Rome Post For Mr Mclntosh

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31085, 14 June 1966, Page 1

Rome Post For Mr Mclntosh

(From Our Own Reporter) WELLINGTON, June 13. The Secretary of External Affairs (Mr A. D. Mclntosh) will become New Zealand’s first Ambassador to Italy.

Mr Mclntosh will take up his post in Rome next October, after his retirement from the Public Service. In the meantime, Mr J. P. Costello, of the Department of Industries and Commerce, will become Charge d’Affaires and will open the office. When Mr Mclntosh takes up his post Mr Costello will become commercial counsellor responsible for trade. The Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake) said Mr Mclntosh’s extensive experience in the international field, especially as head of New Zealand’s external affairs service for the last 23 years, would fit him admirably for the task of establishing the new post.

He would be accredited later to “certain other countries” in Southern Europe where New Zealand’s Interests required representation.

Mr Mclntosh has been Secretary of External Affairs since 1943 and permanent head of the Prime Minister’s Department since 1945. He began his Public Service career in 1925 at the Department of Labour, and 10 years later was appointed to the Prime Minister’s Department as head of the information division and deputy head of the imperial affairs division. Before this appointment Mr Mclntosh was for eight years the Parliamentary reference librarian. He was awarded a Carnegie travelling fellowship and studied at the University of Michigan. In 1939 he became deputy head of the war-time Cabinet secretariat, arid from 194345 was Secretary of the War Cabinet. Mr Mclntosh has been Secretary of External Affairs since the post was created in 1943. He is the Government’s

principal adviser on foreign and Commonwealth affairs. He has attended most Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ conferences since 1944 as principal adviser to successive Prime Ministers, and has also attended most international conferences at which New Zealand has been represented. Mr Mclntosh was chief adviser and alternate delegate at the San Francisco conference in 1945, and has attended many United Nations assemblies since, either as delegate or as leader of the New Zealand delegation. At the Paris peace conference in 1946 he was rapporteur of the committee responsible for the peace treaty with Italy. He represented New Zealand on the Trusteeship Council when the independence of Western Samoa was being negotiated. Mr McIntosh was born in Picton in 1906 and went to Marlborough College, Blenheim. He graduated M.A. with honours from the University of New Zealand in 1929 and received an

honorary doctorate of law from the University of Canterbury last year. He was awarded the C.M.G. in 1957. Mr Mclntosh is married, with one son who is studying at Cambridge University.