whereby the ABC was permitted to broadcast any concert for which admission was charged. Access to news produced a similar problem, with the ABC confronting Keith Murdoch's powerful News Limited, which had great influence over conservative politicians like Joseph Lyons and Robert Menzies. Without its own news-gathering organisation, the ABC was dependent on News Limited. When war broke out in September 1939, Moses decided to broadcast the news independent of News Limited. Menzies refused to back the ABC. Second World War Moses volunteered for service with the Second Australian Imperial Force (AIF) on 13 May 1940, and was given the AIF service number NX12404. A lieutenant in the British Army Reserve of Officers, he was commissioned in the AIF as a lieutenant on 17 May 1940. He was promoted to captain on 1 July, and was posted to the 2/20th Battalion as a company commander. On 3 February 1941, he embarked for Singapore on the ocean liner . He was promoted to major on 24 August 1941, and on 30 August joined the staff of AIF Malaya, under Major General Gordon Bennett. As liaison officer to the 11th Indian Division, Moses twice narrowly escaped ambushes. On 11 February 1942, he had a conversation with Bennett's aide, Lieutenant G. H. Walker, in which he expressed a desire to escape if Singapore fell, as seemed likely at that point. Five days later, Moses, Bennett and Walker escaped from Singapore in a sampan, and made their way to Sumatra. They crossed Sumatra to Padang, on its west coast, from whence they flew to Java. In Batavia, Moses was knocked down by a taxi, fracturing his ribs. He was diagnosed with scrub typhus, and placed on the dangerously ill list. He was evacuated by a Dutch freighter and taken to Perth where he was hospitalised at the 110th and 113th General Hospitals. After the war he strongly supported Bennett's decision to escape from Singapore. On 9 October 1942, he was appointed commander of the Port Moresby Base Area, then engaged in support of the Kokoda campaign, with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Not satisfied with an administrative post, he personally lobbied the commander of Allied Land Forces, General Sir Thomas Blamey, and the Minister for the Army, Frank Forde, for an active command, demonstrating his fitness by running up an hill. On 27 December he assumed command of the 2/7th Cavalry Regiment, which he