"The National Service Act allowed you to be a conscientious objector on two provisions, religious or philosophical.

"Many of us believed that it wasn't enough simply to escape conscription by taking advantage of these provisions.

"We had to defeat the Act itself because not only was it so unfairly administered in the selective marble taking way that it was but it was we thought it was allowing the Vietnam War to be sustained by Australia. So we wanted to make the Act unworkable and that meant that we took a position of not complying with its provisions. There were a whole range of steps that you could take in this process. You could not register. You could not go to your medical and so on.

"My, my action was that I refused to obey an order to attend an Army medical and they sent me several of these and then eventually they put a warrant out for my arrest in order to appear before the court and one lived underground as it was called. It was all quite exciting."

ALAN GOULD, PROTESTER