Minister of Defence, Stephen Smith, must surely now do four things if his ostensible quest for greater transparency and accountability in the ADF is dinkum.

First, instead of further inexplicable delay (having received it in mid December), the Minister must immediately release the independent report by Andrew Kirkham, QC, into the incident.

Second, he must immediately allow the reinstatement of Commodore Bruce Kafer as ADFA commandant and apologise to him publicly for the unfair and dishonourable way he has been treated;

Third, he must finally stop unfairly gagging Commodore Kafer from defending himself in public.

Finally, Minister Smith must explain why it took him nearly two weeks to publicly refute, and finally help allay, the vicious slurs and other damaging public confusion about the incident  that he knew to be untrue, and which so undermined public confidence in our defence force.

Unless there is some unknown and peculiar explanation, the obvious one is Stephen Smith deliberately chose to inflame and exploit public hysteria for his own personal political leadership ambitions.

Public and defence force confidence must be restored that future ministerial control of the ADFA ADF will instead be exercised properly according to the Defence Act; the principles of natural justice, administrative law and civil control of the military; and normal community standards of fair play, honour and public office integrity.

[*Note: As the ADA noted at the time and on several occasions subsequently, the handling of this matter by Channel 10, following the approach from the victim, was undertaken very professionally and with great sensitivity and perspective by the two experienced journalists concerned (Hugh Riminton and Matt Moran). The ADA continues to believe that the subsequent situation would have been much worse for both victims of the incident had most other journalists been involved. It is noteworthy that both journalists have considerable experience in covering defence issues, with one having served in the defence force. Given their accurate and balanced reporting of the initial circumstances as they were then known, it was not their fault that the subsequent general media frenzy so ignored the facts of the matter and continually reported the most untruthful, ridiculous and maliciously dishonest allegations about the ADF and its handling of the matter. Nor was it their fault that subsequent public hysteria whipped up by the disgraceful media coverage, and ministerial inaction, was so ill-informed, unjust and unjustified.]

Wednesday, 18 January 2012

Letter to The Australian

(not published)

The growing inability to deport both failed and assessed asylum seekers who pose a security risk if granted Australian residency requires resolution.

Detaining them all indefinitely is not an option on humanitarian grounds. But neither is blanket release or dilution of the necessary security checks.

Resolute action is now necessary to bolster public confidence in both the fairness and overall integrity of immigration law.

Former LTTE belligerents (who cannot qualify for refugee status anyway under the Refugee Convention), and proven supporters, now detained should be deported back to Sri Lanka without further ado once appropriate guarantees are obtained from that government so the non-refoulement provisions of the Convention do not apply. Propaganda from the Tamil community in Australia and other LTTE apologists should rightly be ignored.

The valid principles underlying ASIO security checks of asylum seekers should be strengthened by the institution of a non-public but still accountable appeals process using similar operational security safeguards to those applying to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Intelligence Services.

After all, the former Security Appeals Tribunal set up to allow appeals of ASIO assessments generally was soon merged with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal because of pronounced lack of work and the lack of merit in most appeals.

Monday 16 January 2012

Letter to The Age (Melbourne)

(not published)

Saturday’s editorial (“Long way to a level battlefield”) was riddled with inaccuracies, misconceptions, poor research, selective quotation and seemingly outright prejudice.

The ADF’s many women currently serving in frontline positions cannot understand the mindset that so readily and continually ignores that they exist, perform superbly, and are best equipped to offer expert and professional opinions on female employment in combat roles and gender-relations in the defence force generally.

Nor that enquiries and applications by females for entry into ADFA, for example, have risen since the April 2011 scandal. Chiefly because applicants and their parents have been impressed by what they have found out on enquiry, contrary to what media groupthink has so often reported sensationally, selectively and inaccurately.

Moreover, while the federal sex discrimination commissioner’s report into ADFA did note that sexual harassment had been “widespread” she qualified this by emphasising it was low-level and involved no actual crimes. The media, including your editorial, omit to mention such specificity.

Ms Broderick has also noted that ADFA is a well-run institution, it’s record in gender and sexual misconduct is much better than any other tertiary institution in the country, and the only reason she cannot quantify the extent in more detail is because of poor record-keeping in the universities and TAFEs.

Finally, there is the editorial’s misguided thrust that our defence force is somehow out-of-step with the society it comes from.

It is, but only to the extent that rates of sexual misconduct (along with drug abuse and youth suicide) are markedly lower in the ADF than society at large, even allowing for 50 per cent of the force being under 25 years of age, and ADF personnel being as Australian as anyone else - not some moral praetorian guard.

In fact the main reason why the media is able to dwell on the ADF so much is only because it has better record-keeping and a better and more open record of dealing with such matters than most other organisations in our society.

Our defence force’s “sensitivity to adverse publicity” is perfectly explicable, and justified, when you consider how often such publicity is incorrect, unfair and just plain wrong in both senses.

PS. The documents obtained by Channel 7 under FOI recently are not “new”, not “allegations”, not “classified”, mostly relate to incidents that are already public knowledge (including well-publicised court cases), and the 19 briefs concerning gender or sexual matters (even by the widest definition) constitute a miniscule number in a workforce of over 100,000 over a two-year period. Perhaps even the Age’s rate is worse than this one in 10,000 comparison?

Tuesday, 10 January 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

Gary Wilson (letters, January 10) rightly worries about equal justice for both victims of last April’s incident at ADFA.

The female cadet wrongly and dishonourably filmed, without her apparent consent, by fellow cadets she should have been able to trust.

And the commandant wrongly stood aside, traduced and then denied natural justice by ministerial intervention that was unfair at least - and deeply improper according to most experts on administrative law and civil control of the military.

Continuing civil court proceedings are providing the cadet with the normal opportunity for justice. Dependent on the outcome, administrative action by the defence force concerning those who allegedly filmed her is also likely.

Her right to a potential ADF career also needs protection but reintegrating her into ADFA, at this stage, poses serious group dynamics difficulties. Not least because many cadets naturally resent, and blame her in part, for all the media sensationalism and untruths, the public hysteria and continuing confusion it spawned, and the trashing of all their reputations.

Finally, the sooner the Minister apologises to the commandant and allows the CDF to reinstate him the better for all concerned.

Tuesday, 03 January 2012

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

Releasing the report into the offensive sexual incident at the Australian Defence Force Academy last April needs to be put in context.

A general “warts and all report” by the federal sex discrimination commissioner (a statutory officeholder independent of ministerial influence) has already concluded that ADFA is, overall, an impressive and well-run institution.

If, as reported in the media, the inquiry by Andrew Kirkham QC has effectively exonerated the specific actions of the commandant and his staff, then duly reinstating Commodore Bruce Kafer should be done before the new ADFA training year starts later this month.

But this is only part of the solution.

The ADF also needs to continue protecting the stalled potential career of the other victim of the incident, the young cadet filmed without her consent. And where the group dynamics of the cadet body have led many to blame her, however unfairly, for the subsequent public hysteria fed by the extensive and mostly inaccurate media coverage that so unfairly traduced all their reputations.

Then there are the likely consequences of an objective report reflecting poorly on the judgement and actions of the Minister for Defence (even though Kirkham’s terms of reference prevented him examining such actions).

It is not in the national interest for there to be further tension between this Minister and the defence force. Alleviating this is no doubt concentrating the minds of the ADF and departmental hierarchy, especially if the report is likely to embarrass him politically and personally.

A personal and public apology to Commodore Kafer from the Minister would undoubtedly help.

As would his admission that, as widely acknowledged among administrative law experts, the Minister’s attempted interference in an unrelated defence force disciplinary proceeding concerning the female cadet should not have occurred. Being contrary to the principles of administrative law in particular and the separation of powers between executive and judicial (and quasi-judicial) functions generally.

Civil control of the military by ministers is engrained in the culture of our defence force, the Constitution, and the necessary separation of civil political control from military command in the Defence Act. But such control must be exercised properly, lawfully and carefully.

Now, the Minister’s spokesman claims that the Kirkham Inquiry “was formally requested by the Chief of the RAAF [sic]… and is not for the Minister to release”. But the Minister directed the Service Chiefs to hold the inquiry (as is his right) and would have approved the terms of reference.

Its formal institution by the Chief of Air Force only reflected the longstanding constitutional and statutory separation of command and control.

Whoever is responsible for the report’s release this should occur now.

Wednesday, 28 December 2011

Letter to The Australian Financial Review

(published Tuesday, 03 January 2012)

Brian Toohey's ”Adelaide to Detroit, the underwater route” (December 28-January 2 is again underwater in his fixation on European submarines, but not in his scepticism about political pork-barrelling by federal and state politicians ever eager to divert the defence budget elsewhere to buy votes. And in rejecting the supportive claims by feather-bedding interests in commerce, the unions and indeed parts of academia.

Can we therefore summarise recent debate on replacing our Collins-class submarines (which is meant to start in the mid 2020s).

ASPI’s estimate of up to $36bn (over decades) for an Australian build could be somewhat high but they are correct about the technological, industrial and budgetary risks of another local indigenous project. The Kokoda Foundation’s estimate of $18bn seems on the low side at first glance but their study (when released in full) might justify it.

Toohey's Brian’s off-the-shelf European submarine alternative, however, will not work; except perhaps as a four-boat interim option because they cannot really meet the capability needed in the long term unless greater numbers than 12 are procured.

This would increase the $9-12bn claimed for this option substantially. It would also be harder to crew and operate the larger but less suitable fleet needed.

If no-one else is building the type of conventionally-powered submarines we need, and the task might be too big for us to build them again, then the option of leasing Virginia-class nuclear-powered boats from the US also needs to be examined. Much fewer than 12 boats would then be needed (greater range, endurance, speed, etc) and the cost differential between nuclear and conventionally-powered boats continues to drop anyway.

They would be the most modern submarines available, a tested commodity, and fully compatible with our major ally operationally and logistically. The Americans would look after the reactor, thus negating our limited nuclear engineering capacity (and paranoia among some about nuclear energy).

No-one credible seems to doubt that the class that replaces the Collins replacements will be nuclear powered (and probably leased from the US).

We should at least look at jumping a generation directly.

Wednesday, 28 December 2011

Letter to The Australian

(published Thursday, 29 December 2011

Argument about replacing our Collins-class submarines (meant to start in the mid 2020s) can be easily summarised.

Ignore the renewed pork-barrelling claims by federal and state politicians ever eager to divert the defence budget elsewhere to buy votes. And also the supportive claims by feather-bedding interests in commerce, the unions and indeed parts of academia.

ASPI’s estimate of up to $36bn (over decades) for an Australian build could be somewhat high but they are correct about the technological, industrial and budgetary risks of another indigenous project. The Kokoda Foundation’s estimate of $18bn seems on the low side at first glance but their study (when released in full) might justify it.

The off-the-shelf European submarine alternative is unlikely to work ("Half-price super subs tempt navy", 26/12). Except perhaps as a four-boat interim option because they cannot really meet the capability needed in the long term unless greater numbers than 12 are procured.

This would increase the $9-12bn claimed for this option substantially. It would also be harder to crew and operate this the larger but less suitable fleet needed.

If no-one else is building the type of conventionally-powered submarines Australia needs, and the task might be too big for us to build them again, then the option of leasing Virginia-class nuclear-powered boats from the US also needs to be examined. Fewer Much less than 12 boats would then be needed (greater range, endurance, and speed, etc) and the cost differential between nuclear and conventionally-powered boats continues to drop anyway.

They would be the most modern submarines available, a tested commodity, and fully compatible with our major ally operationally and logistically. The Americans would look after the reactor, thus negating our limited nuclear engineering capacity (and paranoia among some about nuclear energy).

No-one credible seems to doubt that the class that replaces the Collins replacements in the 2040s will be nuclear powered (and probably leased from the US).

We should at least look at jumping a generation directly.

Thursday, 22 December 2011

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

Recent public argument on asylum seeking continues to be mostly flawed. Even ignoring the emotion or ideology on both sides, most protagonists falsely assume the issue is a domestic rather than a strategic policy issue.

In particular, Australia’s geo-political situation and its implications should not be ignored.

Nor should the original intention of the Refugee Convention (and Chapter VIII of the UN Charter). This is to pressure neighbouring states to resolve conflicts so refugees can directly and swiftly return home, rather than be marooned permanently in refugee camps watching their society, polity and families destroyed.

Asylum policy also necessarily involves Australia’s wider strategic relations with neighbouring states. Including not letting them pressure us on this and wider issues by facilitating extra-regional refugee flows or not.

It is also axiomatic that any effective regional mechanism to protect refugees must involve “offshore processing” in an Australian context, particularly with such extra-regional flows.

But we are our near and wider region’s only effective signatory to the Refugee Convention. Even NZ is mostly able to avoid responsibility because of its location.

The nearest real signatories to our north-west are Israel and the EU. To the north-east it’s the USA and Canada. To the north its no-one.

Australia is also a highly desirable first-world country and one of only four with a mass immigration program, a diverse society and no national ID card.

We have resettled over six million immigrants since 1946. We have also permanently resettled, rather than just temporarily sheltered (as the Convention requires), nearly one million refugees.

Our near and farther neighbours have no incentive to sign the Convention, or otherwise care for refugees, not least because they regard us (and the EU) as their permanent solution. And now we cannot even send  bogus asylum seekers home with deportation rates sinking to as low as two per cent.

These are all the major pull factors that must be targeted to destroy the people smugglers’ business model.

And the main push factor is not conflict per se ― as some are prone to claim reflexively ― but that the Convention is not universal, especially in our near and wider regions.

Current numbers of unauthorised arrivals are manageable but the strategic, operational and humane effectiveness of current policy, including sustaining public confidence, is wholly dependent on the numbers remaining low and slow.

But there is no longer any criminal, economic migration, refugee flow or international travel complexity rationale for this to continue.

We also continue to let our neighbours off the hook by being not only the region’s soft touch but it’s only touch. And by wrongly assuming in our domestic arguments that our neighbours are somehow blameless or not involved.

Meanwhile, genuine refugees continue to suffer overseas. 

[Editor's Note: The ADA's comprehensive discussion paper on asylum and refugee policy can be read here].

Wednesday, 16 November 2011

Letter to The Australian Financial Review

(published Thursday, 17 November 2011)

For many years the Australia Defence Association has argued that India should be rewarded for not proliferating nuclear weapons technology in practice, rather than punished in perpetuity for not acceding to the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty on principle.

Dave Sweeney from the Australian Conservation Foundation (Letters, November 16) criticised the selling of uranium to India, even under strict NPT-type safeguards. But his simplistic and sensationalist claims actually inverted the real strategic implications.

India is a great power, a democracy and generally a much more responsible international actor than, say, NPT signatories Russia and China.

Rewarding India would be stabilising not destabilising in terms of both the regional and global nuclear balances. And in reducing the risks of nuclear war through progressing arms control and eventually disarmament in practice.

Rewarding Indian restraint also sends a powerful strategic message to serial proliferator and sub-continental rival, Pakistan. Stop and recant or your marked strategic inferiority to India can only get worse.

Finally, the ADA does not intrude into the ACF’s commensurate public-interest watchdog responsibilities for environmental matters. Perhaps the ACF should think twice before again straying into national security policy when so clearly lacking the perspective and expertise to do so.

Tuesday, 01 November 2011

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Thursday, 03 November 2011)

Debating war is always difficult, especially as Australia is generally a junior partner in complex coalition wars. It is now much more difficult as so few Australians have personal experience of military service or war, even in extended families.

But all wars end when one side gives up so anti-war arguments need to be reasoned and evidence-based, not merely ideological, emotive, simplistic or plain defeatist (letters, November 01). Moreover, thoughtless arguments, however inadvertent, actually assist the enemy and unnecessarily complicate the job of our diggers on the ground.

Since the ADF deployed to Oruzgan in 2005 the Australia Defence Association has regularly warned that our governments were not adequately explaining the strategic rationale for our military effort there and that public support was waning leaking away. Overly-tight ministerial control of defence force public information activities and often poor media coverage exacerbates the problem.

Much of the ensuing vacuum in informed debate has been filled by emotive or ideological stances, or by arguments that are well-meaning but dependent on misconceptions, over-simplifications and outright myths.

David Lewis (Letters, November 1) is simply wrong. The international effort in Afghanistan is not illegal, immoral or an “invasion” in law or practice. It has always been underwritten by numerous UN Security Council Resolutions and, as numerous independent polls show, a significant majority of Afghans.

Patricia Saunders (Letters, November 1) misses that Australia has strategic interests in helping fix Afghanistan as well as our responsibilities under the UN Charter and our wider alliance and moral commitments as an activist liberal democracy.

Alan Stretton (Letters, November 1), who should know better, omits that  warfare is inherently dynamic. Strategic objectives and the potential to attain them necessarily change over the course of any war.

The relevant strategic calculus is surely that the longer-term and wider geo-political risks of quitting still remain greater than the costs of persevering (for both Australians and Afghans). If this was not so, the ADA would obviously insist on withdrawal.

Just as we lead criticism of lip-service justifications, formulaic condolences and other political grandstanding whenever the price for the security all Australians enjoy is sadly paid by our diggers.

Wednesday, 19 October 2011

Letter to The Sydney Morning Herald

(published Thursday, 20 October 2011)

Steve Biddulph ("its time for the truth to allay, or confirm, our fears about SIEV-X", SMH Opinion, October 19) unfortunately adds to the confusion and paranoia surrounding the October 2001 SIEV-X tragedy.

Some survivors report their abandonment by unidentified naval vessels following the sinking. The majority do not.

What Biddulph Steve should have pointed out anyway is that as the nearest Australian naval (or other) vessel was some 250 kilometres away they were definitely not ours.

And Moreover, an Occam’s razor analysis indicates that the sinking is much more likely to have been a wholly Indonesian activity no matter what their motivation.

The reluctance by Australian authorities to hold a Royal Commission into SIEV-X is therefore probably for four reasons.

First, a lack of legal or other jurisdiction as this Indonesian vessel left an Indonesian port and did not sink in Australian waters. sank in Javanese waters well inside Indonesia’s internationally designated zone of search and rescue responsibility.

Second, given the undoubted involvement of corrupt Indonesian officials in organising the voyage, there was a decision to prioritise our long-term strategic relations with Indonesia rather than further complicate them by publicly exposing the extent of Indonesian criminality involved.

Third, there was a belief (largely justified by subsequent Indonesian actions to clean up their act), that holding Indonesia responsible forcefully via diplomatic channels instead would achieve more for everyone over the long-run, including preventing further victims in future.

Fourth, both Australia and Indonesia are a signatories to the November 2000 Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air of the UN Convention on Transnational Organised Crime. It is surely better that consequent law enforcement measures taken to disrupt people smuggler activities in Indonesia legitimately are undertaken jointly with the Indonesians than by them alone.

Finally, to infer that Australian AFP, ASIS or ADF personnel would somehow deliberately or recklessly kill women and children as some form of deterrent or punishment is despicable.

So is the inference that they would somehow cover it up if the Indonesian authorities they were working with had done so for whatever reason.

Wednesday, 12 October 2011

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

Professor Bill Maley, Australia’s top academic expert on Afghanistan, appropriately rebutted the wilder claims of Howard Carew and John Coochey (Letters, October 11).

But Bill’s citing of the lack of Refugee Convention signatories between Afghanistan and Australia also needs to be turned on its head.

Asylum seeker flows (and the conflicts causing them) are and always should be a regional problem, not Australia’s protection and especially resettlement dilemma alone.

There will be no effective solution, and increasing risks of broader strategic instability, until more than 7 of the 35 countries between the Aegean and Arafura Seas sign and respect the Refugee Convention.

India, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia would be a good start, both morally and strategically. No opportunity should be lost in pointing out their hypocrisy, and strategic and moral buck-passing, to any Indian, Singaporean, Malaysian or Indonesian you meet.

After all, as the comprehensive ADA discussion paper on this issue notes, there is a good take-up of the Convention regionally across South America, the Caribbean and much of Africa and Central Asia.

Thursday, 29 September 2011

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Monday, 03 October 2011)

Few juxtaposed letters expose flawed argument so comprehensively as David Kibbey does to Judy Bamberger (Letters, September 28). And indeed to the adjoining editorial ("Equal opportunity taken to front line", September 29, p16).

Kibbey, a distinguished war veteran with experience of close-quarter infantry combat, was later the commandant of the Army’s recruit training centre when it integrated females to achieve gender-neutral training. Moreover, through serious injury in military training to a female family member, the Kibbey family have sadly experienced all dimensions of this complex issue.

ADF experience in even carefully planned peacetime training is that load-bearing injuries to females are much greater than to men at ratios between 5:1 and 7:1. This is more due to bio-mechanical differences between the genders than a matter of females not being able to achieve combat task-dictated physicality standards.

Kibbey logically cautions against the simplistic belief that integrating females into the last few combat roles can ignore bio-mechanical differences between men and women. This particularly applies to combat roles, such as the infantry having to carry heavy loads, where technology or other means cannot render integral tasks gender-neutral bio-mechanically and often physically.

In stark contrast, Bamberger’s confused ramblings seriously misunderstand the whole issue. Especially the legal, moral, OH&S and operational needs to avoid the risk of equity intent ― inequitable result paradoxes.

Injuring, wounding or killing our female diggers disproportionately to our men doing the same job would be inequitable, unfair, operationally inefficient and unacceptable to the Australian community.

We need to maximise female employment in the defence force but the complexities and risks sometimes involved cannot be wished away by ignoring or denying them.

Thursday, 29 February 2011

Letter to The Australian

(published with editing that unfortunately partly changed the meaning on Saturday, 01 October 2011)

David Kibbey (letters, 29/9) is a distinguished war veteran with experience of close-quarter infantry combat. He was later the commandant of the Army’s recruit training centre when it integrated females to achieve gender-neutral training.

Moreover, through serious injury in military training to a female family member, the Kibbey family have sadly experienced all dimensions of this complex issue.

ADF experience in even carefully planned peacetime training is that load-bearing injuries to females are much greater than to men at ratios between 5 and 7:1. This is more due to bio-mechanical differences between the genders than a matter of some females not being able to achieve combat task-dictated physicality standards.

Kibbey logically cautions against the simplistic belief that integrating females into the last few combat roles can ignore bio-mechanical differences between men and women.

This particularly applies to combat roles, such as the infantry having to carry heavy loads, where technology or other means cannot render integral tasks gender-neutral bio-mechanically and often physically.

For many legal, moral, OH&S and operational reasons the ADF needs to avoid the risk of equity intent ― inequitable result paradoxes. I injuring, wounding or killing our female diggers disproportionately to our men doing the same job would be inequitable, unfair, operationally inefficient and unacceptable to the Australian community.

We need to maximise female employment in the ADF but the complexities and risks sometimes involved cannot be wished away by ignoring or denying them.

Or indeed by ministerial fiats issued to distract public attention from other issues.

Wednesday, 14 September 2011

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Thursday, 15 September 2011)

Sylvia Miners (“Gender degradation”, Letters, September 14) exemplifies the prejudices, flawed assumptions, misinformation and worse that continually hinder effective public debate on matters affecting our defence force.

She does not appear to realise that Duntroon cadets have long been of both genders, that the Australian Defence Force Academy and the Royal Military College Duntroon are separate institutions, and that the disgraceful April filming incident was at the former not the latter. She Sylvia also oddly misses that even this incident is quite atypical at either institution using any objective measure - or indeed any statistical comparison with civilian tertiary institutions.

The forthcoming independent report into ADFA by the federal sex discrimination commissioner  will hopefully open Miners' Sylvia’s blinkered eyes.

Thursday, 08 September 2011

Letter to The Age (Melbourne)

(not published)

At the very least, Leunig’s cartoon in Wednesday’s “Age” (September 7) demonstrates his intellectual and moral detachment from his citizenship responsibilities to the diggers our country sends to fight its wars.

They are our Special Forces not “the” Special Forces. They are fellow Australians, not somehow “someone else”, and are lawfully deployed by our Government to fight a war on behalf of us all.

It is particularly despicable for Leunig to provide the enemy with propaganda fodder by incorrectly claiming that our Special Forces “murder” anyone. Either in combat with the enemy under the Laws of Armed Conflict or at any other time.

Leunig unprofessionally and immorally ignores the longstanding principle underlying any debate on Australian participation in any war, whether you oppose it or not. Every Australian always has a responsibility to avoid increasing the risks our diggers have been sent to face.

Argue with the Government all you like but do so responsibly, not by targeting our troops.

Thursday, 25 August 2011

Letter to the Newcastle Herald

(published instead as a longer opinion article here)

We can all hope that Jeff Corbett (“Finding reason in war”, Newcastle Herald, August 25, p.10) did not intend to be so thoughtlessly offensive.

Jeff’s notions that the soldier died just “doing his job”, and was not “driven by a noble cause”, confuse several key differences to civilian accidents or illnesses.

First, the soldiers death stemmed from him doing his duty, on behalf of all Australians, when lawfully deployed to a UN-endorsed conflict by our elected Government.

Second, an enemy deliberately killed him when doing so. His death resulted from no random accident or illness, no matter how sad or untimely.

Third, our diggers do believe in a noble cause because every day they witness, first hand, the benefits they help bring Afghans at village level, even if Afghanistan overall is still a mess.

Jeff’s further false moral equivalence of an Australian soldier, who applies force only in accordance with the Laws of Armed Conflict, with the Taliban who immorally do not comply with international humanitarian law generally, is simply despicable.

To cap it all off, Jeff then claims, simplistically, that the digger “died in vain”. This is deeply insensitive to the soldier’s family and friends in their initial grief.

By all means debate our participation in the Afghanistan War, but wait a week or so and then do it responsibly instead.

Finally, the Corbett diatribe aptly illustrates the dangers in a liberal democracy when the troops on the ground understand the war, and believe in their mission, much more comprehensively than the people back home who sent them.

Monday, 15 August 2011

Letter to The Australian Financial Review

(published Tuesday, 16 August 2011)

Geoffrey Barker, “New bid to rein in Defence”, AFR, August 15, oddly forgets that Defence’s old Force Development and Analysis Division (FDA) did not just “decline in the late 1990s”.

It’s abolition was a major recommendation of the businessmen-led 1997 Defence Efficiency Review. This found FDA’s function to be counter-productive institutionally, and its personnel and organisational culture a major cause of the decades-long, poisonous relations between the public service and the defence force that made the whole department so ineffective when developing new defence capabilities.

The Defence Department's Force Development and Analysis Division (FDA) FDA was abolished so such development could instead be focused, collaborative and driven by operational priorities, not divisive, time-wasting, expensive and insufficiently linked to executing strategic policy (“New bid to rein in Defence”, opinion, August 15).

Far from your columnist Geoff Barker's Geoff’s mythical “iron colonels” being the problem in Defence, the entrenched problem has generally been four real and destructive myths.

• First, that all All or most problems in “Defence” are with the military, not the ever-burgeoning and very top-heavy department.

• Second, that our Our Australian Defence's Force's defence force’s widely acknowledged professionalism in the field during war and peace-keeping is somehow irrelevant when examining departmental problems and their reform.

• Third, Tthat it is somehow improper or inefficient ― the opposite of the truth ― for military officers to offer professional advice to gGovernment as to what weapons our defence force actually needs to use to deter wars, and win them if necessary without unnecessary risks to our own troops.

• Fourth, Tthat the essential constitutional principle of “civil control of the military”, properly exercised only by Ministers and Parliament, somehow justifies civilian public servants supplanting civil control by Ministers or trying to exert pervasive bureaucratic interference in military professional matters.

 Bringing back an FDA-type function, without reining in bureaucratic arrogance and departmental mythology, will be just as disastrous as it was last time.

Saturday, 06 August 2011

Letter to The Australian

(published instead as a longer opinion article in the Inquirer section of the Weekend Australian on Saturday, 13 August 2011 (see here)

Peter Van Onselen ("Former terror suspect is being denied justice again", Opinion, August 6) mistakenly views the David Hicks saga backwards by not applying the relevant international and Australian law in that order.

As a belligerent captured fighting in a war, Hicks was lawfully interned under the Laws of Armed Conflict as the specialist international law applying. Whatever the perceived international legality of his subsequent, and separate, criminal trial and sentence by US Military Commission - and whether or not profits from his book or other activities are the proceeds of crime or not (and can or should be forfeit) - his internment until at least his trial did not constitute “imprisonment” or being “held without trial” for a single minute.

Even more relevantly, treachery remains a crime in Australia. Under our reformed (post-Hicks) treachery laws anyone doing now what Hicks did then can have their day facing an Australian court. We owe our diggers no less.

Hicks’ actions in 2001, after the 9/11 attacks, in fighting against a UN-endorsed international force (including Australia) could not be prosecuted only because of the Burchett loophole. Australia’s then archaic treachery laws required a war to be “declared” before serving with the enemy was an offence. But declarations of war had been invalidated by the UN Charter from 1945.

Moreover, we now know from the contradictory accounts written by and about Hicks, Mamdouh Habib and Jack Thomas, that they cannot all have been “mistakenly” involved with Islamist terrorism.

Given the extensive omissions, evasions and tendentious claims in Hicks’ diatribe to the gullible, he remains morally guilty of both treachery and of profiting from it.

If Hicks gets to keep his profits it will only be by another legal technicality, not justice.

Friday, 05 August 2011

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Wednesday, 10 August 2011)

Your editorial "pursuit of Hicks a tad vindictive" (August 5, p16), incorrectly described David Hicks as being “arrested” in Afghanistan in 2001. Such mistakes contribute to the endless confusion for some as to the international and Australian law applying to Hicks.

Hicks was instead captured as a belligerent fighting in a war. He was consequently legitimately interned under the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) as the specialist international law applying. He did not qualify for conventional prisoner-of-war status under the Third Geneva Convention because the force he served with, the Taliban, did not adhere to LOAC and international humanitarian law generally. But as the US Supreme Court confirmed in the June 2006 Hamdan ruling, as a captured and interned belligerent he was protected under Common Article 3 of all four Geneva Conventions.

Whatever your views of the legality of his subsequent and separate criminal trial and sentence by US Military Commission, and whether or not his book's profits resulted from a criminal offence and can or should be forfeited, his internment as a captured belligerent until that trial did not constitute “arrest” or being “held without trial” for a single minute.

Four Some other points are worth noting.

First, Hicks was morally guilty of treachery but saved from Australian prosecution only by an archaic legal technicality.

His actions in 2001 in fighting against a UN-endorsed international force (including Australia) were not then criminal offences in Australia only because of the Burchett loophole in our existing treachery laws. These pre-1945 laws required a war to be “declared” before serving with the enemy could be an offence, but declarations of war had been invalidated by the UN Charter after 1945.

Second, under our updated treachery laws, anyone doing now what Hicks did then can have their day in an Australian court.

Third, if you read the inter-related and somewhat contradictory accounts written by and about Hicks, Mamdouh Habib and Jack Thomas, at least one of them has to be lying about their then commitment to terrorism.

Third Fourth, given the extensive omissions, evasions and tendentious claims in Hicks’ diatribe to the gullible, he remains morally guilty of profiting from his crimes and would keep his book profits only by another technical escape from the law.

Monday, 01 August 2011

Letter to The Australian

(published Wednesday, 03 August 2011)

Various correspondents ignore the particularly damning expert testimony to the Royal Commission into the Black Saturday bushfires from Major General Jim Molan and Dr Nick Jans concerning high-level leadership and how to command and run an operational  (as opposed to a bureaucratic) headquarters.

Molan was invited to testify by the Commission as an expert witness based on, among other things, his experiences of commanding a battalion, brigade and division, being our Defence Attache in Indonesia during the 1999 East Timor crisis, and having been the Chief-of-Operations for the army-level joint headquarters conducting the coalition effort during a crucial stage in the Iraq War.

Jans, an academic specialist from the ADF’s Centre for Defence Leadership and Ethics (note the integral inter-relationship) is a retired brigadier and war veteran. He also nearly lost his house in Marysville to the fires.

Christine Nixon’s failure in command was not just her absences at critical times on the day, her lack of effective deputisation, her lack of contactability, or indeed her unwillingness to subsequently accept responsibility by trying to attribute criticism of her performance to perceptions of politics, gender and obesity.

As the expert testimony spelled out in detail, her disastrous record before, during and after the crisis encompassed failures to ensure the communications and staff systems of her emergency headquarters were capable of coping with a crisis, failures in exercising and testing them adequately, and failures as the overall commander in not setting an example to every level of her staff, and later the people of Victoria, by necessarily making command decisions and accepting absolute responsibility for everything.

Not that this should be surprising. Police across Australia have long joked that the easiest way to get Nixon to leave any informal professional discussion was to introduce an operational policing topic.

Monday, 01 August 2011

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

Rod Olsen (Letters, July 31) seems to have fallen into the same historiographical traps that so ensnared Bernard Davis and Peter Marshall (Letters, February 8 and 12).

As well as avoiding the distortions of hindsight, folk memory and political bias, we always need to be aware of what historians refer to as “presentism” and the “condescension of posterity”.

The first wrongly applies contemporary perspectives to explaining past events, rather than placing them in their historical context, especially where current political opinions are projected into past strategic debates. The second falsely assumes that, because we now know what happened, we are either smarter than past Australians or would undoubtedly have then thought differently to them.

In 1914 and 1939 most Australians were just as intellectually and strategically aware as we are now. They considered that Australia would suffer greatly in strategic, economic and liberty terms if Germany and later Japan won those wars.

Whether they were correct or not, and no matter what some might think now of their decisions then, their heavy sacrifices should continue to be honoured in a non-partisan manner by all Australians. Due commemoration is not glorification of war nor militarist inculcation.

Tuesday, 19 July 2011

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

John Simmons (Letters, 19/7) touches on some problems with the way the ADF promotes officers to middle and senior ranks but starts at the wrong end (the top) through omitting the history and complexity involved.

The generation, for example, who pioneered genuine joint-Service approaches in the 1980s and 1990s largely sacrificed their careers in doing so because the three Services then largely ignored or severely under-rated performance outside the Service concerned. Especially where single-Service dinosaurs resisted moves to “jointery” and punished those who excelled in furthering it.

Angus Houston was unique among the current generation of senior officers in having held two genuine joint jobs below one-star rank. Most have not had a single, even nominal, joint job below that rank.

Moreover, the recurring inequity of promotion in the Army above major-equivalent being generally harder than in the Air Force and the Navy remains largely insoluble in an increasingly integrated defence force that will always need synergistic but distinct Service professional specialisation.

There is merit, however, in four bottom-up reforms.

First, the purported equivalence of military ranks to Public Service grades should be updated to reflect reality, especially the career-experiences and post-graduate training and qualifications actually involved.

For example, a staff college graduate commander, lieutenant colonel or wing commander whose 15-20 year career has included a range of sub-unit and then unit command, teaching and progressively more senior staff positions is clearly far superior in experience and overall organisational value than virtually all EL1, and probably many and perhaps most EL2.

This is why "civilianising" ADF positions, supposedly to save money, so frequently backfires. With a lieutenant colonel, for example, within a few years there are often two EL1s (or even an EL2 and two EL1s) doing the same or similar job at much greater expense and at perhaps some operational cost.

Second, officers whose further promotion is eventually vetoed should have the right to challenge the promotion board concerned directly, face-to-face around the table, to guarantee greater fairness, integrity and transparency of such decisions

Third, within limits, officers should have the right to challenge selections for unit and higher command appointments and commensurate senior staff positions.

Fourth, wherever possible, one-star and above vacancies should be advertised, especially joint-Service ones.

Wednesday, 15 June 2011

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Friday, 17 June 2011)

Several recent letters [to the Canberra Times] unfortunately exemplify what happens when some in our community become so disengaged from fellow Australians serving in our defence force that they are unable to debate national participation in a war responsibly. To the extent some correspondents seem unable to realise why such responsibility is necessary, some are not even able to recognise irresponsibility or try to excuse it, and one even somehow denies Australia is fighting a war in Afghanistan.

The Australia Defence Association has not once suggested or implied that Australians cannot or should not debate the war in Afghanistan or Australia’s contribution to it.

But, as the relevant public-interest watchdog, we will continue to remind the thoughtless or the ideologically rigid that debate and dissent on this topic needs to be undertaken responsibly, and that sensitivity is needed at times to avoid magnifying the worry or grief defence force families in our midst have to endure.

At least in the case of a war, no Australian has unlimited licence to engage in any form of dissent. Especially dissent that unfairly or improperly risks increasing the dangers our diggers face on the ground in Afghanistan. This was widely understood in our previous wars, up until the withdrawal from Vietnam in 1972, because many Australians had personal, close-family or community knowledge of such risks through fighting or living through World War II.

Our reformed treachery laws rightly strike an appropriate balance between personal liberty and the reciprocal national responsibility to our troops of every Australian. These laws rightly outlaw acts that assist an enemy our government commits our defence force to fight, on behalf of our country, where such assistance is intentional.

Irresponsible debate merely strengthens the case for further reform to outlaw reckless acts of assistance as well.

Friday, 10 June 2011

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Monday, 13 June 2011)

Recent debate on the Afghanistan War continues to demonstrate the longstanding ADA observation that most arguments against the war have a factual deficit and most in favour have a conceptual one. But whether you are for or against this war several things about any war always need to be borne in mind.

First, Australia is at war, not just our defence force and the families of its personnel. We are all involved.

Second, our governments commit our defence force to war so criticism, and ensuing actions, should be directed at the former not the latter.

Third, all wars are ultimately contests of will and end when one side gives up.

Fourth, there is a moral, legal and intellectual line between legitimate and responsible dissent from such a government decision and assisting the enemy we send our diggers to fight. Every Australian needs to observe this line carefully because encouraging the enemy to believe Australia and our allies might be giving up, however unconsciously or recklessly, unfairly disadvantages our troops in the field and those Afghans on our side.

Fifth, in the era of the Web, blogs, social media – and the ensuing avalanche of accessible views on each side ranging from balanced to downright ignorant or biased – the risk of assisting the enemy (even accidentally) is much greater than in our previous wars.

Finally, most Australians now thankfully lack personal experience of war or defence force service, even in their extended families. But this has unfortunately led many to become intellectually and morally disengaged from their citizenship responsibility to debate our nation’s wars responsibly. Indeed some now even deny such a responsibility.

Too many are also now so insensitive to the grieving families of our war dead that they brutally exacerbate such grief rather than respect the individual and family sacrifice involved. By all means debate the war, but not when such grief is at its initial height and never by thoughtlessly claiming our diggers are dying in vain (even if you believe this).

Moreover, such a claim is usually just as morally and conceptually invalid as its opposite – that we must continue to fight a war or else such sacrifices would be wasted. And just as disgusting as the increasingly formulaic condolences to the grieving families from too many of our politicians and civic leaders.

Thursday, 19 May 2011

Letter to The West Australian

(not published)

Your article “Bitter rift over new defence chief” (May 19, p.11) incorrectly described the corporate succession plan for the ADF leadership as a purely military intention.

As in any large organisation, it has instead necessarily been developed and broadly endorsed over the last half-decade by the last three (Labor) Ministers for Defence, the last three Secretaries of the Department of Defence, the current CDF and indeed all recent (Coalition) shadow ministers and ministers.

The article also nonsensically claimed that the ADF somehow “resents interference from its civilian masters”.  

As a necessarily apolitical institution our defence force has never resisted the essential constitutional principle of “civil control of the military” by Ministers on behalf of parliament.

But civil control is rightly different in law, history and practice to a notion of “civilian mastership”.

Such a notion does not justify, for example, amateurish interference in military professional matters by public servants, armchair strategists in academia or would-be war correspondents in the media - or automatically validate criticism by them - just because they are civilians and the ADF therefore just slaves to their will or always in the wrong because of the uniforms worn.

Moreover, the ADF is now largely prevented by ministerial direction and bureaucracy from answering back when publicly criticised. This emphasises the need for the longstanding and undoubted loyalty to civil control by our defence force to be reciprocated by ministers defending the ADF from inaccurate, biased or unfair public attacks.

Monday, 02 May 2011

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Wednesday, 04 May 2011)

It is Howard Carew (letters, May 01) who has missed the point, not professors Greg Jackson and Jeffrey Grey, but tragically he is not alone.

The commandant of ADFA did not treat the filming incident as a “misdemeanour” as Mr Carew mistakenly claims. He called in the military and civilian police straight away – and well before the incident became public. The independent Kirkham Inquiry will no doubt vindicate this and other of his actions.

Both Jackson and Grey were or are longstanding senior (civilian) academics at ADFA and have a deep knowledge of the academy, its student body and its institutional culture. If their judgement is that the recent incident is neither typical, nor indicative of a systemic problem, then surely the community should trust their first-hand views.

There should be no more public hysteria fuelled by inaccurate, sensationalist and often biased media coverage ― and by ministerial panic.

Thursday, 21 April 2011

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

Your April 19 editorial and letters from John Simmons and Patrick Ryan (April 18) ignore that the constitutional principle of civil control of the military can only be exercised properly when in accordance with the Constitution, the Defence Act and the principles of natural justice and administrative law.

Whatever his motivation concerning the recent incident at ADFA, the current Minister for Defence has clearly not done so. Instead of pointing out that the incident was being properly investigated (as he now admits) he poured verbal petrol on the fire of uninformed public hysteria.

Section 2 of the Defence Act deliberately separates civil control (by the Minister) from command (by the Chief of the Defence Force), yet this Minister improperly intervened in the chain of command to publicly traduce and scapegoat the commandant of ADFA. This Minister then sought, improperly and perhaps unlawfully, to quash a disciplinary penalty.

Mr Simmons is incorrect, This latter action did contravene the separation of powers between executive and judicial or quasi-judicial functions.

Even if the ADF’s statutory disciplinary code is not based in Chapter III of the Constitution it is still immune from executive fiat. Moreover, under the principles of administrative law, any Minister should avoid trespassing, or being seen to trespass, on the exercise of statutory quasi-judicial functions whether they be an ADF disciplinary tribunal or, say, the Social Security Appeals Tribunal.

There are also general limits as to what a Minister can direct a statutory officeholder (CDF, Service Chief) to do where Parliament has conferred some authority to exercise power independently of the Minister for good reason – such as to command the defence force.

In legal terms, the stream (Minister) cannot rise above the source (statute/Parliament).

Finally, no-one in the ADF, as Mr Ryan oddly believes, thinks the defence force somehow works for the Governor-General and not the elected government.

The GG’s designation as Commander-in-Chief of the ADF under the Constitution (Section 68) is titular and exercised only on the advice of the Executive Council (ie. the PM and Cabinet).

For example, when later asked what would have happened if Sir John Kerr had tried to use the ADF to dismiss the Whitlam government, the then ADF Chief (General Sir Frank Hassett) noted that the military would necessarily have followed the directions of that government’s Minister for Defence.

Thursday, 14 April 2011

Letter to The Australian

(not published)

Last Monday’s editorial and many recent letters about our defence force are quite chilling in their shameful, Dreyfus-like, rush to judgement irrespective of the facts, the law and the principles of natural justice.

Even more importantly, what really went wrong over the last week or so was not that the ADF’s chiefs somehow resisted civil control of the military but that they had to insist on the Minister exercising it properly.

The clash is definitely not anything to do with the ADF somehow improperly resisting ministerial authority, fighting reform of the Department of Defence or condoning sexist behaviour.

As per the Constitution and the Defence Act, civil control of the military is rightly exercised by the Minister for Defence on behalf of parliament and the executive. However, our tried and tested Westminster constitutional model deliberately separates control and command to remove the gun from our politics ― and the party politics from the institutional culture and operations of our military.

Command is vested in the Chief of Defence Force and Service Chiefs as statutory officeholders. By law the only ADF member the Minister for Defence can direct is the CDF, who then converts the Minister’s directions to orders and passes them down the military chain of command.

If the Minister has concerns about any individual he needs to take them up with the CDF, by convention in private.

He should never, as occurred last week, worsen public hysteria by reaching down into the chain of command to scapegoat the commandant of ADFA publicly. Nor should he unfairly gag those falsely accused or create a second victim of the ADFA sexual assault incident.

The Minister further abused his lawful authority by interfering improperly in an on-going defence force disciplinary proceeding ― contrary to longstanding conventions and, at the very least, the spirit of both the law and the principle of the separation of powers between executive and even quasi-judicial functions or statutory disciplinary codes.

Finally, the Minister is also neglecting his responsibility to defend the ADF collectively, and its personnel individually, from unfair and misinformed criticism. Just as the Attorney-General has to defend a judiciary who also cannot answer back.

Wednesday, 13 April 2011

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

Bruce Haigh (“Looking at Australian Defence Force through a glass darkly”, April 13, p.19), unwittingly encompasses nearly every aspect of the current hysterical stampede following an undoubted and reprehensible sexual assault at ADFA.

Offering not a shred of fact or responsible argument, Haigh defames the Commandant of ADFA, Bruce Kafer, by claiming that he somehow “failed to perform his duty” and “failed to show the requisite leadership”. There is absolutely no evidence of this, and much against the accusation, as refutations of the many baseless allegations against Kafer and his staff are now finally drip fed out by the Minister for Defence.

I hope Kayfer sues Haigh for the cowardly calumny, even before the Kirkham Inquiry spreads egg all over the face of Haigh and all the others who have rushed to judgement through ignorance, bias or hypocrisy.

How Haigh can so brazenly deny that Kafer is the second victim of this incident is also surely beyond the understanding of anyone who respects the principles of natural justice. Haigh is also clearly oblivious to the irony that it is such unfounded and malicious criticism of Kafer that has caused such considerable injustice to a decent man who did his duty – as the Kirkham Inquiry will no doubt find.

Finally, Haigh fundamentally misunderstands, or more likely misrepresents deliberately, the principle of civil control of the military (by the Minister) and how command of the ADF is properly exercised (by the CDF) under that control.

What went wrong over the last week was not that the military’s chiefs somehow resisted proper civil control but that they had to insist on it.

Wednesday, 13 April 2011

Letter to The Australian Financial Review

(published Thursday, 14 April 2011)

“The military versus its masters”, Opinion, April 13, p.55 was entirely wrong about every aspect of the current clash between the defence force and Defence Minister Stephen Smith its Minister.

Constitutionally, and in the Defence Act, civil control of the military can only be properly exercised by the Minister for Defence - on behalf of parliament and the executive – not by Public Service bureaucrats as Geoffrey Barker Paul Dibb improperly implied.

The tried and tested Westminster constitutional model deliberately separates control and command. This has long removed the gun from our politics and the party politics from the institutional culture and operations of our military.

Command of the defence force is therefore vested by law in the Chief of Defence Force (CDF) and Service Chiefs as statutory officeholders. The only Australian Defence Force member the Minister can legally direct is the CDF, who then converts the Minister’s directions to orders and passes them down the military chain of command.

What went wrong over the last week was not that the military’s chiefs somehow resisted proper civil control but that they had to insist on it.

The Minister has a responsibility to defend the ADF collectively, and its personnel individually, from unfair and inaccurate criticism (in this case media and public hysteria about the Commandant of ADFA). Just as the Attorney-General has to similarly defend the judiciary.

If the Minister has  concerns about any individual he should take them up privately with the CDF, not worsen the hysteria by reaching down into the chain of command to humiliate an ADF member publicly. Especially when this officer was being defamed, was not allowed to explain what had really occurred and was effectively denied natural justice. And where this Minister has recent form for scapegoating the Chief of Navy over the amphibious fleet .

Finally, the Minister compounded all this by interfering improperly in an on-going defence force disciplinary proceeding - contrary to longstanding conventions, and at the very least the spirit of both the law and the principle of the separation of powers between executive and judicial/disciplinary functions.

The clash is definitely not anything to do with the ADF somehow resisting ministerial authority or reform of the Department of Defence.

Friday, 08 April 2011

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published until 14 April 2011 during which time the public hysteria had become much worse)

The nub of the constitutional, legal and professionalism issues that have now emerged from a disgraceful sexual assault at ADFA is simple.

Under the constitution and the Defence Act, the Minister rightly exercises civil control of the military on behalf of parliament and the executive (although some APS bureaucrats improperly think they should too). But command of the defence force is rightly vested by law separately in the CDF and Service Chiefs as the governor-general’s appointment as commander-in-chief is purely titular.

This tried and tested constitutional model has long removed the gun from Westminster-system politics and the party politics from the institutional culture and operations of the military in those democracies. An apolitical defence force that defends all Australians equally is essential to our parliamentary democratic system and indeed the professionalism of our defence force

If the Minister for Defence thinks he has a problem with anyone in the defence force, both legally, morally and by longstanding convention he should advise the CDF of this, preferably in private, so the CDF can properly address the matter through the chain of command.

Instead, in answer to an ignorant and provocative question by a journalist, Stephen Smith unwisely humiliated a dedicated senior ADF officer in public, and tried to scapegoat him for doing what that officer considered to be his professional duty where the Minister did not know, nor could be expected to know, all the complex circumstance involved.

He then publicly interfered in on-going defence force disciplinary proceedings - again contrary to longstanding conventions, probably the law (in spirit at least) and the principle of the separation of powers (between executive and judicial or disciplinary functions).

This is not a minor matter, nor one of the ADF somehow resisting reform or  Minister Smith’s grip on his department and the ADF.

The Minister has dug himself into this hole and he should stop digging. Including his staff briefing pet journalists to traduce the Australia Defence Association for doing its job as the independent, non-partisan, national public-interest watchdog for defence issues.

Monday, 04 April 2011

Letter to The Australian

(not published)

Your article “Spy chief told UK to boycott Evatt as PM” (April 4, p.1) only confirmed what most students of the period already realised anyway – Spry’s professional concerns about Evatt’s mental stability and consequent reliability if he became PM.

The article ignored this occurred at a high point in the Cold War, Australia’s strategic relationship with the US had only just been rebuilt, we then had much closer alliance with the UK,  and the Petrov affair occurred just after the armistice (not peace) in the Korean War - when the strategic threat from Soviet-led communism was overt and growing - and our diggers still occupied front-line defensive positions there.

Only cursory mention was made of the major problems caused by the previous Labor government’s initial unwillingness to accept that Soviet espionage had thoroughly penetrated the Australian government throughout the 1940s. A threat which led Chifley to create ASIO to fix the problem and reassure our allies that Australia could be trusted to respect confidences.

But the biggest omission from the article was commonplace acceptance of Evatt’s burgeoning mental instability even then. Instability confirmed in detail by his bizarre behaviour at and after the subsequent Royal Commission into Soviet espionage, his sudden and disastrous splitting of the ALP in even more bizarre circumstances, and as recorded in most memoirs of the period by Labor politicians.

There was also no discussion that no modern, mainstream, Australian political party would elect or retain a leader as mentally ill as Evatt. Nor that his leadership when so sick was an undoubted tragedy for Labor and Australia.

But the key point is that if Evatt could not be trusted to respect the security of intelligence provided by allies (for reasons of illness, ideology or both), then those allies were entitled not to provide it to him.

In such an unprecedented and extremely difficult situation where the ALP would or could not remove their ill leader, the head of ASIO was surely duty-bound to advise such key allies of his professional opinion. No disloyalty to Australia was involved. Spry did not suggest that such material should not continue to be shared with relevant Australian Cabinet ministers and officials, only that Evatt was a serious problem and why.

Finally, Spry was Director-General of ASIO, our national security intelligence agency. He was not a “spy chief” as one of ASIO’s roles is to deter and prevent spying, not undertake it.

Such limited analysis, amateur terminology and shallow conclusions are to be expected when only the subjective views of two left-wing academics are quoted.

Tuesday, 15 March 2011

Letter to Crikey.com

(published Wednesday, 16 March 2011)

Margaret Simons’ analysis of the first week of “7:30” (Crikey, yesterday, Item 15) claimed that all the stories broken “deserved their place in the program”. But surely the highly inaccurate and sensationalist first-night story about the poor state of the Navy’s amphibious fleet was a particularly disappointing launch for a revamped approach to serious current affairs television by the national broadcaster?

While wrongly castigating the Navy for the disastrous state of its amphibious ships, the program did not once point out that responsibility for their maintenance was largely removed from the Navy in 2003 by the Department of Defence, supposedly to save money and with little care for the strategic consequences and operational considerations.

Nor that the root cause of the problem was the particularly short-sighted decision by the Keating Government in 1993-94 to over-rule professional advice from the defence force and buy second-hand American, rather than new, ships in the first place. Again to supposedly save money without due care for the strategic and operational problems caused.

A disastrous decision that has instead cost the taxpayer more over the long run and saddled the Navy with 40-year old adapted ships, rather than purpose-designed ones that would now be under half-way through their operating lives.

Given the several decades-long life-cycle of many defence weapons platforms (ships, vehicles, aircraft, etc), short-sighted and incorrect decisions in defence procurement have a very long life. They can reach out to touch politicians and governments well into the future. The current Minister for Defence and Treasurer, for example, were advisers to PM Keating when the wrong decision was taken and must now cope with the consequences nearly 20 years later. This irony is not lost on anyone in our defence force or indeed anyone with a long memory of defence issues.

The “7:30” program was aware of all this background (because the ADA had advised them) but oddly chose not to tackle the situation from a long-term perspective. It seems the quest for a first-night splash, and perhaps the scalp of the Chief of Navy, won out over the facts and balanced analysis of the causes?

Again ironically, the current Chief of Navy has done more to fix such problems than anyone else in the Department of Defence.

Indeed a good question for “7:30” to have asked instead for their splash is why Stephen Smith has not been defending Vice-Admiral Crane from all the incorrect media and political scape-goating?

Wednesday, 09 March 2011

Letter to The Geelong Advertiser

(published Tuesday, 10 March 2011)

Your article Recent coverage on on the future of Fort Queenscliff failed to explain the problem or sheet home responsibility.

As with many historic defence sites around Australia the base problem is that the fort no longer has any military utility but high heritage maintenance costs. The defence force (and the Commonwealth government) no longer needs it but the state government does not want to take it over (as has occurred with all the old forts in other harbours around the country) and pay the upkeep costs.

It could, however, have been very different.

In the early 2000s the Army sought to move the Land Warfare Development Centre (LWDC) from Puckapunyal to Queenscliff to replace Command and Staff College. The centre was well-suited to Queenscliff, the layout of the fort and the amenities of the area. It could have stayed there for decades.

Its location in Puckapunyal has long created major staffing problems because that area does not suit the family structure of the older, more senior-ranking personnel needed to staff the centre, especially in terms of career continuity for older spouses and the range and quality of secondary schools and tertiary institutions needed for older children.

Unfortunately Puckapunyal sits in the highly marginal seat of McEwen and the then federal MP, Fran Bailey, was also the Parliamentary Secretary for Defence. She refused abused her position by refusing to let any unit be moved from Puckapunyal, thereby incurring permanent massive costs for the taxpayer and perpetual staffing difficulties for the LWDC.

Few ministerial decisions have been so short-sighted and destructive ― for the LWDC, the Army, the taxpayer and now the Borough of Queenscliff and the greater Geelong area.

Tuesday, 08 March 2011

Letter to The Australian

(not published)

Calls by the Opposition Spokesman for Defence, Senator David Johnston, for the Chief of Navy to be held accountable for the worn-out state of the Navy’s amphibious fleet are misplaced at best (and will do nothing for confidence that he is properly across defence issues).

The Chief of Navy largely lost the responsibility for warship maintenance in 2003 when this was transferred to the Defence Materiel Organisation and Navy Support Command was disbanded.

Yet again, a departmental reorganisation aimed at supposedly saving money has instead resulted in significant operational costs to the defence force and risks to Australians generally, as well as greater financial costs over the long term to the taxpayer.

All the virulent public scape-goating of Vice Admiral Crane would not be happening, of course, if the Minister for Defence was properly defending the Chief of Navy from uninformed, and often ignorant, criticism in the media.

Those with long memories of defence planning know that the main reason why HMA Ships Kanimbla and Manoora are now worn out is because the government in 1993 chose to save money in the short term, against professional advice from the defence force, by forcing the Navy take second-hand American ships rather than get new ones that would now only be halfway through their operational lives.

A short-sighted decision, incidentally, taken by a government in which Stephen Smith and Wayne Swan were advisers to the prime minister. The irony of this is not lost on members of the defence force and indeed anyone who is informed on defence issues.

Friday, 04 March 2011

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

Friday’s editorial on departmental budgeting unfortunately cited Defence’s purchase of an additional C-17 strategic transport aircraft as an example of wasteful spending, just to expend allocations by June 30.

It is really an excellent example of the opposite.

First, capital investment programming to rebuild our defence force after the prolonged neglect of the 1980s and 1990s necessarily means a multi-year, not single-year, approach.

Second,  as Dr Mark Thomson from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has noted in this and previous years, it makes sense to bring other programming decisions forward if a supplier is behind schedule on a current-year program.

Third, the extra C-17 is not additional investment overall anyway as it is almost entirely offset by cancelling later-year aircraft in the C-130J program.

Finally, as with the UK and Canada, the decision to obtain more C-17s  is based on practical experience of the aircraft’s utility.

As with most other aspects of the flawed 1980s defence-of-Australia dogma, events and consequent ADF operations in East Timor, Aceh, Nias, PNG, Solomon Islands, Iraq and Afghanistan have continued to disprove the idiocy of largely denuding our defence force of  the air and maritime strategic mobility capabilities it needs to execute government policy.

Tuesday, 22 February 2011

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

Parts of today’s editorial on ASIO were undergraduate-style polemics from a bygone era, not the considered comment and adherence to facts expected of a major newspaper.

Perhaps the editorialist’s confusion, or nostalgic rush to the head from their student days, stemmed from misunderstanding that ASIO is a security intelligence agency not an “intelligence service”. And from not appreciating that ASIO, far from being “essentially secretive and undemocratic in nature”, is a well-regulated agency operating under numerous ministerial, parliamentary and other safeguards.

It has no power of arrest, just like its counterparts in other Westminster-system democracies, and poses no threat to democratic discourse that is undertaken peacefully, publicly, lawfully and with respect to the democracy that ASIO helps protect. ASIO operations are for all practical purposes really no more intrusive than most other departments, especially those who often interact with citizens such as Centrelink or Medicare.

It is also no more secretive than other departments with an obvious national security or police role such as Defence and the AFP. ASIO is naturally more conscious than most departments of a citizen’s right to privacy and the need for a strict apolitical approach organisationally. Certainly much more so than the ABC and the Department of Immigration.  

Accusing the new ASIO building of being an “intrusive secret police headquarters” is simply emotive, incorrect and irrelevant. The headquarters of all our six intelligence and security agencies are in the parliamentary triangle – as are all other important Commonwealth departments and agencies.

Friday, 18 February 2011

Letter to The West Australian

(not published)

Andrew Probyn (“Minister faces defence battle”, February 18, p.21), no doubt unconsciously, produced several remarkable ironies when discussing the current poor state of the Navy’s amphibious fleet.

He misses that most of the responsibility for ship maintenance was long ago removed from the Navy (to the Defence Materiel Organisation), but then suggests “navy chiefs [get] the bollocking they deserve”.

Andrew then quotes camp oven-to-kettle criticism from former Defence official Hugh White, a leading exponent of the strategic school long strongly opposed to the ADF being strategically deployable at all. A school, in fact, whose trenchant opposition to amphibiosity almost caused us major strategic humiliation in East Timor, if not for the ADF’s “can do” attitude and Dili being relatively close.

Then we come to the root-cause irony that the now well-recognised incorrect decision to go for old, second-hand and barely suitable amphibious ships in 1993-94, rather than get new ones suited to Australia’s requirements and save money over the long-run, was taken deliberately by the government in which Stephen Smith was an adviser to Paul Keating.

The final irony is that the current Chief of Navy has probably done more to fix operational, materiel and personnel problems across the whole fleet than anyone else in Defence.

After Vice-Admiral Crane has been so wrongly blamed and “bollocked” in so much uninformed media and popular comment, it is surely now time for Minister Smith to emphasise this truth in public.

Friday, 18 February 2011

Letter to The Australian

(not published)

Henry Ergas (“Captain Kafka running Defence, February 18, p.12) shows no understanding of how to measure and test defence capability development.

Nor of the relationship between studying a largely unknowable future, that must be met by effective strategic planning, and then executed by focused, flexible and adaptable force structuring. Hence his 1950s-era claim that “defence acquisition decisions reflect compromises between the Services’ wish lists”.

Then he oddly describes Sir Arthur Tange as somehow being “the greatest reformer in the department’s history” when Tange was the one most responsible for creating the mess in Defence in the first place. Not least by delaying an effective strategic-level, joint-Service command structure for two generations after they were implemented in comparable countries to, among other things, eradicate harmful inter-Service rivalry.

Finally, Henry misses that it is primarily not the Navy’s fault that its 40-year old ships are finally worn out (as is much else in the ADF).

Australia serially under-invested in our defence force for the three decades before 2000, hence the catch-up increases needed since then; another key point Henry ignores. Indeed it is financial theorists, and other closet Napoleons, that have too often produced the glib excuses enabling governments to disguise their prolonged neglect of the ADF from the Australian people.

Sunday, 13 February 2011

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

Peter Marshall (Letters, February 12) and Bernard Davis (Letters, February 8) seem to have been confused by editing of the ADA letter (February 4) about observing the differences between commemoration and (militarist) celebration of our war dead. The words “had to defend” and “have to” (fight) were unfortunately omitted from our discussion of the defence of liberties in war (in general), both past and probable future ones respectively.

But Peter and Bernard also ignore an important principle. Current arguments about the causes, justifications and results of the more controversial wars, even those long past, should surely be entirely separate from our honouring of those lost in war because of what they believed at the time were their responsibilities as Australian citizens.

Moreover, we need to avoid the distortions of hindsight, folk memory and what historians refer to as “presentism” or the "condescension of posterity" ― applying contemporary perspectives to explaining past events rather than placing these events in their historical context (especially where this involves the projection into past strategic debates of current political opinions).

In 1914, for example, most Australians were just as intellectually and strategically aware as we are now. They considered that Australia would suffer greatly in economic, strategic and liberty terms if Germany won the war.

Whether they were correct or not, and no matter what some might think now of their decisions then, such heavy sacrifices should continue to be honoured in a non-partisan manner by all Australians.

Monday, 07 February 2011

Letter to The Australian

(published Tuesday, 08 February 2011)

(similar letter published in full by The Canberra Times on Monday, 14 February 2011)

Whatever the merits of its arguments either way, the real issue is that the Kokoda Foundation study, “Australia’s Strategic Edge in 2030”, again highlights the flawed Defence White Paper process used since the mid 1970s to plan Australia’s future security ("Boost military to take on China", The Australian, February 7, p.5-6).

The 2009 White Paper process was better than its predecessors, but neither the way they are prepared or the resulting papers have been intellectually or institutionally robust enough for such an important task. And the defence investment promises made in White Papers have never been kept by governments anyway.

Finally, such White Papers are limited in how they can justify defence strategies and capabilities because, by definition, they are declaratory policy not what Australia can and does really think.

Instead of such flawed bureaucratic processes, and the partisan or academic squabbling which invariably follows, we need to use a formal strategic intelligence estimate of the various possibilities and their likelihoods followed by a formal strategic appreciation to derive the best responses.

Every country needs to work to stop another Cold War. China and the US also need to be discouraged from becoming peer strategic competitors in another Cold War.

A formal strategic appreciation of the challenges, opportunities and threats caused by the rise of China would be a much better means for Australia to encourage the former and discourage the latter.

Wednesday, 02 February 2011

Letter to The Australian Financial Review

(published Monday, 07 February 2011)

Both sides of politics are being less than correct historically when attributing blame for sudden and burgeoning deficiencies in defence force amphibious vessel capabilities.

There are four root causes to the problem, all  of them ignored by the politicians and indeed missed by most media reporting.

First, largely inadequate investment in defence capabilities by governments of both political persuasions since World War II has meant precious lessons from the Pacific campaign about Australia needing extensive amphibious capabilities were mostly lost for over four decades. Australia remains a heavily seaborne-trade dependent, island continent, surrounded on two sides by archipelagoes and with vast oceans in every direction. We are a country also responsible strategically and/or legally for ten per cent of the Earth’s surface (most of it ocean).

Second, amphibiosity became a cultural and organisational orphan in our defence force because political horizons, and departmental bureaucratic and funding arrangements, from the 1940s to the 1990s savagely discriminated against joint (tri-Service) capabilities in favour of exclusively single-Service ones.

Third is a cultural problem in the Navy (and to some extent the other two Services), which for too long regarded amphibiosity as a third-level, or even irrelevant, professional qualification and operational skill. Even now the Navy’s elite Principal Warfare Officers (PWOs) cannot specialise in amphibious warfare as a core skill and be badged accordingly until 2013.

Finally, once again, governments are at fault for short-term thinking driven by diverting defence investment to vote-buying elsewhere.

As with many naval vessels, it has cost more over the life-cycle of our amphibious ships to buy, maintain and upgrade second-hand, old or inadequate vessels than it would have cost to procure and maintain adequate new ships and regularly replace them in the first place. Moreover, if the Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke, Keating and early Howard governments had invested in sufficient, bigger, and new ships matched to regional maritime conditions, strategic requirements and operational needs, since 1987 we would have much more easily handled regional contingencies in Fiji, Vanuatu, Bougainville, PNG, Solomon Islands and East Timor.

In hull terms, steel is cheap and air is free. Modern ships of size can now be run by much smaller crews than in the past. This is why the modern Canberra class amphibious ships coming into service in the next decade mid 20-teens will revolutionise how the ADF can work and should think in deterrence, stability, peacekeeping, disaster relief, warfighting, and diplomatic and sovereignty support operations generally.

Wednesday, 02 February 2011

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Friday, 04 February 2011)

Much correspondence on the proposed memorials for the world wars, both for and against, has missed some of the historical and enduring perspectives involved.

First, the continuing importance of the vista from the new and old parliament houses down Federation Mall across the lake up Anzac Parade to the Australian War Memorial is not just scenic. It is an important symbolic, moral, historical and indeed practical reminder to all at Parliament House, and all who visit it, that generations of Australians have defended had to defend these liberties in war. Most of them ordinary Australians serving in our defence force temporarily.

Second, objections to the new memorials on the grounds they somehow encourage militarism are, at best, ahistorical and show considerable confusion about the differences between commemoration and celebration.

Third, my observation is that the commemorative focus of the current generation of war veterans and their families, both symbolically and personally, is on the names of their mates, comrades and loved ones properly recorded perpetually in bronze in the roll-of-honour above the Australian War Memorial’s pool of memory.

Finally, Australia has fought 12 wars and mounted some 45 peacekeeping and related operations since federation. We will undoubtedly have to fight and mount many more in future. Only three of the twelve memorial sites along Anzac Parade are spare (with one more reserved for the peacekeepers). Only the Korean and Vietnam Wars have been commemorated individually (for reasons peculiar to their era and community treatment of their veterans since).

On practical, symbolic and aesthetic grounds these, and the lakeshore parts of the very meaningful Parliament House – War Memorial vista, should surely now be reserved to commemorate worthwhile generic sacrifices (nurses, navy, army, air force, merchant marine, peacekeepers, etc) and not every war, other operation or campaign, current political fashion or ethnic group individually.

Monday 22 November 2010

Letter to Crikey.com

(published Tuesday, 23 November 2010)

Re. "Elite Oz soldiers in covert operations for top-secret base” (yesterday, Item 1). As the independent, non-partisan, national public-interest watchdog for defence and wider national security issues, can we point out that the article by Antony Lowenstein in yesterday's Crikey suffered two substantial and serious flaws that surely should have been challenged and corrected during the Crikey editorial process. Or else the whole article should have been spiked as crap, not journalism, or even as reasonable comment in public debate.

First, the article was merely a mixture of undergraduate-level urban rumours, historical myth (especially about the Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War) and left-wing conspiracy theory, flavoured by numerous factual mistakes, misrepresentations and misunderstandings about our defence force, its compliance with international law and, indeed, the way Australia actually works as a democracy ruled by law. Even the two Australian sources cited, such as an equally fact-free, six-year old, long-discredited Brian Toohey article in the Australian Financial Review, and a more recent but also unbalanced and quite factually erroneous article by Sally Neighbour in The Monthly, provided no actual basis for the specific and general claims made. Journalists quoting other mistaken journalists is not substantiation.

Second, everyone is free to write such tripe but it was plainly very irresponsible of Crikey to publish it. Our soldiers are deployed in Afghanistan fighting a UN-endorsed war at the lawful direction of our elected government, and on our behalf. It is unfair at best for any Australian to make their job harder or more dangerous by writing or publishing biased nonsense that can be so easily misused in Al Qa’eda propaganda. There is no excuse to betray the men and women of our defence force by such stupid, thoughtless and irresponsible claims. If you disagree with the war in Afghanistan, argue with our government (using facts), not endanger our troops (by wild claims).

Let us also be clear here about what Crikey has boldly stated. “Crikey understands Australia has been engaged in such behaviour [alleged killings contrary to the Laws of Armed Conflict] in the past decade in the Middle East, leaving Canberra and its officials open to potential charges of war crimes and prosecution in an international criminal court”.

Previous Ministers for Defence and the current Chief of Defence Force have pointed out on several previous occasions ― when journalists have made incorrect claims about supposed “assassinations” ― that the ADF, including its Special Forces, have not and do not ever assassinate anybody. They do not even deliberately kill anyone, except in battle, and where authorised by Australian rules-of-engagement grounded in the Laws of Armed Conflict and the ethics of a professional defence force made up of honourable fellow Australians. Similar denials have been made by Ministers responsible for ASIS. No journalist, or polemicist, has ever been able to back up such a claim with a single substantiated fact. Furthermore, as in this case, every journalist’s sole defence when challenged to prove such claims has been merely to cite older unsubstantiated claims by other unprofessional journalists or ideologues.

Then there is the determined lack of balance that permeated the article. The numerous denials by the Ministers and CDF are not even mentioned. No military or intelligence historian was cited either. The only two academic experts consulted, a defence finance expert and a lawyer who does not specialise in LOAC, naturally commented on a hypothetical basis only (and I suspect were not quoted accurately anyway). Both unsurprisingly made only the qualified observation that, if true, such acts would be illegal. Neither, however, offered any confirmation of the wild claims made or that they considered such claims might or could be true. Moreover, neither the ADA as the relevant public-interest watchdog, or the Australian Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers as the relevant professional body, were asked for an opinion. Antony has consulted us before so the omission this time is puzzling if one assumes he approached the topic objectively.

And just in case someone claims that the ADA is somehow biased, may I point out our extensive record of condemning the use of torture, rendition and assassination in the UN-endorsed international campaign against Islamist terrorism (usually referred to incorrectly by polemicists of either extreme as the supposed “war on terror”).

Sunday 14 November 2010

Letter to The Age (Melbourne)

(published in part Tuesday 16 November 2010)

Waleed Aly’s review of David Hicks’ book (“A prisoner of the search”, The Age, A2, November 13, p.19), deftly tackled its major flaw, the treachery question, and noted that objective readers seeking explanations will be disappointed.

As with most of his apologists, Hicks avoids discussing tackling that if any Australian now did what he has admitted doing in 2000-01 they could rightly be prosecuted under our updated treachery and counter-terrorism laws.

Too-long delayed amendments in 2002 finally closed the loopholes that allowed Wilfred Burchett, and fifty years later David Hicks, to escape prosecution for assisting an enemy we lawfully sent our defence force to fight in UN-endorsed operations on our behalf.

And with even more of the usual monotonous dishonesty, the book also fails to distinguish the undoubted legitimacy of Hicks's his internment as a belligerent captured in the Afghanistan War from the natural legal controversy over his later, quite separate, criminal trial, conviction and prison sentence by a US Military Commission for terrorist offences.

The sooner Australians learn first-hand what a dill Hicks is the better ― as is proved every time a microphone is thrust in front of Mamdouh Habib.

Thursday 11 November 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Monday 15 November 2010)

The Australia Defence Association welcomes John Warhurst (“Along came Jones with big power to be heard”, November 11, p.19) joining our criticism of broadcaster Alan Jones over his outrageous and cowardly attacks on the Director of Military Prosecutions, Brigadier Lyn McDade. As a necessarily non-partisan public-interest watchdog organisation, we also agree with Warhurst's John’s criticism of Jones for his right-wing bias and less than professional attention to detail more generally.

But Jones is a commercial broadcaster and advertising by others, not our taxes, support his vituperation and bias. His audience is also sectional by choice. Even allowing for John Warhurst’s own left-wing predilections, it is therefore difficult to reconcile the inconsistency of his criticism of Jones with his denials of ideological bias in some parts of the ABC as merely “allegations”.

By any truly apolitical measure, the ABC as an institution owned by taxpayers of all political allegiances can be less than careful in preserving the non-partisan stance necessary for a publicly-funded broadcaster and required by its Charter. Where many critics of ABC bias go wrong, however, is in regarding the whole ABC as an amorphous mass of “pinkos”.

In fact, the marked left-wing bias is largely concentrated in current affairs television and in a lack of sufficient diversity and balanced approaches among radio national talk-show hosts, especially in morning programs. ABC television and radio news, radio current affairs, News-24, and local radio across the country are generally free of political bias.  

Moreover, the advent of the balanced News-24 has highlighted the often suffocating left-wing bias of programs such as the 7:30 Report, Lateline and Q&A – the audiences of which cannot and should not be sectional by their own, the presenter’s or the ABC’s choice.

Friday 05 November 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

Any debate on civilian deaths in Iraq since 2003 lacks context if it excludes the very high probability that mass bloodshed among Iraqis was inevitable no matter when or how the Saddam Hussein regime finally fell. This was very obvious to those of us who worked in Iraq during the regime (in my case with the UN).

Whether the 2003 US-led intervention was the main cause of the bloodshed, or even a primary accelerant, will be a task for historians in more dispassionate times. As will be assessing whether the presence of international forces ended up ameliorating the bloodshed or exacerbating it.

What is known now is that the vast majority of Iraqis have been killed by other Iraqis.

Thursday 04 November 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Saturday 06 November 2010)

Debates about war are often naturally emotional but this does not mean they need be emotive - or at least emotive or ideological to the extent facts and context can be discounted or ignored.

Jochen Zeil (letters, November 4) incorrectly claimed that the “West” somehow established the Taliban and al Qa’eda as resistance movements against the Russians (actually Soviets). But the Taliban arose organically in late 1994, some five years after the Soviets left and the US and other Western powers had, short-sightedly, withdrawn support from the Mujahidin resistance instead of refocusing aid on rebuilding Afghan civil society.

From 1995 the Taliban were heavily backed by the Pakistani intelligence services due to fears that the enduring chaos in Afghanistan would spread to Pakistan’s tribal territories or worse, backed up by longstanding but flawed theories about Pakistan needing strategic depth against India by dominating Afghanistan. They still are to varying extents.

Similarly, following his service fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan and evolution of his Islamist ideology, Osama Bin Laden founded al Qa’eda independently and aimed it first at his own (US-aligned) Saudi government.

Wednesday 03 November 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Monday 08 November 2010)

Irfan Yusuf’s opinion article (“artful dodger does himself no favours on David Hicks”, November 3, p.19) itself employs several artful dodges of facts inconvenient to its argument.

First, if David Hicks or any other Australian committed the same acts now as Hicks has admitted doing in 2000-01, they could rightly be prosecuted under our updated treachery and counter-terrorism laws. Amendments in 2002 finally closed the loopholes that allowed Wilfred Burchett, and fifty years later David Hicks, to escape prosecution for assisting an enemy we lawfully sent our defence force to fight in UN-endorsed operations on our behalf.

Second, Hicks’ question to John Howard on ABC's [television program] Q&A ― misread as it was by Hicks ― was an artful dodge by its author (obviously not Hicks). As far too many do, the question omitted to distinguish the undoubted legitimacy of his detention as a belligerent captured in the Afghanistan War from the obviously controversial legitimacy of his later, quite separate, criminal trial, conviction and prison sentence by US Military Commission for terrorist offences.

The US Supreme Court has reconfirmed the legitimacy of interning captured belligerents in several decisions directly, and indirectly by its (correct) application of the general protections of Common Article 3 of all four Geneva Conventions to Hicks and the others so detained (even though they do not qualify for prisoner-of-war status under the Third Geneva Convention). This is also why the ADA has long noted that Mamdouh Habib was improperly detained at Guantanamo Bay because, unlike Hicks, he was arrested by Pakistan, not captured fighting in a war.

Third, the ADA has always defended Hicks’ right to argue his case in public but, on moral grounds at least, not to be financially rewarded for it. As well as the democratic principle involved, we have long argued that the sooner Australians learn first-hand what a dill Hicks is the better ― as is proved every time a microphone is thrust in front of Habib.

Finally, every review of Hicks’ book so far has criticised all that it avoids saying, especially when Hicks still refuses to be interviewed or otherwise explain himself. It seems odd that Irfan Yusuf is so silent about all this less than artful dodging.

Tuesday 02 November 2010

Letter to The Age (Melbourne)

(not published)

Dan Oakes (“Australia’s helping hand to warlord condemned”, November 2, p.2) typifies the problems Australia has in debating Afghanistan war issues objectively – and not just for its slanted headline. Asking only Bruce Haigh and Amin Saikal for their views yet again might tenderly massage the ideological stance of many “Age” readers but it does not inform them adequately or air the principles involved more broadly.

The Australia Defence Association is confident that checks and balances were applied appropriately in bringing six Afghan police auxiliaries (not militiamen per se) to Australia to participate in an ADF exercise testing our diggers before their deployment to Afghanistan.

Contrary to the opinions and background of Haigh and Saikal, the decision was based on up-to-date experience about the situation in Oruzgan province and integrated Afghan-ISAF efforts to rebuild civil society there. We should applaud such initiatives, not subjectively describe or condemn them.

Moreover, in any war judicious and nuanced choices often have to be made when fighting common enemies for the common good. In World War II we allied ourselves with one murderous dictator, Stalin, in order to defeat another one, Hitler.

Finally, in both principle and long-proven practice, any carefully controlled exposure of foreign security force personnel to Australian society and to our defence force, as organisms ruled by law, is always likely to have benefits far outweighing disadvantages for the foreign society they police or defend on their return.

Monday 01 November 2010

Letter to The Australian

(not published)

Your November 1^st editorial on defence funding and equipment procurement admirably addressed problems caused by political pork-barrelling and bureaucracy but misattributed or ignored other causes and their historical background.

First, it echoed recent claims about supposedly insufficient parliamentary scrutiny of the Department of Defence without noting that, whatever the sufficiency or not, Defence has long been scrutinised more than any other department.

Second, it regurgitated recent armchair strategic theorising, rather than note actual operational, economic and scientific analyses, about the submarines and warships we need and the best way to build and sustain them over their 30-year or more lives.

Third, it did not acknowledge that the program of real investment increases promised in the 2000 and 2009 Defence White Papers (but under-delivered) is still needed to cancel out the massive sustained neglect of our defence force throughout the last three decades of the 20^th Century under governments of both political persuasions. Moreover, as a percentage of both GDP and the federal budget, defence funding has not increased over recent decades and even remains at lower percentages than in the 1980s and early 1990s. It only seems higher because the economy is stronger.

The bottom line is not that we spend too much on defence but that we still do not invest enough or with sufficient long-term, apolitical vision. Especially in comparison to much greater national spending in each case on social security, health and education; spending which also continues to rise exponentially in comparison to defence (the only major government responsibility solely funded federally).

Monday 01 November 2010

Letter to The Sydney Morning Herald

(not published)

Your November 1^st editorial on the participation of six Afghan police auxiliaries in an ADF operational readiness evaluation (ORE) exercise at the Cultana Training Area in SA was riddled with factual, conceptual and practical misunderstandings.

First, the Afghans are formally members of the Oruzgan Police Provincial Response Force, not (or not just) a private militia. This distinction needs to be reinforced not diluted, and not least to the Afghans involved and those back home.

Second, no “Special Forces base where the dark arts are taught” was involved conceptually, geographically or with regard to the type and nature of the exercise.

Third, the ORE was collective training for our defence force, not individual training (schooling) for the Afghans.

Fourth, their participation in the exercise was mainly to benefit our diggers undergoing realistic testing before deploying to Afghanistan.

Finally, as the ADF’s long experience of educating and training Indonesian and Filipino soldiers in Australia has shown – and with appropriate commonsense safeguards - exposure to Australian society and how the military of a democracy ruled by law does work is of considerable benefit to authoritarian countries in the cultural re-engineering needed to transform their security forces into ones knowing and implementing how they should work. Indeed the national democratisation of Indonesia and the Philippines has been largely led and partly sustained by military officers trained and educated overseas in Australia and other liberal democracies.

Friday 29 October 2010

Letter to the Courier Mail (Brisbane)

(not published)

You can generally depend on Terry Sweetman (“Late confession raises questions about way Australia goes to war”, October 29, p.48) to bark up the wrong tree when trying to discuss a defence issue.

Terry suggests a grand conspiracy theory for none of Australia’s wars having involved declarations of war since 1941 (actually 1944). He should instead read the 1945 UN Charter which outlawed such declarations.

Then there is Terry’s odd belief that because 60 (actually around 50) per cent of those opinion polled oppose the Afghanistan War they must all be informed and correct. Trust Terry to ignore the simplistic, context-free questions asked to gain such high results.

He should instead read recent Hansards that detail many thoughtful speeches by MPs from all mainstream parties debating the war. He could then compare them with the large percentage of uninformed and/or ideological opinions on the war offered up on blog sites, talkback radio and letters to the editor (about two thirds of them by our estimation).

Terry could also compare this blog-standard nonsense to the detailed understandings of our troops on the ground in Afghanistan. This might help him grasp their growing frustration at silly articles like his – and the dangerous situation for any democracy at war when our troops fighting it become markedly more informed than much of the population at home.

Friday 22 October 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Wednesday 27 October 2010)

Few would hate war more than a soldier because few know more about it first-hand or professionally.

David Stephens’ suggestion (Letters, October 22) that defence force commanders somehow want to stay in Afghanistan for the supposed “training” value is as offensive as it is ignorant.

With a small, professional, defence force, not the mass armies of previous wars, a very small part of the national family now fights our country’s battles. And, just from Afghanistan, they have suffered 21 dead, 152 wounded, 9 widows, 2 grieving fiancés and 19 children now without Dad.

Indeed, much of our country’s combat burden is borne by a very small part of the ADF, including the Special Forces now showing signs of strain with some personnel having done seven tours of Afghanistan, plus Iraq and East Timor.

But is the general community now so out of touch with the defence force that protects them that ludicrous and insensitive notions about enduring all this for “training” can be believed - or thought worth publishing?

Sunday 17 October 2010

Letter to the West Australian (Perth)

(not published)

The headline of Paul Murray’s article “War criminals or just doing their duty?” (“West Australian”, October 16, p.32) epitomises the mostly uninformed, inaccurate and sensationalist media coverage of the charges against three commandos.

The charges indisputably involve a battlefield accident, not a war crime. This defamation of the men concerned shows, at best, careless or callous indifference to them, their unit, our defence force and the cause for which they fight on our behalf.

Such articles, based on popular misconceptions and assumptions yet to be tested in court, also confuse the general public and needlessly anger many war veterans. Especially where anyone forgets about the laws of war and associated accountabilities that have always applied to our soldiers in combat.

Too many Australians are also unnecessarily fearful because poor media reporting has not explained that the known circumstances of this particular battlefield accident are so highly unusual, and specific, that are they most unlikely to apply to combat generally.

Wednesday 13 October 2010

Letter to The Age (Melbourne)

(not published)

Your editorial defending the principle and process whereby three soldiers have been charged over a battlefield accident in Afghanistan is a refreshing change from the position of your sister paper in Sydney which (wrongly) editorialised on 30 August that such charges could or should never be laid – and then declined to publish the ADA’s objections to that position [below].

Wednesday 06 October 2010

Letter to the Australian Financial Review

(published Thursday 07 October 2010)

Recent letters, editorials and opinion comment on the charging of two Australian soldiers and an officer over a battlefield accident in Afghanistan seem based on mistaken assumptions as to the circumstances, operational context and laws applying.

Fears that such charges might now mean a lawyer crouching beside every digger are also generally unfounded. The publicly-known circumstances of this accident, and the resultant charges, are quite specific to this incident. Any added application to wider combat seems minimal to nil because all diggers every digger, in every war Australia has fought, have has had limits imposed on their use of lethal force in combat (chiefly by the Laws of Armed Conflict based on the Hague and Geneva Conventions).

That this was a battlefield accident is undisputed by all except Taliban propaganda but, at the very least, four non-combatant children and a youth protected by the 4^th Geneva Convention were accidentally killed by the Australian Defence Force in February 2009.

The investigation and accountability processes of a defence force deployed by a democracy ruled by law necessarily kicked in. Otherwise we are no different to the Taliban, the SS or the Japanese in World War II.

Key facts as to how the accident occurred, and whether reckless or negligent failure to comply with rules-of-engagement or other command orders contributed, will now be tested in court not on letters pages, blogs or talkback radio.

Otherwise, as for previous wars, media sensationalists the sensationalist wing of our media, and political extremists, will make scurrilous allegations about supposed ADF war crimes or atrocities for ever.

Fortunately for those charged, they will at least be tried by court martial where their guilt or innocence and any punishment, including any mitigating circumstances, will be decided by professional peers who understand the operational difficulties and moral nuances of combat. Unlike in the new Military Court of Australia as set out in the seriously flawed bill before Parliament.

In the MCA, serious offences that would mean a jury trial for any Australian civilian would be heard by a Federal Court judge sitting alone, with no jury or court martial board, and with no requirement for the judge to have experience of military service or war beyond a vaguely defined “knowledge of the ADF”.

Controversy about the charged commandos further emphasises the conceptual flaws and civil liberties outrages posed by the imposition of the MCA on our nation’s defence force by out-of-touch politicians, arrogant civilian lawyers and a previously apathetic populace.

Saturday, 25 September 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published 28 September 2010)

David Barbeler, “Memorial held over site of ship’s grave” (September 25, p.2), is to be congratulated for at least identifying the submarine that sank the “Centaur”, off Brisbane in May 1943, as Japanese. Unlike, for example, Queensland premier Anna Bligh whose recent press releases notoriously attribute  the sinking only to “a submarine”.

Failure to identify the submarine, and omission of any mention that the sinking of a plainly marked hospital ship was a deliberate war crime, is dishonourable historically, disgraceful morally and counter-productive strategically.

Worldwide public remembrance of war crimes should never allow fundamental details to be airbrushed away by political correctness, inappropriate fears about commercial consequences, or undeserved sensitivity for contemporary diplomatic niceties. Particularly as most Japanese today know little if anything of Japanese aggression and atrocities throughout Asia in the 1910-45 period because their school and university history books do not tell the truth.

We should not condone such revisionism, dishonour our own war veterans or forget their hard-won strategic lessons. By continuing to remember and proclaim the truth about such atrocities in context we also avoid the slippery slope to wider denials and increased risk of future war crimes through loss of deterrent moral force internationally.

Most importantly we need to avoid the lazy mistake of assuming this is just an historical issue. As current China-Japan territorial tensions over distant islands again show,  a perennial cause of strategic instability in East and North Asia is Japan’s continued unwillingness to admit wartime aggression and atrocities - in stark contrast to Germany and its reintegration into modern Europe through truly facing its Nazi past and demonstrating genuine contrition.  

True friends of modern Japan are not those who help the Japanese government and people to continue denying responsibility for major wartime aggression, widespread atrocities and their contemporary consequences.

Wednesday, 08 September 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published 21 September 2010)

As part of a UN-endorsed operation, Australia - not just our defence force - is fighting a difficult war in Afghanistan. Every Australian therefore has a citizenship responsibility to debate Australia’s participation responsibly. Not least so our diggers are not unduly endangered, the enemy not irresponsibly assisted, nor the UN Charter-based international system otherwise undermined.

Rather than calling for advocating censorship, as Rick Patten (Letters, September 07) misunderstands, the ADA is calling only for debate to be informed and responsible.

This includes letters to the editor, so our objection to David Lewis’s letter was therefore threefold. Every supposed fact he quoted was unarguably incorrect (not just a difference of opinion). His argument would also not be regarded as objective, by either informed opponents of the war or any reasonable or neutral observer generally. The letter was so biased and irresponsible it risks being used by the enemy for misinformation, propaganda and subversion.

Critics of this and other ADA stances need to try addressing our logic, rather than just hurl abuse and avoid the nub of our arguments through straw men, red herrings and emotive irrelevancies.

Saturday, 04 September 2010

Letter to The Australian

(not published)

Angela Shanahan (“Catholic padres frozen out in Afghanistan”, Weekend Australian, September 4-5, p.7) unfortunately misunderstands the nature, needs and practice of chaplaincy support to our diggers in modern war.

This is a great pity as, contrary to growing secularism overall, both our defence force and the broader Australian community have once again re-learned in Afghanistan ― as we do in every war ― the importance of our military chaplains across a range of spiritual, operational, morale, institutional-ritual and national-honouring needs and responsibilities.

But Afghanistan battlefields are not mass-casualty, concentrated ones where unit-based chaplains are generally present at the point of death like they were in the world wars. The nature of the fighting, dispersed over large areas in often quite small groups, means that chaplains can rarely be there for deaths in combat although they invariably are if the severely wounded die later in a coalition medical facility.  

Moreover, in a 43-country, inter-operable coalition force spiritual and medical care is not just nationality based. ADF personnel necessarily have some access to chaplains of all denominations from many countries ― just as they do for surgeons and nurses.

Even more importantly, as in every war, every chaplain cares for the spiritual needs of all their diggers, not just those of any one denomination.

As there are only five full-time Roman Catholic chaplains in the whole Army, permanently stationing one at Tarin Kowt, even if this was possible, would quickly burn them out spiritually and physically. It would also unbalance rotations and inequitably match chaplains to the denominational balance of the force, thereby unfairly and improperly disadvantaging the diggers of some other denomination.

Finally, the Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops to the forces have not been responsible for posting chaplains since the day-to-day leadership of chaplains passed to each denomination's principal chaplain, in each Service, in the 1980s (replacing diocesan bishops from both major denominations being two-hatted as Chaplain-Generals in the Army Reserve). Each major denomination now has a mix of full-time and reservist principal chaplains organising chaplaincy in the Navy, Army and Air Force. They do a great job in very difficult circumstances.

Wednesday, 01 September 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Friday 03 September 2010)

The Canberra Times surely has a responsibility to informed public debate not to publish emotive and illogical letters such as that by David Lewis (September 01), with every sentence being based on a factual mistake and/or misquote, misunderstanding or emotive rant.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan is not somehow “illegal” but endorsed by several UN Security Council resolutions.

The incident that he criticises occurred in February not November 2009. Four, not nine, children were killed. Six, not nine, were killed overall and, however tragically, all the children were killed accidentally not “massacred”.

Civilian casualties from ISAF (not “NATO”) actions have steeply declined not “steadily gotten worse and worse” ― and UN figures record that more than two thirds of civilian deaths in the war have been perpetrated  by the Taliban and its Islamist allies. Most of these Taliban-caused deaths have involved deliberate or reckless breaches of international humanitarian law (IHL). Virtually none of the ISAF ones have and none deliberately.

Australian troops have not committed “shameful atrocities”, nor have “NATO” [ISAF] and Australian forces been involved in numberless civilian massacres”, nor do ISAF forces operate with an “obvious free-fire mentality”, as would surely be known by any objective and informed observer.

Finally, as well as getting the name of the Australia Defence Association (and my position) wrong, Mr Lewis carelessly or maliciously misquotes me as somehow saying “our troops (like the rest of NATO) are just an armed rabble”. The point made was the opposite. As the defence force of a liberal democracy ruled by law, the ADF complies with IHL and expects to be and is held properly accountable for doing so. Unlike the Taliban who are indeed an unaccountable, lawless armed rabble in moral and legal terms.

Mr Lewis’ letter was based, at best, solely on factually incorrect beliefs and misunderstandings that informed and objective citizens would not reasonably reach or argue. His views add only to public prejudice and ignorance, and recklessly help misinformation, propaganda and subversion by an enemy at war with the international community.

Such letters do not merit publication in a responsible newspaper.  

PS. Given the wartime context, religious overtones to the war and the writer being a clergyman, the factually and conceptually incorrect, and needlessly inflammatory, term “Islamic extremism” (actually Islamist extremism) in the letter by Vincent Zankin should also not have been published.

Monday 30 August 2010

Letter to The Sydney Morning Herald

(not published)

Your 30 August editorial is inconsistent with both Australia’s proud war record and our continuing responsibilities under international law.

No matter the difficulties, and no matter what our enemies (Nazi Germany, Japan, North Korea, China, North Vietnam, Taliban, etc) have done or might do instead, Australia always fights it’s wars while respecting the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC). Every previous and current digger knows that their application of force is not, and cannot ever be, unlimited in operational, moral or legal terms.

Moreover, the suspicion by some that the court martial of alleged offenders might risk soldiers exonerating soldiers is absurd in historical, ethical, judicial and professional terms. Not least because our counterpart national responsibility to our diggers is to ensure that if charged with breaches of LOAC they get a fair trial, including a jury of their professional peers.

In the vexed and nuanced situations involved in fighting wars fellow soldiers in a court martial are far more qualified to assess guilt, innocence and any mitigating or aggravating circumstances than a civilian court divorced from such realities, experiences and knowledge could ever be or be expected to be.

Saturday, 14 August 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Saturday, 21 August 2010)

Philip Dorling (“Leaks: Love ‘em or loathe ‘em”, August 14, p.27) claims that “no substantive case has been made that the WikiLeaks disclosures have materially harmed US or Australian military operations or security, or put Afghans … at any greater risk from the Taliban …”.

Putting aside the illogical qualifier “any” to still emerging facts, and the probable detriment for Australian troops in Afghanistan, Dorling's Philip’s whole approach is based on the syllogistic proposition that this is somehow merely a free-speech issue.

But the media rights group, Reporters Without Borders, and human rights watchdogs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have strongly condemned WikiLeaks for needlessly risking Afghan lives. Moreover, Australian law surely applies to WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, no matter what US, or indeed wider international action, might be taken to curb his (reckless at best) breaches of international humanitarian law.

Ironically, Dorling's Philip’s ahistoric description of the notorious Wilfred Burchett as a "journalist" when comparing him to Assange also misses the key point involved. Burchett was a willing communist activist for the North Koreans who, among many other treacherous acts, betrayed Australian prisoners-of-war in Korea while masquerading as a journalist who merely “reported from the other side”.

Burchett escaped his day in court only because of a loophole in archaic Australian treachery laws caused by the 1945 UN Charter’s abolition of the declarations of war that such laws depended on. Fortunately, under our reformed wartime treachery laws – especially the Security Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act, 2002 – Julian Assange would appear to have a case to answer,  legally as well as morally, for assisting by “any means whatsoever another country or organisation that is engaged in armed hostilities against the Australian Defence Force”.

As Burchett mythology shows, we should let a court determine the facts this time rather than, as with Burchett’s treachery, ignore fair play and dishonor our reciprocal citizenship obligations to the diggers we lawfully send to fight Australia’s wars.

Friday, 13 August 2010

Letter to The Australian

(not published)

Consideration of prosecuting Julian Assange under Australia’s wartime treachery laws (the Security Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act, 2002) should not depend on, or even need, a request from the US.

As an Australian who has needlessly endangered fellow Australian troops, Australian law applies to Assange independently of possible US actions or indeed wider action for Assange’s reckless breaches of international humanitarian law.

All Australians owe a moral and legal responsibility to the troops we send to fight our wars not to endanger or otherwise betray them – even if some of us might disagree with the lawful government decision to send them or oppose the war involved. No other position is fair or tenable in a parliamentary democracy ruled by law and based on reciprocal obligations among its citizens.

Particularly when there are many alternative avenues available for responsible dissent about any war that do not endanger our troops or their lawful mission as part of a UN-endorsed force.

Not when there are alternatives to irresponsibly bolstering enemy propaganda, repression of  dissent among anti-Taliban Afghans and any enemy’s will to fight.

And not where dissent recklessly and inhumanely undermines the universal acceptance of international law (and the responsibilities of Australia and every Australian to uphold it).

Wednesday, 11 August 2010

Letter to the Business Spectator

(published 11 August 2010)

Robert's Gottliebsen's article (The grunt needed for Defence, August 11) is certainly provocative, but his purported cure would worsen, not cure, the disease. The next Minister for Defence has much more to do than just sort out the problem of the Joint Strike Fighter. They must fix the Department of Defence's bureaucracy for a start.

As for the JSF, this is a particular problem that the Australia Defence Association and others have been pointing out for over six years. Unfortunately, the solutions are not easy and not isolated from wider strategic and corporate problems. Considerable detail on such matters can be found at www.ada.asn.au.

Anyone who follows defence issues would also know that Malcolm Turnbull has not shown much interest in such matters, and indeed has made some glib public comments that indicate seriously insufficient reading and research concerning defence issues. Kevin Rudd would not make and ideal Defence Minister either. He does not have the personality and willingness to delegate to handle the portfolio – and the precedent of John Gorton in 1971 bodes ill for making a sacked PM the Minister for Defence.

Finally, the F-22 [Raptor] is widely acknowledged in the ADF as part of the solution to the cost, technical and strategic failings of the JSF. Robert's comment about supposed ADF "brass", or "military bureaucracy", being the problem would be laughable if not so tragic. As with most Department of Defence problems, the civilian bureaucracy is much more the cause of Defence's problems than the military.

Reforming Defence has to start somewhere and the ADA has always advocated beginning with improved ministerial supervision – in quality, numbers and structure. We can think of several parliamentarians on both sides of politics who would make much better Ministers for Defence than Turnbull or Rudd.

Tuesday, 10 August 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Monday, 16 August 2010)

All wars and arguments about them are morally complex. But your August 10 editorial on the Taliban’s murder of ten international civilian medical-aid workers perhaps exemplifies the problems when double standards emerge, however inadvertently, in arguments about the war in Afghanistan.

Just compare your comparatively “wet-lettuce” criticism of a genuine and deliberate atrocity by the Taliban to the often subjective, and sometimes even pompous, uproar that erupts on your letters pages should the ISAF combat with the Taliban inadvertently (but still legally) result in Afghan civilian casualties.

Moreover, while broadly condemnatory, the editorial omitted that these murders were unequivocally yet another deliberate and serious breach of international humanitarian law by the Taliban and its Islamist allies. And that this latest Taliban atrocity again clearly typifies the moral, legal and humanitarian chasm between ISAF goals and activities and those of the Taliban. A chasm of principle and practice so often over-simplified, obfuscated or denied by many of those opposing Australia’s contribution to a UN-endorsed force.

Surely even critics of ISAF can see the invalidity of bigoted Taliban claims that the aid workers were “preaching Christianity” or “carrying a bible” (both irrelevant under the Fourth Geneva Convention). Or the invalid (and incorrect anyway) Taliban excuse that they were being protected by ISAF and this somehow justified their capture and then murder as unarmed prisoners and non-combatants. Or the bogus and irrelevant Taliban excuse that the murders were by “robbers”, and not the Taliban, even though the Taliban consider this acceptable anyway.

In debating Afghanistan we all need to hold fast to the principle that international humanitarian law is universal.

There is no opt-out clause for those motivated by religious bigotry. Nor indeed for any apologists motivated by ideology or other prejudices. There is no nuance either. Non-combatants are non-combatants, barbarism is barbarism, cowardice is cowardice and hypocrisy is hypocrisy.

This is why our diggers are doing so much good on the ground in Afghanistan, despite the failings of the Karzai government and despite their efforts being little understood in Australia, particularly by those who seem to choose not to understand.

Monday, 09 August 2010

Letter to the Brisbane Courier Mail

(not published)

Queensland premier, Anna Bligh, today announced a “thanksgiving and remembrance service” on 24 September  to commemorate the May 1943 sinking of the Australian Hospital Ship, Centaur, off Brisbane.

However the press release twice attributes the sinking to only “a submarine”. It is as if World War II never happened or the Geneva Conventions, international humanitarian law generally and the contemporary Asia-Pacific strategic balance are somehow unimportant

The failure to identify the submarine as a Japanese one, and to omit any mention that the sinking of a plainly marked hospital ship was a deliberate war crime, is historical inaccuracy, moral cowardice and strategic stupidity. Worldwide public remembrance of war crimes should never allow fundamental details to be airbrushed away by political correctness or inappropriate fears about commercial consequences.

Moreover, most Japanese today unfortunately have a very poor knowledge of Japanese aggression and atrocities throughout Asia in the 1910-45 period because Japanese school and university history books do not tell the truth. But we condone such revisionism, dishonour our own war veterans and forget their hard-won lessons, if we do not have the courage to continue remembering and proclaiming the truth about such atrocities in context - and thereby avoid the slippery slope to wider denials and increased risk of future war crimes through loss of deterrent moral force internationally.

Finally, this is not just an historical issue because the strategic instability Japanese [historical] revisionism causes affects us all today and in our shared strategic future across the Asia-Pacific. A major cause of strategic instability in East and North Asia is Japan’s continued unwillingness to admit their wartime aggression and atrocities - in stark contrast to Germany and its reintegration into modern Europe through truly facing its Nazi past and demonstrating genuine contrition.  

True friends of modern Japan are not those who help the Japanese government and people to continue denying responsibility for major wartime aggression, widespread atrocities and their contemporary consequences.

Friday, 06 August 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

Steve Ellis and Basil Johnson (Letters, August 6) surely ignore, conflate or confuse separate moral dilemmas about responsibly protesting any war, and in this case:

• whether WikiLeaks should have leaked the material or were there not better alternative protests;

• even if the end somehow justified the means, why at the very least was WikiLeaks so cavalier about not screening out details likely to kill people (and needlessly endanger our troops); and

• to who is WikiLeaks accountable and what gives them a supposed right to decide who lives and who dies in the Afghanistan War?

Steve’s justification for the leaks is based solely on democratic government being threatened if a governments lies. But who should judge if it is lying?

Is not democracy also threatened when unaccountable, often ideologically-driven, groups or individuals selectively ignore facts, and Australian or international humanitarian law, and act irresponsibly through the moral or intellectual vanity that they are somehow better humans or alone know “the truth”.

This is why misplaced analogies of WikiLeaks to Daniel Ellsberg leaking the Pentagon Papers are so invalid.

No matter your views on whether Ellsberg was justified or not, he was responsible in his method and bravely accountable for his actions. Moreover, the Pentagon Papers risked no lives directly, being an intellectually coherent study of how the Vietnam War had developed, not raw data about its current progress which - as we have seen in recent weeks - is too prone to biased analyses, misunderstandings or selective interpretation.

Moreover, emotive and incorrect terminology about “invading” Afghanistan and our presence being a “military occupation” ignore that ISAF has always operated, accountably, under a robust UN mandate and with the overall support of most Afghans.

Finally, contrary to Steve’s bizarre claim that worrying about the consistent application of international humanitarian law is “the predictable perspective of the professional military lobbyist”, the ADA believes that such law – and Australia’s treachery statutes – remain necessary to preserve international and national good citizenship respectively, the rule-of-law, and the necessary moral distinctions between our goals and efforts and the Islamist barbarism that rejects such laws and distinctions.

Thursday, 05 August 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

John Coochey (Letters, August 5) asks what avenues of anti-war protest are available when some voters might feel misled by governments?

Any answer must surely be based on the principle Australia and every Australian, not just our defence force, is at war because the government we all elect has lawfully made this grave decision.

Commonsense surely then means that any protest at this decision should be based on real research, rather than partisan sloganeering, and directed only at the government not our troops. And rather than thoughtless or ideological posturing, all protest acts should not endanger or otherwise betray our diggers – even unintentionally or recklessly .

Unlike the arrogant, selfish, deliberate, unfair, immoral and probably illegal treachery of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange (and the ethical bankruptcy of his apologists).

This is why we, and other democracies, have and need laws to deter and punish treachery when our fellow citizens forget or ignore their citizenship responsibilities and let us and our troops down. Luckily, because of that Australian commonsense, we rarely need to use them.

Monday, 02 August 2010

Letter to Crikey.com (in answer to a claim about an earlier ADA letter below)

(published Wednesday, 04 August 2010)

By totally ignoring the much more successful 2008 book on military-media relations edited by UNSW professors Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey [The Military, the Media and Information Warfare],  Kevin Foster (Crikey, comments, Friday 23 July) artfully avoids even mentioning the biases that largely invalidated the utility of the book edited by him the same year on the same topic (as was noted in its Sydney Morning Herald review).

Moreover, Kevin’s claim that he “had trouble sourcing work that supported the ADF’s media policy”, falsely implied that the chapter he sought from by me was somehow in this vein. But this too ignores the Australia Defence Association’s long record of publicly criticising Department of Defence media policy since various Ministers began tightening this improperly in the 1990s.

Indeed it was because my draft chapter addressed fault on both sides that it so clashed with Kevin’s simplistic view that journalists are always right and the military always wrong. Moreover, he knows that the ADA criticised Defence at the seminar, for declining to participate, because this was a self-fulfilling reaction that merely reinforced beliefs about the department.

Kevin also incorrectly claims that he censored out my chapter of the seminar proceedings only because I somehow “refused any proposed edits”. But I accepted many of them and only withdrew the chapter from publication after Kevin refused to discuss his more unscholarly objections. As an experienced editor of academic and professional conference proceedings, I was simply astonished by his disrespect for the common courtesies of academic debate and the proper neutral role of a proceedings editor.

As a professed journalism academic Kevin was oddly most unwilling even to consider my thesis that journalism as a profession was at least partly responsible for the breakdown between the professions of arms and journalism, and perhaps more liable due to declining standards in media coverage of military matters. He also refused even to consider whether the problem was because journalism, both as a profession and in the daily practice of far too many media organs, has apparently ceased to set, respect and police professional standards seriously as a profession properly should.

As a final example of ideology rejecting normal academic discourse, Kevin blankly refused to discuss the effect of cultural clashes between the necessarily non-partisan institutional culture of our military (whatever the private views of ADF personnel individually), and the growing unprofessional politicisation of reporting and comment by many reporters, columnists and media organs. Ignoring centuries of democratic constitutional development and the rise of teaching and nursing union militancy respectively, Kevin oddly claimed that the military as a profession were (and needed to be) no more politically neutral than teachers or nurses.

Only at this sad stage did I stop persevering with academic argument against ideology.

Friday, 30 July 2010

Letter to Crikey.com (answering comments on an ADA opinion article published by Crikey on 29 July 2010)

(published Monday, 02 August 2010)

Harry Goldsmith (Crikey, comments, Friday 30 July) confuses four separate moral issues about the WikiLeaks saga:

·         whether the material should have been leaked;

·         whether WikiLeaks has sufficient knowledge to understand the material and safely make such decisions;

·         whether it should have been leaked in the reckless way it was (insufficiently vetted to protect Afghans on our side from harm, etc); and

·         to who is WikiLeaks accountable?

Harry also misunderstands that our moral and practical objections mainly concern the last three issues. This is why his Ellsberg analogy is invalid as, no matter your views on Ellsberg’s justification, he was responsible in his method and bravely accountable for his actions.

In a nutshell, no matter how much you might disagree with the UN-endorsed ISAF effort in Afghanistan, this gives no right to actions unfettered by responsibility or respect for international humanitarian law (IHL). All Australians also have a citizenship obligation not to add unduly to the dangers our diggers face there (on behalf of all Australians). This aspect of debate about the Afghanistan War is not a freedom of speech issue but one of fairness, human decency, reciprocal obligations and the universality of IHL.

Harry also ostensibly professes concern as to whether his words are subversive or treacherous. Whilst uninformed, illogical and polemical, they obviously fall within legitimate dissent and are therefore not as he fears (or perhaps seeks in would-be “political martyrdom”).

But such views would, for example, be rightly criminal if they led Harry, intentionally, to help the Taliban kill or wound an Australian digger. It also goes well beyond justifiable dissent if an Australian is so absorbed in their own views that they neglect (or are indifferent about) their responsibilities as a citizen – and take insufficient care whether their actions, and in some cases even words, result in killing or seriously threatening the lives of Australian diggers lawfully deployed in a war by our elected government on behalf of all of us.  

This is why the ADA advocates further reform to Australia’s treachery laws to deter and prohibit reckless, and not just intentional, assistance to the enemy. Again this would not affect normal, intelligent and responsible dissent.

Finally, Harry repeats the myth that the US somehow created the Taliban. It was instead created by Pakistan in late 1994 (as part of its strategic rivalry with India), five years after the US had stopped supporting various Mujahideen groups who forced the Soviets out (1989) and overthrew Najibullah’s communist regime (1990). The Taliban overthrew the Mujahideen regime in 1996.

Wednesday, 28 July 2010

Letter to The Australian

(not published)

Even though the vast bulk of material recently released by Wikileaks would not be new in nature to those who keep up with the Afghanistan War (or fighting wars generally), this latest material goes well beyond justifiable whistleblowing such as the recent helicopter gun-camera film [from Iraq] showing probable breaches of the laws of armed conflict.

Put bluntly, Wikileaks is not authorised in international or Australian law, nor equipped morally or operationally, to judge whether open publication of such material risks the safety, security, morale and legitimate objectives of Australian and allied troops fighting in a UN-endorsed military operation. Particularly when there are many alternative avenues available for legitimate dissent that do not endanger our troops and/or irresponsibly bolster enemy propaganda.

Moreover, as an Australian citizen, Wikileaks’ Julian Assange may also be guilty of a serious criminal offence by assisting an enemy the ADF is fighting on behalf of all Australians, especially if the assistance was intentional. Whatever his motives, his actions again highlight the need to further amend our treachery laws to also prohibit reckless assistance to such an enemy.

Finally, both Wikileaks’ actions and declarations, and much subsequent media coverage, lacks moral, legal and historical contexts.

.

ISAF’s battlefield mistakes are the result of typical wartime tragedy, accidents and at times incompetence or personal failure, not deliberate or institutional policy. Moreover, ISAF transgressions are generally investigated and punished and we should expect no less.

What Wikileaks and its apologists ignore are the clear legal and moral differences between the actions of rule-of-law democracies applying international humanitarian law in UN-endorsed warfighting (however imperfectly at times), and the deliberate rejection of such law by the Taliban and its Islamist allies – including them treating ISAF’s difficult adherence to this law as merely a vulnerability to be (illegally) exploited.

Tuesday, 27 July 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

The republished “Guardian” opinion article (“The dark underside of NATO”, Times2, July 27, p.4), opened with two factual mistakes in its first sentence, was based on several mistaken assumptions, implied a false moral equivalence between the UN-endorsed International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the Taliban, and then ignored the governing legal and moral contexts including the Taliban’s regular and deliberate atrocities.

.

Taliban and Al Qa’eda belligerents captured in the Afghanistan War are not somehow held “without trial”. They are detained under the Geneva Conventions and this is monitored by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as the designated inspecting power.

They are not subject to “extrajudicial killings” either. Killing enemy belligerents in a war, even without warning, is not a judicial act but lawful combat (if the Hague and Geneva Conventions are complied with).

In contrast, the Taliban and its Islamist allies largely reject IHL in letter and spirit. They routinely torture and murder prisoners, not treat them in accordance with IHL and detain them under supervision by the ICRC. Non-combatants are routinely targeted and killed by the Taliban without compunction and often indiscriminately.

Even worse, they treat ISAF’s difficult adherence to IHL as merely a vulnerability to be (illegally) exploited.

Whatever the battlefield mistakes of ISAF forces, they are the result of accidents, wartime tragedy and at times incompetence or personal failure, not deliberate policy. Moreover, ISAF transgressions are investigated and punished.

Wars are always nasty and morally confusing. But this never justifies failing to distinguish the legal and moral differences between the actions of democracies applying IHL in UN-endorsed warfighting (however imperfectly at times), and the deliberate pursuit of barbarism and rejection of IHL by the Taliban and its Islamist allies.

All wars are contests of ideas, morals and ultimately will. Responsible criticism of ISAF in Afghanistan is both legitimate and necessary.

But sloppy and biased articles like the “Guardian” one disgracefully undermine IHL, immorally bolster enemy propaganda, irresponsibly weaken support for ISAF in Afghanistan and here at home, and make the difficult job of our troops even harder.

Monday, 26 July 2010

Letter to Crikey.com

(published Wednesday, 28 July 2010 ― see also our letter of 02 August above)

Even for the editor of a leftish literary magazine such as Overland, it was surprising to see Jeff Sparrow (“Should politicians attend military funerals”, Crikey, 23 July, Item 4) recommend the flawed book edited by Kevin Foster on the troubled relationship between our military and our media.

Among journalists and the military the best recent Australian book on military-media relations is instead widely judged to be “The Military, the Media and Information Warfare” (being the proceedings of the two-day September 2008 Army History Conference), edited by UNSW professors Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey. This appropriately inclusive book features proper scholarly debate by a diverse range of Australian, British, American and German academics and journalists – the latter including famous US war correspondent, Joseph Galloway, and an excellent chapter by SBS TV’s Karen Middleton.

The Foster effort, in sharp contrast, was meant to be the full proceedings of a sparsely attended one-day November 2008 Monash University symposium but ended up only including the contributions that Foster agrees with. Even its review in the Sydney Morning Herald (hardly a bastion of conservative views) emphasised that the book was biased and unbalanced.

In disclosure, the chapter Foster commissioned from me based on my symposium presentation was one of those censored out in a most unprofessional and un-academic manner.

Wednesday, 21 July 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

The general tenor of your July 21 editorial – that Australia’s security and intelligence agencies have somehow grown too big, that this is unnecessary, and that they have insufficient accountability – was ideological not logical.

US comparisons were touted without any acknowledgement of differences in scale, threat or constitutional structure. Followed, sadly again, by the incorrect and tired journalistic cliché that ASIO and its sister organisations are somehow “spy agencies”.

The claim that ASIO staff numbers have tripled since 2001 omitted mentioning that this was from an historically low base as staffing had foolishly been slashed by half in the 1990s (ostensibly due to the end of the Cold War).

But the nub of the editorial, implying an imbalance between our security-intelligence effort and the actual threat, simply resorted to a cheap rhetorical trick rather than argue any measured assessment based on facts.

No mention that since 2001 over 100 Australians have been murdered by Islamist terrorists in New York, Bali and Jakarta. Nor mention that 38 Australian residents professing Islamist beliefs have or are being tried for terrorist offences, with 24 convictions or guilty pleas so far and many of them serving long sentences.

No recognition that there are Islamist terrorists today who want to kill Australians – thwarted chiefly thus far by pro-active, community-based, security-intelligence and police work. Nor recognition that the perpetual challenge in countering such terrorism is that the terrorists, no matter how capable or not, only have to get lucky once whereas the security and intelligence agencies have to be vigilant, effective and lucky all the time in order to protect us.

Finally, as a public-interest watchdog covering the national security agencies, the ADA has considerable confidence in the balance struck between the obvious needs for operational security on the one hand, and delegated public accountability on the other ― through ministerial, statutory and all-party parliamentary committee oversight backed up through independent review by a dedicated Inspector-General. Not to mention the informal internal restraints of professionalism and commonsense among agency staff and the external one of budgetary jealousy in the wider bureaucracy.

Monday, 19 July 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

Steve Kenny (“Hicks did not commit any crime”, CT, July 19, p.2), a former lawyer for David Hicks, claims Hicks “did not commit any crime” and “should have his name cleared”.

But such claims again ignore three pertinent and undoubted facts.

First, as a result of the loophole in archaic Australian law that prevented David Hicks having his day in an Australian court, under our updated treachery laws anyone now serving with an enemy the ADF is fighting necessarily commits a serious offence. This is as it should be and is only fair to the men and women of our defence force we send to fight wars on our behalf.

Second, as in any war, Hicks’ 2001-06 detention was as a belligerent captured in war, not for a crime. This was and remains lawful under the Geneva Conventions – as was confirmed by the US Supreme Court in the June 2006 Hamdan ruling - and is not disputed by any serious international lawyer.

Third, whether Hicks’ later separate criminal trial, conviction and sentence by US Military Commission was justified in international law or not remains understandably controversial. But it does not change the factual and moral situations that if Hicks was to commit the same acts today as he has freely admitted doing in 2000-01 he would commit an offence against Australian law.

Even ignoring Hicks’ own admissions and boasts about voluntarily joining terrorist training camps, in moral terms that preclude any slipping through loopholes in archaic treachery laws David Hicks can, and should, never have his name cleared of any terrorism links.

Thursday, 15 July 2010

Letter to The Australian

(not published)

Discussion about the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and Tamil asylum claimants has been overly influenced by short-term Australian perspectives on what was a very long and nasty civil war, subjective claims (at best) from LTTE sympathisers in the Tamil diaspora and other apologists, and the often inept and at times equally subjective statements by Sri Lankan diplomats.

Plus continuing LTTE intimidation of moderate voices in Australia’s Tamil and Sinhala communities – which alone should surely see it proscribed in Australia as a terrorist organisation whether the war in Sri Lanka has ended or not.

We should therefore welcome Sergei DeSilva-Ranasinghe’s analyses of the situation in Sri Lanka and its Australian linkages – not least because they are based on academic-standard, in-country, research, including in particular detailed first-hand interviews with moderate Tamil community leaders, academics and other observers no longer suppressed or attacked by the LTTE.

Moreover, in terms of Tamil asylum claimants, defining and identifying just who was an LTTE combatant, or why (as some were forcibly conscripted), can be difficult but cannot be ignored

Sifting through the sea of LTTE and Sinhala chauvinist propaganda needs to use three time-proven legal sieves, especially when confronted with sloganeering such as “one man’s terrorist is (somehow) just another man’s freedom fighter”.

First, LTTE personnel, as combatants, are not eligible for refugee status and cannot lawfully claim or be granted asylum in Australia under the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Second, it is indisputable that the Sri Lankan military have not always respected the laws of armed conflict (LOAC) appropriately but they are subject to national and international accountability processes, however imperfectly.

So must the LTTE and its personnel and supporters be held accountable.

If you start a war, fight it by policies and methods that deliberately contravene not only LOAC but also wider international humanitarian law – and then finally lose the war you start and prosecute by illegal methods – there are and must be moral, legal and practical consequences for the perpetrators. Otherwise no war criminal could ever be tried, and war itself cannot be deterred or its effects ameliorated.

Third, the International Committee of the Red Cross, as the inspecting power under the Geneva Conventions, is generally satisfied with the post-war detention and national rehabilitation measures being undertaken by the Sri Lankan government (and the UNHCR agrees).

Tuesday, 13 July 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Thursday 15 July 2010)

The Australia Defence Association thanks Nicholas Stuart (“Labor betting the middle way leads to re-election”, July 13, p.11) for acknowledging our longstanding reputation for political and institutional impartiality. And for acknowledging the efforts we make as a public-interest watchdog group to help public debate on defence and wider national security issues be informed rather than the opposite.

It may, however, be somewhat disconcerting for some to have Stuart Nic describe our commentary on the departure of Senator John Faulkner as Minister for Defence as "an accurate assessment".

This will no doubt intensely worry certain polemicists among your readership who are prone to react with humourless letters-to-the-editor alleging bizarre conspiracy theories and offering plain abuse every time the ADA criticises one of Stuart's Nic's columns in the paper. Has Stuart Nic paused sufficiently to think about the risks his praise of the ADA might cause to the psychological health of this small, but seemingly determined, band who so often suffer ideological apoplexy when the ADA is forced to confront one of their pet prejudices or subjective beliefs?

Thursday 24 June 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Monday 28 June 2010)

David Williams (Letters, June 22) stated he was “gobsmacked” by the ADA opinion article on poor public debate about Australia’s wars published on June 18. Alessandro Antonello (letters, same day) claimed to “cringe” at my [opinion article] point that it was insensitive and inappropriate to debate our Afghanistan commitment simplistically when the families of our casualties were enduring their initial grief.

No doubt many readers genuinely cringed at Mr Antonello’s insensitivity (at best) or were in turn gobsmacked by Mr Williams’ numerous misunderstandings and factual errors.

The sad irony is that both letters only prove my contention that debate on how we initiate, fight and end our wars is usually not objective and informed – and that this situation greatly hampers our strategic and moral decision-making as a society. And Contrary to the claims of both writers, I did not somehow suggest that having more wars to improve societal or political experience of war was desirable or that debate on our wars should be shut down or confined only to the knowledgeable.

Furthermore, Mr Antonello’s belief that uninformed contributions to public debate are useful or necessary for “modern democracy” is surely bizarre.

Finally, Mr Antonello’s comparison with health or agricultural policy matters is invalid. Our parliaments, communities and families have many members with experience in these occupations so the background level of public knowledge and the consequent quality of public debate is much higher than it is for our societal experience of war and debates on this subject.

This situation is as it is and denial or ideological rants do not solve the resultant problems. To improve public debate on whether and how we should fight our wars we first need to appreciate and admit the extent of the problems caused by generally uninformed and too often irresponsible debate so far.

Wednesday 16 June 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published despite advice from The Canberra Times that this reply to an unwarranted and dishonest attack on the ADA would be published on Friday 18 June 2010)

In a banner-headlined, five-column, 628-word letter,  Glenn Jones (June 16), was generously permitted to pose rambling questions to the Australia Defence Association, especially concerning the application of international humanitarian law (IHL) in general, and the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) in particular, to the vexed circumstances of David Hicks.

All the matters he raised are, of course, discussed and answered in detail on the ADA website. Some study of them and their links, and not his resort solely to Wikipedia, might have prevented Mr Jones from so many factual errors and from mistakenly accusing the ADA of positions and motivations that are the very opposite of the truth.

Now as an independent, non-partisan, community-based watchdog the ADA generally runs some 6-18 months ahead of wider national debate in our particular field of public-interest oversight. As with our fellow public-interest watchdogs some find independent objectivity confronting, particularly where it challenges comfortable prejudices.

In the early 2000s we were discussing Australian ramifications of the UN-endorsed international campaign against Islamist terrorism, Guantanamo Bay and David Hicks ― and criticising practices such as rendition and torture ― when few were interested either way unless through ideology or knee-jerk anti-Americanism .

We were the first to point out that, as with previous Australian prisoners-of-war, detention under LOAC as a belligerent captured in a war has quite a different legal basis in IHL to that suggested, or discounted, by the US for their separate criminal trials by US military commission. And that LOAC detention is not and never has been a civil law or habeas corpus matter.

We consistently noted that Mamdouh Habib was not captured in a war as such and could not be lawfully detained by the US under LOAC.

Because of our belief that IHL is and must be universal we support the US Supreme Court’s June 2006 Hamdan ruling that, although those detained at Guantanamo Bay do not generally qualify as prisoners-of-war under the Third Geneva Convention because their methods of belligerency (such as indiscriminate terrorist attacks) contravene IHL, they are protected by Common Article 3 of all four Geneva Conventions. By relying only on Wikipedia Mr Jones got this wrong too.

By 2005 Major Michael Mori, the USMC officer appointed to defend David Hicks before a US military commission, had described the 8600-word discussion on the ADA website as the most comprehensive summary in Australia of Hicks’ situation (although he perhaps disagreed with some of it). A former (Labor) federal attorney-general went out of his way to congratulate the ADA on the refreshing objectivity of the analysis.

The Summer 2006/07 issue of our journal was again the first to argue practically for Hicks’ release from belligerent detention on LOAC parole. In the Spring 2007 issue, Associate Professor Greg Rose argued for updating IHL and LOAC to cope with new problems from modern wars, including a fifth Geneva Convention to cover captured belligerents [such as Hicks] who do not qualify for prisoner-of-war status.

Throughout this period we advised Major Mori (and other responsible members of the Hicks camp) that pressuring the Howard Government for action was not actually being helped by the wider anti-government stridency of many of Hicks' left-wing supporters. This advice (also proffered by others) influenced the reorganisation and reorientation of Hicks’s legal defence efforts, not least because our impartial perspective was acknowledged.

Later that year, my chapter in “Law and Liberty in the War on Terror” (UNSW Law School) again reiterated the ADA’s absolute opposition to torture and maltreatment of detainees on moral and practical grounds, and because of the dangerous precedents this posed to Australian military personnel captured in war.

It is therefore disappointing to see the “Canberra Times” publish Mr Jones’ subjective and false claims about the ADA’s work as a public-interest watchdog for defence and national security issues.

Wednesday 08 June 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Monday 14 June 2010)

Bernard Davis (Letters, June 8) claims long-overdue reform of our treachery laws is somehow “draconian”, “un-Australian”, “one inch from a police state” and “two inches from a military dictatorship”.

This tirade ignores Australian history and how laws based on mutual obligations work in a liberal democracy. If we lawfully send our defence force to fight wars on our national behalf, it is surely a crime for any Australian to then betray and endanger our defence force by actively assisting the enemy.

And such acts were always unlawful until the UN Charter in 1945 prohibited the “declarations of war” that our previous treachery laws were archaically based on.

For 57 years, especially from Menzies in Korea to Hawke in the first Gulf War, every Australian government let down the ADF badly by not updating the law and closing the loophole.

The restoration of every citizen’s obligation not to (intentionally) assist an enemy Australia is fighting threatens no exercise of legitimate peaceful dissent from the decision to go to war (just as it did not before 1945).

There is now, of course, a good argument that reckless assistance should also be unlawful if it involves an act.

Friday 28 May 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Monday 07 June 2010)

In what again seems to skate closely to an apologia for Islamist terrorism, and among other polemical claims too numerous to refute, Irfan Yusuf (“Rising trend of fearmongering on refugees and passports”, May 28, p13)  incorrectly claims that David Hicks was “unlawfully detained by the United States” in an “illegal prison camp”.

Under the Geneva Conventions, as a Taliban combatant captured by the opposite side in a war he chose to fight in, David Hicks was not detained illegally for a single minute - at least, perhaps, until his later separate criminal trial and prison sentence by US Military Commission.

Moreover, and somewhat ironically, he was only detained by the US for so long because the war continued, and our then inadequate treachery laws meant he could not be released on prisoner-of-war-type parole for criminal trial in Australia (as the US was willing to do).

Fortunately this longstanding and disgraceful legal loophole has been closed so a future Wilfred Burchett or David Hicks can have his their day in court.

Rightly, since the Security Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act, 2002, an Australian citizen anywhere in the world now commits treason if he or she (among other things):

·                   intentionally assists, by any means whatsoever, an enemy, at war with the Commonwealth;

·                   intentionally assists, by ‘any means whatsoever’, another country or organisation that is engaged in armed hostilities against the Australian Defence Force (ADF); or

·                   forms an intention to do any of the above acts and manifests that intention by an overt act.

In a liberal democracy ruled by law we owe no less to the men and women of the Australian Defence Force we send to fight Australia’s wars on our behalf.

Irfan Yusuf should be prepared to acknowledge this.

Friday 28 May 2010

Letter to the Australian Financial Review

(published Monday 31 May 2010)

James Eyers’ (“Victory on military court battlefield”, May 28) omitted discussing several key difficulties with implementing the proposed Military Court of Australia (MCA).

First, the purist constitutional desire to make it a fully Chapter III court system risks creating or exacerbating problems with regard to the court’s practicality and equity during defence force operations in the field, especially overseas where all our wars have been and are likely to be.

Second, the problem of deploying a Chapter III federal court overseas (even ignoring the comity complications) is not merely a “logistical” matter as Eyers believes, but it is a fundamental issue of the MCA being able to provide fair trials for wartime offences by truly encountering first hand, and understanding in context, the situation and background to an offence and any exceptional or mitigating circumstances.

Third, as with present current courts martial, MCA judicial officers will need a real understanding of both wider military matters and war (not just military law), particularly as it is proposed they sit in judgement alone. This poses real difficulties in a purely Chapter III court model.

Only two federal court judges, for example, have any general military experience and even then only as peacetime reservists. Only three more have experience as reservist military lawyers (which is not the same thing). In terms of effective deployability, only two of the five are under 60 (and one of them is already the Judge-Advocate General of the defence force as a reservist). Similarly, only two federal magistrates have any military experience and even then only as reservist lawyers.

Fourth, the abolition of jury trials and apparent near-total abolition of courts martial needlessly removes the tried and tested safeguard of appropriate trial by peers that modern military law has developed since the 1880s.

Finally, the military discipline of a defence force, and its adherence to an integrated system of disciplinary and criminal law when deployed overseas, is constitutionally and lawfully a function of command and must remain so in the defence force of a liberal democracy subject to Australian and international law.

ADF commanders also remain legally and morally responsible to those under their command for such subordinates receiving fair trials if charged with disciplinary offences - and criminal offences when serving overseas.

Tuesday 18 May 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times (in reply to one of the flawed points in an opinion article on defence matters by Nic Stuart)

(published, again unfortunately less it's conclusion (see letter of 14 May below), on Monday 24 May 2010)

Nic Stuart (“This is as good as it gets”, May 18, p.9) tries to discuss ADF senior rank numbers in total isolation from the rampant bureaucratisation, de-professionalisation and policy process politicisation in the Department of Defence that largely causes them.

Since the 1974 reorganisation of the defence group of departments into one entity there have always been more SES officials than star-ranked ADF officers, even including reservists and UN secondments in the latter.

The 1998 Defence Reform Plan [DRP] duly directed a 30 per cent cut in both. Only the ADF complied. SES and executive positions kept increasing relentlessly.

The DRP specifically recommended that Defence needed only four not five deputy-secretary equivalents. By 2010 these have tripled to 14.

ADF three-stars also increased by a third from four to six, but no serious observer has questioned the modern need for, and the definite improvements resulting from, having senior enough professionals as chiefs of joint operations and capability development respectively.

Further down there are orders of magnitude more EL1s and EL2s than their purported ADF equivalents across the entire ADF. Indeed there are significantly more EL1s and 2s in Canberra than their quoted ADF regular and reservist equivalents everywhere.

Yes, there are too many senior officers in the ADF, but most are still rightly employed in professionally planning or controlling the defence of a sparsely-populated country occupying a continental-sized land mass and with significant international responsibilities for 10 per cent of the Earth’s surface.

But curbing numbers of ADF senior ranks is only a small part of a far more important reform - reversing and then preventing a reoccurrence of the excessive and continually burgeoning size, complexity and loss of true purpose of the Department of Defence.

Unlike all the reactive and failed periodic reviews of the department since 1974, we need a truly first-principles and expert review of how our national defence should be best organised (and resourced) under civil ministerial control not civilian bureaucracy.

Friday 14 May 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Tuesday 18 May 2010)

In a notable use of syllogistic argument, Albert White (Letters, May 12) cites only the case of Dr Mohamed Haneef to claim our counter-terrorism laws are somehow unjust, unworkable and unnecessary.

Mr White conveniently ignores the 17 recent convictions for serious terrorist offences that have resulted from these laws - following decisions in fair trials by juries made up of fellow Australians in better possession of the facts, circumstances and nuances involved than Mr White’s apparent ideological stance.

Mr White might try reading the relevant trial summations and conviction comments by the presiding judges before making further alarmist claims that only pander to the terrorist propaganda that the laws are somehow directed at all Muslims, rather than targeted specifically against a tiny extremist minority of Islamists seeking to recruit or hide within our mainstream Islamic communities.

He should also note that the only terrorist conviction overturned on appeal was one due to a legal technicality about the admissibility of certain evidence obtained overseas, not the known and indeed freely admitted guilt of the accused.

Moreover, even in Dr Haneef’s case over-zealous concerns about civil liberties ironically worked against him.

Based on the experience of other Western jurisdictions with much longer authorised investigative detention periods, it is probable that Dr Haneef would have been released from arrest quicker if the complex police investigation had not had to be so hurried (and bungled) because he could only be detained for such a short investigative period before charges had to be preferred.

Those Australians not murdered by Islamist and other terrorists deterred, thwarted or convicted by our new counter-terrorism laws no doubt disagree with Mr White’s odd belief that our counter-terrorism legislation is not a justified and prudent response to a present and continuing threat to our democratic system.

Tuesday 27 April 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Thursday 29 April 2010)

Anzac Day belongs to all Australians and should not be a politicised or indeed a military occasion.

Moreover, despite claims that Anzac commemorations risk becoming militaristic, the ADF’s enduring lack of social and political influence in Australian society proves the absence of militarism.

This minimal influence is shown by general under-investment in our common defence, small defence force with perpetual difficulties in regular and reservist recruiting, popular opposition to military conscription in peacetime, lively debates among military historians and the striking lack of a “warrior culture” in the ADF.

Instead, most Australians have long and rightly seen Anzac Day only as public honouring of veterans and their families for preserving our freedom to argue – and for acknowledging the sacrifices those veterans and families made and often continue to make.

Formed ADF units should therefore not march on Anzac Day unless recently returned as a unit from active service overseas (excepting bands and perhaps, every decade or so, when commemorating some significant milestone anniversary of that unit in battle).

Veterans serving in the ADF should surely march, voluntarily, in uniform or not as they choose, with the appropriate unit, ship or other association.

Similarly, dawn services are genuine bottom-up community occasions and need no “official party”.

Finally, in terms of balancing collective memory, informed analysis and current national governance, our real problem is that for the rest other 364 days of the year most Australians do not think enough, if at all, about applying the costs and lessons of past conflicts to how we can best defend Australia now and in the future.

The too frequent and sustained neglect of our defence by governments of both political persuasions, and the armchair-heavy pontifications on defence matters by academic theorists and newspaper columnists, rely greatly on this phenomenon.

Monday 26 April 2010

Letter to the Brisbane Courier-Mail

(not published)

Ian McPhedran (“Exit plan vital”, April 26, p.2) rightly noted the Defence Minister’s comments that more information needs to be released about what our troops are actually doing at home and overseas.

The Australia Defence Association has long argued for this but McPhedran’s article ignored the two elephants in the room by blaming only the military’s occasional misuse of operational security caveats.

He ignored the greater effect of hyper-centralised ministerial political control over even the most minor, uncontroversial and unclassified Defence media release – rather than defence force commanders at all levels simply being allowed to brief the public and the media directly on what their forces are actually doing (as generally occurred until the mid 1990s).

Mr McPhedran also ignored the greatest difficulty - consistently poor media coverage of Australian defence issues - which is far too often by generalist reporters rather than, as used to occur, by specialist journalists with personal experience and real understanding of military professionalism and war.

Contrast defence reporting, for example, with economics, health and business coverage mainly done by journalists career-dedicated to, and professionally qualified in, such subjects.

Only by fixing all three problems can we really rebuild mutual trust between the military, the media and the public and ensure our diggers are not unduly endangered by amateurish reporting and/or the thoughtless public debate it often causes.

Friday 23 April 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

Anzac Day continues to belong to all Australians through natural growth culturally. It should not be a politicised or indeed a military occasion.

Moreover, too much academic debate about what “Anzac” means and why gravitates to political extremes, not Anzac’s intellectual or cultural centre nationally.

These opposing extremes have most recently re-emerged in the book of often polemical essays edited by Henry Reynolds and Marilyn Lake, and in the conspiracy theory articles in “Quadrant” by Mervyn Bendle.

Most Australians, on the other hand, have long and rightly seen Anzac Day as publically honouring veterans and their families – and for acknowledging the sacrifices they made and often continue to make.

This is why formed ADF units should avoid marching on Anzac Day unless recently returned as a unit from active service overseas (excepting bands and perhaps, every decade or so, when commemorating some significant milestone anniversary of that unit in battle).

Finally, in terms of balancing collective memory, informed analysis and current national governance, it is a pity that for the other 364 days of the year the broad centre of Australians do not think enough, if at all, about applying the costs and lessons of past conflicts to how we can best defend Australia now and in the future.

The too frequent and sustained neglect of our defence by governments of both political persuasions, and the flawed force structure and strategy pontifications of armchair academic theorists, rely greatly on this phenomenon.

Thursday 15 April 2010

Letter to the Australian Financial Review

(published Friday 16 April 2010)

Like many in the refugee debate, Klaas Woldring ("Boat people are genuine", Letters, April 14) confuses symptoms with causes by ignoring the practical history, strategic intention and realistic humanitarian spirit of the 1951 Refugee Convention.

The Convention was designed to protect refugees in neighbouring countries temporarily, so they could safely and quickly go home, by forcing those countries to solve the causes of the refugee flow in the first place.

It was not intended to encourage the misery of permanent refugee camps in a region or the strategic instability and moral hypocrisy of extra-regional refugee flows.

But most countries have never signed the Convention and are now counter-productively rewarded for passing the moral buck to those who do, chiefly in North America, Europe and Australasia. Other signatories (Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc) pay lip service to the Convention, or worse, create refugees.

This effective rewarding of non or pseudo-signatories causes endemic strategic instability internationally as well as institutionalising misery communally and individually.

Well-meaning but short-sighted reinterpretations of “persecution” in many signatory countries do not help. Based on World War II experiences the Convention rightly defines a refugee as someone facing a well-founded fear of (political or racial) persecution by governments.

But “persecution” has come to be so widely defined by some as to include any form of social unpleasantness by anyone, even if non-government sponsored, unorganised, fleeting, just part of the everyday cultural frictions found in most multi-racial or multi-cultural societies or not a “well-founded” belief in other ways. Such loose definitions undermine the Convention. They also make it harder for genuine refugees to gain asylum in competition with floods of spurious claimants just seeking a socio-economically better life in Western countries.

Moreover, war itself or the aftermath of losing a war does not automatically constitute “persecution” or justify asylum.

In the case of Sri Lanka’s Tamils, for example – and despite real and claimed failings by the Sri Lankan authorities – having to undergo legitimate post-war screening and other security measures after losing a war you start and fight by methods that contravene international humanitarian law does not necessarily constitute “persecution” or indeed merit asylum.

Friday 16 April 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

The Department of Defence bungles mentioned by John Coochey (letters, April 16) have long been highlighted by the Australia Defence Association.

Often the Association is the first to point such bungles out, describe their history, offer explanations as to likely causes and recommend reforms.

It is therefore odd that John seems to blame us as the public-interest guardian messenger rather than support our efforts, especially in increasing ministerial supervision and reintroducing statutory board-type accountability into the department.

Moreover, his apparent puzzlement about some modernised and planned defence capabilities is even odder. Perhaps wider reading would help.

As a country with an essentially maritime problem in geo-strategic, economic and defence terms, restoring the ADF’s operational mobility for likely tasks in our region is surely logical.

Not to mention broader rebuilding and modernising of our defence force after all the neglect, political pork-barrelling and inwards-looking ideological wishful thinking inflicted on it in the 1975-1999 period - before strategic reality again mugged Australia with the East Timor intervention and subsequent operational commitments.

Monday 12 April 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published Wednesday 14 April 2010)

Jenny Stewart’s article on defence force equipment procurement inefficiencies (“Flawed from the very start”, April 12, p.9) rightly describes it as “a milieu of ferocious bureaucratic complexity” where Defence and the ANAO “are locked in a kind of performance audit dance”.

This ever-growing prerogative of the harlot, complexity of power without responsibility for outcome, is demonstrated by Defence’s now baker’s dozen of civilian deputy-secretary equivalents.

This tripling of the four recommended by the 1998 “Defence Reform Program” is despite, or more likely as a result of, the more than a dozen second, third and fourth-principle reviews of departmental processes (every three years or so) since the early 1970s.

Professor Stewart is also practically and morally correct in noting that the “safety of the men and women who will be operating the equipment is also clearly of the highest importance” (even if it is not so regarded under current arrangements).

But she does not connect the dots to identify the real culprit, the institutionalised but often intellectually and professionally irreconcilable clash of financial versus operational efficiency.  

The truly reformist answer is no doubt counter-intuitive to two generations of Defence bureaucrats (both civilian and military) and armchair strategic theorists steeped in Tange dynasty nostrums about supposed ADF “gold-plating” of operational requirements.

It lies in separating, not further integrating, how equipment is best procured from the necessarily military professional judgements as to what types of equipment best execute the government’s strategic policy.

The recent move by the Rudd Government to dedicate a junior minister to defence science, technology and procurement is a welcome step forward, one which has long been championed by the Australia Defence Association.

The next reform needed is to reintroduce the type of statutory management board, combining ministers, senior ADF officers and financial experts (but no theorists) that Defence had until 1974 – an era where colossal cost over-runs due to project management reasons alone were virtually unknown. This was because decision-makers were legally accountable, and had to really know and trust each other, and work as a team.

Instituting a second full-time junior minister dedicated to overseeing day-to-day ADF operations, not just its personnel aspects, should be the next reform.

Followed for the first time by a truly independent, genuinely expert, first-principles review of Defence's roles and structure, not yet another reshuffling of its ever-burgeoning processes and processors.

Only then will Ministers for Defence be able to change partners and dance with other than bureaucrats, and auditors, advisory boards and waste in perpetuity.

Tuesday 09 March 2010

Letter to the Sydney Morning Herald

(not published)

For decades the Australia Defence Association has been Australia’s biggest and most consistent critic of Department of Defence failings.

It is therefore very disappointing to see a worthy three-month investigation by the SMH “investigative Unit” finally reported in such a subjective, sensationalist and often out-of-context fashion as your articles on Defence spending [published on 09 and 10 March].

The efforts of the team in researching wasteful spending were unfortunately diluted by emotive inferences about ADF personnel supposedly living high on the hog, incorrect assumptions about the who, why and what behind such spending, and no apparent recognition that the defence force and the Department of Defence are not interchangeable terms.

It is also a pity that the only two former ADF officers quoted both retired nearly three decades ago and neither held the appointment cited. Modern views would have allowed realistic explanations of context and the bureaucratic, political, commercial and legal processes weighing down on defence force operations.

Three final points are worth noting. First, Defence employs over 80,000 full and part-time ADF personnel and some 22,000 Public Servants – and has extensive international responsibilities. Big expenses for travel, etc, are inevitable.

Second, most of the supposed examples of “extravagance” cited or implied refer to mandatory Public Service conditions of service and travel and training policies applied across every federal government department.

Third, once the context of most payments is known the justification becomes evident to any objective reader.

Saturday 27 February 2010

Letter to The Weekend Australian

(not published)

In their curate’s egg article on defence industry policy (“Iron colonels fight the invisible hand”, Inquirer p.4, 27-28 February), Paul Dibb and Geoff Barker oddly end up suggesting that Capability Development Group (CDG) in the Department of Defence should be headed by a civilian deputy secretary rather than a senior defence force officer.

This is a very old-fashioned 1980s bureaucratic view. It particularly ignores that the modern, integrated, CDG (replacing separate and sometimes competing branches of Navy, Army and Air Force headquarters) stemmed from the 1998 Defence Reform Programme – as did the logical decision that its professional head needed to be just that, a military professional.

This reintroduction of military professional judgement – not Dibb’s mythical “iron colonels” – into processes dangerously bereft of appropriate expertise previously has proved to be one of the most effective reforms of Defence since World War II.

Especially in rebuilding the ADF’s force structure after decades of neglect, streamlining ADF and departmental advice to Government, and money, time, morale and overall departmental credibility saved.

The CDG’s military officers are obviously much more qualified professionally and morally than public servants to understand the risks to their own lives, and those of the men and women they have command responsibility for, when helping decide what weapons and equipment would best handle combat.

Military professional expertise, not game-playing by bureaucratic or academic theorists disengaged from frontline needs and responsibilities, should therefore always lead but never replace appropriate professional, financial and business advice to government concerning which weapons or equipment should be chosen to give our defence force a realistic fighting chance.

Finally, Dibb and Barker also deliberately gloss over that most defence equipment project problems occur during procurement or from Government industry policy requirements, not from the earlier research and operational specification phases undertaken by CDG.

And they strangely fail to mention that deputy secretary-equivalent numbers in Defence have exploded from 5 to 14 in the last 12 years.

Even though the production of his precious deputy secretaries now appears to be a priority Defence output Paul Dibb is apparently still not satisfied.

Friday 26 February 2010

Letter to the Australian Financial Review

(not published)

Your Friday 26 February editorial on defence force equipment procurement unfortunately regurgitated some well-outmoded subjective views from the era before modern, integrated, joint-Service and departmental staff processes were implemented.

In particular, the suggestion that Defence’s Capability Development Group (CDG) should be headed by a deputy secretary rather than a senior defence force officer reflects very old-fashioned and indeed arrogant bureaucratic views from the bygone era when military professional expertise was inappropriately muzzled by over-reaching Defence bureaucrats.

It also strangely ignores that most equipment problems occur during procurement, now the job of the Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO), not from the research and operational specification phases undertaken by CDG.

And that the DMO now has four deputy secretary slots, plus a more senior associate secretary as CEO, in place of the one deputy secretary considered able to handle such matters until the late 1990s.

The creation of the integrated CDG (replacing separate branches of the three Service headquarters) stemmed from the 1998 Defence Reform Programme, as did the logical decision that its professional head needed to be just that, a military professional.

This reintroduction of military professional judgement, into processes dangerously bereft of appropriate expertise previously, is one of the most effective reforms undertaken in the Department of Defence in the last four or so decades, especially in terms of ADF and departmental efficiency gained and money, time, morale and departmental credibility saved.

Finally, the editorial peddles the well-disproven myths that modern military officers somehow cannot be trusted to be objective or that every capability proposal is somehow unprofessionally “gold-plated”.

To the contrary, military officers are obviously much more qualified professionally and morally than public servants to understand the risks to their own lives, and those of the men and women under their command, when weapons and equipment need to be eventually used in combat.

Military professional expertise, not game-playing by power-seeking bureaucrats and academic theorists, should therefore always lead (but never dominate) advice to government concerning which weapons or equipment should be chosen for our defence force.

Thursday 25 February 2010

Letter to The Australian

(not published)

Mark Dodd (“Defence to open up on war info”, Thursday, p.2) rightly noted Defence Minister John Faulkner’s admirable decision to release more information about what our troops are actually doing at home and overseas. he Australia Defence Association has been calling for this for a decade and we welcome the Minister’s promise.

But the article, and the ministerial speech it is based on, still ignore the two elephants in the room when discussing relations between the military and the media and the flow of Defence information to the public generally.

First is the hyper-centralised ministerial political control exercised over even the most minor, uncontroversial and unclassified Defence media release, especially since the days of Peter Reith.

Second is consistently poor coverage of Australian defence issues by our media.

This is far too often by generalist journalists rather than, as used to occur, by specialist correspondents with personal experience and understanding of military professionalism or war.

Contrast defence reporting, for example, with economics, health and business matters covered largely by journalists career-dedicated to, and professionally qualified in, such subjects.

To rebuild mutual trust between the military, the media and the public we should start by abolishing centralised spin of any political or defence bureaucracy variety - and revert to the former practice whereby defence force commanders at all levels (including overseas war zones) are authorised to brief the public and the media directly on what their forces are actually doing.

Wednesday 24 February 2010

Letter to Crikey.com (following imposition of a 200-word limit when replying to a 1200-word letter attacking the ADA stance)

(published Wednesday 24 February 2010)

Jeff Sparrow, (Crikey, comments, 18 February), emotively brandished more straw men and red herrings than seen in a middle-ages European folk festival.

Surely any Australian with a conscience and a sense of social responsibility would reasonably think twice before making untrue and – in the complex and nuanced situation of Afghanistan – inflammatory and dangerous claims about the ADF supposedly “assassinating Afghan civilians”, etc.

Sparrow ignores that Air Chief Marshal Houston, in a press conference with Defence Minister John Faulkner, specifically refuted both the “assassination” and “targeted killing” slurs when the incorrect “Australian” article by Mark Dodd appeared in August 2009. Houston also explained the dangers of such careless and incorrect reporting.

Sparrow also avoids the commonly accepted distinction between beliefs and actions that are legitimate and reasonable dissent in a democratic society, and intentional or reckless actions that exceed such limits because they infringe the rights of others to a dangerous extent or cause them harm.

All Australians have a right to argue with our government about Australia’s participation in a war.

But during any verbal or physical protests against a war all Australians also have a moral and citizenship responsibility not to blame, defame or endanger the troops our government sends to fight it on our behalf.

Thursday 18 February 2010

Letter to Crikey.com (concerning a lengthy purported reply to the ADA letter of 16 February 2010 below)

(not published)

Jeff Sparrow, (Crikey, comments, 18 February 2010), tries to defend his fibs about our defence force that add to the dangers it faces by resort only to more fibs, several red herrings and more straw-man brandishing than a mid-Europe folk festival in the middle-ages.

First, our explanation refuting his polemical article in Crikey on Monday [15 February] was submitted to Crikey as an article [see previous letter below] not a comment (hence its length and different style).

Second, this matter is not about Breaker Morant, as Sparrow well knows, so he should stop fluttering this false flag.

Third, note that Sparrow largely chose not to discuss why his fibs about the ADF somehow “assassinating” Afghan “local leaders” are dangerous for our troops. Or why surely any Australian with a conscience and a sense of social responsibility would reasonably think twice before making such untrue and, in the complex and nuanced situation of Afghanistan, inflammatory and dangerous claims.

Fourth, there are the further Sparrow fibs and evasions about “targeted killings” although he has now run away from defending the “assassination” slur and his claim that Afghan civilian leaders were so “assassinated”. He quotes [Chief-of-Defence Force] Air Chief Marshal Houston and the Department of Defence website out of context and (to give Sparrow the benefit of the doubt) when he perhaps misunderstands the legal and operational terminology Houston used.

“Targeting and killing” is not the same as a “targeted killing” and the difference is not arcane. In the sense used by Houston, by targeting he was probably referring to an individual Taliban commander being selected by a staff process involving intelligence, legal and policy inputs and then operational decisions taken in consultation with the Afghan authorities. The Taliban commander so selected is then located and whether he is captured without a shot being fired or during any fighting, or he is killed in battle, this is rightly governed by the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) and his own choice to fight or surrender.

This is not the same as a “targeted killing” – methodology and terminology sometimes used by Israel but never by Australia – involving operational methods of arguable legitimacy depending on the precise circumstances, such as drone strikes outside war zones. “Targeted killing” implies deliberate and premeditated murder outside LOAC and our defence force does not murder anyone.

Furthermore, as the original ADA article actually pointed out, Houston had specifically denied both the “assassination” and “targeted killing” slurs, in a press conference with [Minister for Defence] John Faulkner, when the incorrect article in the “Australian” by Mark Dodd appeared in August 2009. He also explained the dangers of such incorrect reporting. It is worth noting, that when Dodd was challenged by me as to his source for the claim, he could only quote the previous “Lateline” opinion. Neither media item was able to offer any proof with the obvious implication the claims resulted from sloppy or sensationalist journalism.

Now Sparrow might believe what he reads or hears in the media uncritically, especially when it suits his own particular prejudices, but citing these two examples of incorrect reporting as his only supposed “proof” in such a circular fashion is not factually or logically valid. Even a few minutes Internet research would have established that they were both mistaken opinions with no factual backing and had both been previously exposed as such.

Fifth, is it not strange that Sparrow avoids discussing the commonly accepted distinction between beliefs and actions that are legitimate and reasonable dissent in a democratic society, and actions that exceed such limits because they infringe the rights of others to a dangerous extent. After all, it is on such distinctions that individual and collective liberty in a liberal democracy is balanced against our individual and community responsibility to each other not to cause harm.

In the context of Australia fighting wars, any Australian has the right to argue with the government all they like about our participation in Afghanistan. What they do not have is a right to blame the troops we send to fight that war for the government decision to send them.

Opponents of this or any war also have no right to defame or endanger our troops in any verbal or physical protest against such a war. To do so is both immoral and unfair, not least because the troops are there only because of the lawful orders of the government we elect to make such decisions on behalf of all of us. And, thankfully for our liberty, because our defence force legally cannot, should not and does not disobey lawful orders.

Much of the rest of Sparrow’s rant ignores or obfuscates that no Australian law allows any Australian to be imprisoned on the grounds of their political or other beliefs alone. This is as it should be and no-one is arguing otherwise. Sparrow can ignore context and blather on all he likes about people supposedly being in danger of being locked up in their millions for articulating dissenting views but this is simply irresponsible scaremongering and ideological sloganeering.

But when dissenting beliefs are converted to actions causing harm they can and sometimes are criminalised (as in the outlawing of racist hate speech, unreasonable discrimination, terrorism and, in this case, treachery or treason). As the original ADA article noted, usually this only happens when the intention to act is deliberate but also sometimes when it is the result of perhaps unintended but reckless disregard for the wellbeing of other Australians.

The ADA considers actions such as reckless fibs and smears about our troops “assassinating” Afghan civilians, or committing other serious LOAC breaches, reflect callous indifference about the wellbeing of Australian troops as fellow citizens. The combat risks they face as a result of democratic and lawful processes involving us all mean we all have a reciprocal responsibility to not add to these dangers, such as by carelessly inflaming opinions in Afghanistan when our troops are helping restore peace there.

Sparrow’s subsequent attempted defence of his actions surely confirms his arrogant and reckless disregard for our diggers. In our opinion, where justified by the potential seriousness of the consequences, the treachery laws should be amended to criminalise reckless acts. Sparrow and others can bleat all they like about how this would somehow threaten free speech. It would not, as the defences of truth or reasonable steps to determine the truth would excuse or mitigate genuinely-motivated criticism of the government or the Australian Defence Force.

Finally, the 2002 amendments to the laws covering treachery are “chillingly vague” only to those who choose not to research their legal and constitutional basis – and their numerous antecedents and contemporary examples in comparable democratic jurisdictions.

They are instead a too-long delayed closing of the legal loophole that allowed Wilfred Burchett and David Hicks to avoid prosecution in Australia for certain of their actions (not just beliefs or words) that assisted or seemed to assist enemies that our defence force and its allies were lawfully fighting in Korea/Vietnam and Afghanistan respectively. Even if you believe one or both of them to be innocent of such actions, such matters should surely be decided in our courts as Australia let its defence force down very badly in the 1945-2002 period by not closing such loopholes in our old treachery laws.

Tuesday 16 February 2010

Letter to Crikey.com (in answer to an "opinion" article by Jeff Sparrow)

(published Wednesday 17 February 2010)

Re. "War criminal to hero ... a dangerous precedent", Jeff Sparrow (Crikey, Tuesday 16 February, Item 19) used a popular-front agitprop technique, redolent of the Communist Party of Australia in its 1930-1970 heyday period, in tacking on some incorrect claims about current ADF operations in Afghanistan to his supposed conclusion of an historical piece on the execution of Harry “Breaker” Morant in the 1899-1902 Boer War.

Sparrow wrongly (in both moral and factual terms) claimed “… in Afghanistan at the moment Australia has authorised elite counterinsurgent forces to carry out targeted killings, in a strategy modelled upon the notorious Phoenix Program of the Vietnam War. A campaign of assassination of local leaders thought to be loyal to the Taliban contains an obvious potential for human rights abuses, especially since it’s almost impossible for the media to monitor what undercover troops actually do.”

Crikey word-limits prevent further discussion of the false and somewhat arrogant assumption that only “the media” can or should act as a constraint on the operations of our defence force.

As to the law and the context applying, under the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) as they are now known ― either with Breaker Morant in the Boer War or now in Afghanistan ― the deliberate and pre-meditated killing of enemy combatants outside the authorised rules-of-engagement (ROE) and subordinate orders-for-opening fire (OFOF) is usually plain murder – as is the same killing of non-combatants.

But as our Chief-of-Defence-Force has explained on several occasions when similar sensationalist and factually incorrect media reporting has occurred, the ADF does not undertake “targeted killings” or “assassinations” of either enemy combatants or other Afghans. Nor, incidentally, is our Special Operations Task Group (SOTG) in Afghanistan an “undercover” unit.

The sloppy terminology of Sparrow and others incorrectly and immorally implies that civilian Afghan community leaders have been murdered by the ADF when even the Taliban commanders killed by our troops have been killed legitimately as enemy combatants in conformity to the ROE applying and in open combat with our troops (who openly wear Australian uniforms).

Moreover, in moral and practical terms as a fellow Australian talking about Australian soldiers, Sparrow and others are guilty of more than sloppy terminology. These incorrect claims in the Australian press undoubtedly assist the Taliban and their apologists by providing propaganda quotes of supposed “evidence” that the ADF is somehow acting illegally rather than in full compliance with LOAC. The danger of such actions in a complex and nuanced counter-insurgency war, and one with broader international implications for Islamist terrorism outside Afghanistan, cannot be under-estimated.

Whether knowingly or unknowingly Sparrow and other claimants are unfairly adding to the dangers facing the lives of our diggers by, at best, recklessly providing assistance to the enemy they are fighting. Our diggers are fighting in Afghanistan as part of a UN-endorsed international force and consequent to a lawful decision by the democratically-elected Australian government. Any reckless or worse assistance to the enemy our troops are fighting, by any Australian citizen, is an active act of disloyalty and well beyond the exercise of legitimate dissent from the Australian government decision to deploy them.

Intentional assistance to an enemy our defence force is fighting on behalf of all of us is, of course, rightly punishable under Australian law (since the Burchett loophole was finally closed in 2002).

Under the Security Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act, 2002, an Australian citizen anywhere in the world commits treason if he or she (among other things):

• intentionally assists, by any means whatsoever, an enemy, at war with the Commonwealth;

• intentionally assists, by ‘any means whatsoever’, another country or organisation that is engaged in armed hostilities against the Australian Defence Force (ADF); or

• forms an intention to do any of the above acts and manifests that intention by an overt act.

Given continued false claims about supposed ADF “assassinations”, etc, it would now seem high time that this law was tightened to ensure even reckless assistance to an enemy was punishable, as already applies with several terrorist offences.

Finally, getting back to Sparrow’s ostensible purpose for his article, no serious Australian military historian that I know of believes that Breaker Morant was innocent in the murder of the German missionary Hesse by his co-defendant, Handcock. Both of them contravened the laws of war (as then applied) to the shooting of Boer prisoners after capture although some summary shootings might have been then justifiable for those captured illegally wearing British uniforms (depending on the extent of the items of uniform worn and their motive and actions in doing so).

There were also deficiencies in how the charges against Morant, Handcock and Witton were preferred and in their court martial and sentencing. Senior British commanders were also at fault, even if only indirectly, and were not punished.

But several enduring lessons were learnt and have been implemented down to the present day, especially as Australia has fought all its wars as a junior member of an international coalition.