia was a fighter for things she believed in,” we read. “But did the end justify the means? Is that reason enough for a mother to shut out her only child?”

Simon Caterson is a writer and critic.

My Mother The Spy: the daring and tragic double life of ASIO agent Mercia Masson

By Cindy Dobbin & Freda Marnie Nicholls
Allen & Unwin, Nonfiction
308pp, $34.99