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 illegally – 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 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 our reply to an unwarranted and dishonest attack 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, and 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 his 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 and the ADA website) 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 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.

Although Morant and Handcock were not serving in an Australian unit at the time of the offences, after their execution without the Australian government being consulted legislative and policy steps were taken to prevent a reoccurrence. The executions also contributed to the continuing successful practice from World War I onwards whereby Australian contingents contributed to international coalitions always remain under Australian command, are placed only under the operational control of allied commanders (where applicable), and are never under foreign command. It also perhaps contributed to the Australian policy not to execute a single soldier for cowardice in either World War.

Monday 15 February 2010

Letter to the Sydney Morning Herald

(published Wednesday 17 February 2010)

With some irony Monday’s Your editorial on defence force – media relations with the defence force exemplifies other causes of the problem you lament ("Muzzling the watchdogs of war", February 15).

Since the early 1990s there has certainly been excessive and hyper-centralised ministerial political control over the release of any information to the public about what our troops are actually doing at home and overseas.

The Australia Defence Association has consistently criticised Defence the defence force and the Howard and Rudd Governments for this.

But your editorial ignored the other main cause of the problem – consistently poor media coverage of Australian defence issues.

With some notable exceptions this is by generalist journalists (often for short stints) rather than, as used to occur, by specialist correspondents with personal experience and understanding of military professionalism or war.

Just contrast defence reporting, for example, with economics, health and business matters, where this is covered largely by journalists whose career is dedicated to, and professionally qualified in, such subjects.

To rebuild mutual trust between the military and the media we should start by abolishing centralised spin and reverting to the former practice whereby ADF commanders at all levels (including overseas war zones) are authorised to brief the public and the media on what their forces are doing free of any party-political or bureaucratic control.

Sunday 14 February 2010

Letter to Crikey.com

(published Monday 15 February 2010)

Only in “Crikey” could Charles Richardson’s initial ahistoric comparison (Crikey, Thursday 11 February) that Afghanistan was better off under the Soviet Union (or a Soviet-backed puppet government), and Vietnam under the South Vietnamese regime, be criticised only by Guy Rundle (Crikey Friday 12 February) from the even more ahistoric and ideological angle that the South Vietnam parallel was supposedly incorrect.

Both of your columnists ignore that the Soviet Union’s sponsoring of successive communist coups in Afghanistan from 1978, culminating in a Soviet invasion and brutal occupation 1979-89, killed many hundreds of thousands, destroyed Afghan civil society in detail, caused five million refugees to flee and sent Afghanistan spiralling down to arguably even worse rule by squabbling warlords and then the Taliban (1989-2001) after the Soviets were finally forced out.

Most of Afghanistan’s continuing problems are the direct result of the immense human, social, economic and infrastructural damage inflicted in the 1978-2001 period – not results of the UN-endorsed international intervention and reconstruction effort since 2002.

Similarly, whatever the real and perceived ills of South Vietnamese governments, most Vietnamese (formerly South or North) would probably now opt for that type of imperfect but multi-party government if ever given the chance in a free vote to throw off  communist rule in their authoritarian one-party state.

What next, claims by Rundle that Russians and Cambodians were better off under Stalin and Pol Pot respectively than they would have been under democratic governments?

Wednesday 13 January 2010

Letter to Crikey.com

(published Thursday 14 January 2010)

In an item redolent with irrelevant gossip from bygone eras, one-sided political claims and a view of Australian history as seen through a particular ideological prism, Jeff Sparrow (“ASIO, not the government, calling the shots on refugees”, Crikey, Item 8, 13 Dec 10), was unable to cite one instance where ASIO assessments of refugees have been improper or incorrect, nor was he able to demonstrate that security screening of refugees is somehow unjustified, illogical or immoral.

Moreover, those of Sparrow's  Jeff’s ideological bent heartily criticised ASIO for many years for its supposed part in the poor screening of post-World War II refugees and immigrants with fascist or nazi records.

The bottom line is that some security screening of those entering Australia, whether as refugees, immigrants or visitors, is clearly required. Not least because we all live in a globalised society and economy, we cannot somehow quarantine Australia from the rest of the world by total exclusion of travel, and there are at least some foreigners who seek to enter Australia with ill intent.

With regard to asylum seeking, Australia remains one of only seven countries between the  Aegean and Arafura sea that are signatories to the 1951 Convention and we are the only first-world liberal democracy (and country of mass settlement) among them. The legal and moral dilemmas of our situation are complex and nuanced. Just what can you do, for example, when a claimant for asylum turns out to be a serious violator of international humanitarian law (IHL) especially when likely to remain so?

Sparrow's Jeff’s further claim that receiving information from foreign governments is automatically an example of malign influence by such a government is simplistic nonsense. Obviously most of the information on foreigners coming to Australia has to come from somewhere overseas. But equally obviously the views of foreign governments are weighted accordingly depending on their reliability and rule-of-law standards. Information from anywhere in a dictatorship (or compromised democracy such as Sri Lanka) is obviously treated with much more scepticism than information provided legitimately, in accordance with international law and UN processes, by the police force or security intelligence agency of a fellow liberal democracy that respects IHL.

Finally, the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka again highlights serious problems with applying the 1951 Refugee Convention and its underlying concepts to today’s realities. Both sides in this war disobeyed international humanitarian law but the Tamil Tigers were much guiltier in this regard. Despite the propaganda emanating from Tiger sympathisers among Australia’s Tamil community, the Sri Lankan government is fully entitled (and indeed required) under IHL to screen the population of areas previously controlled, viciously, by the Tigers in order to segregate and detain Tiger combatants and committed supporters of terrorism.

As long as such screening and detention meets IHL norms it does not qualify as persecution in terms of the 1951 Refugee Convention. With appropriate safeguards, returning committed violators of IHL to Sri Lanka for criminal trial or temporary detention under the Laws of Armed Conflict is not necessarily a breach of the non-refoulement principle governing the treatment of asylum seekers or even refugees. As understandably no other Convention signatory seems willing to accept serious IHL violators, the imperfect but necessary alternative of administratively detaining them indefinitely in Australia, as it stretches into years, ends up being improper and eventually even inhumane.

Tuesday 12 January 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times (in answer to an opinion article by Nicholas Stuart)

(published Thursday 14 January 2010)

Nic Stuart (“Time to shoot down these silly season good news stories", Canberra Times, January 12, p.11) simply writes another one in arguing that the ADF somehow does not now need its only ground-based point air defence unit because wider protection by fighter aircraft can always do all the job.

It was this type of flawed bureaucratic thinking and narrow ideological approach in the Department of Defence in throughout the 1980s and 1990s that stripped the ADF in detail of many of the readily useable and deployable fighting, logistic, strategic mobility and medical capabilities we have subsequently had to reconstitute – at considerable tactical and strategic risk, expense, effort and time lost – so we could operate successfully in East Timor, the Solomon Islands and further afield since 1999.

Nic also ignores the battle-tested force structuring principles of strategic and operational redundancy – even if only maintained at absolutely minimal levels (in ones not threes) to save money.

Fighters are not going to be always available everywhere, every time needed,  and should not be risked or misused anyway on tasks best met or supplemented by surface-based point or area air defence capabilities such as the new Hobart class destroyers.  

His Moreover, Nic’s odd view that surface-based air defence is outmoded is not shared by our principal allies, comparable allies such as Canada, all our regional neighbours and by all potential adversaries in our wider region.

It could just as well be argued, using Nic’s points and numerous foreign comparisons, that 16 Air Defence Regiment needs re-equipment with more modern weapons or even that, as the regiment has only one not three batteries anyway, that the ADF needs more than one such unit in order to maintain the capability in the three parts needed to deploy it continually for protracted periods or protect more than one airbase or (tiny) deployed force.

Finally, there is his odd argument that defence capabilities that have fired few or no shots in anger over recent decades can easily be scrapped.

Even ignoring deterrent values, the unpredictability of the future and even minimal force adaptability and technological standards maintenance imperatives, this fallacious suggestion would mean, for example, the ADF scrapping all its submarines (last combat 1915),  bombers (last combat 1971), fighters (last enemy fighter shot down in 1953) and artillery (last combat 1971).

Surely the real story about 16 Air Defence Regiment is why its single-unit base at Woodside is not closed, before more funds are expended there, and why it is not moved to a location that offers operational utility, strategic sense and financial savings?

Friday 08 January 2010

Letter to The Australian Financial Review

(published Tuesday 12 January 2010)

By all means allow Mark Latham to comment on political or economic matters.

But not, such as “Why we must avoid US folly”, AFR, January 7, p.46, where his complete ignorance of the fundamentals of grand strategy, all military operations and most intelligence gathering matters, and his prejudiced misunderstanding of much of Australia’s strategic history, only embarrass him, your paper and anyone who once thought he was qualified to be prime minister.

Surely it also simply bizarre for a former Labor Party leader to be so ignorant of the UN Charter, especially Australia’s responsibilities as a member to help restore international peace and security in UN-endorsed military operations.

Wednesday 06 January 2010

Letter to The Courier Mail

(not published)

Ian McPhedran (“Securing a solution”, Courier Mail, 06/01, p.24) oddly claimed that there is a “pro-war lobby” in Australia supposedly arguing that our thankfully low casualty numbers in Afghanistan somehow mean we are not “pulling our weight” strategically.

The Australia Defence Association knows of no-one seriously arguing for a boost to our commitment on such specious grounds and we would know because our job would involve vigorously refuting them.

Ian also appears to miss that in moral and strategic terms Australia should never risk our diggers’ lives in any war unless it in our national interest, we intend to win it and, at group and individual level on the ground, our diggers can fight for moral ideals and practical initiatives rather than ivory-tower “policy considerations”.

The bottom line in such “just wars” is that if we do not fight to win we should not be fighting at all.

Moreover, winning deters other potential wars while losing often encourages other aggressors (especially if we quit just because it got hard or wrongly seemed “unwinnable”).

If Australia needs to commit more troops to Afghanistan in order to help win, reduce our casualties and shorten the duration of our commitment over the long haul, further reduce the misery of the Afghan people and show our strategic and moral will to stand up to Islamist aggression, then we should do so.

But we should never ask our diggers to risk their lives for opinion poll-driven party-political expediency, or as a “token contribution” to satisfy policy considerations or diplomatic aims such as “managing” our strategic relationship with the US, especially when both are invariably postulated by those not called on to risk their lives – and the patience of our US and British allies with such strategic bludging is markedly decreasing anyway.

Making token contributions to the UN-endorsed war in Afghanistan, and not persisting in order to win, are just as strategically invalid and morally indefensible as simplistic or defeatist calls to quit.

Monday 04 January 2010

Letter to The Canberra Times (in answer to a letter from the Chief-of-Army)

(published Wednesday 06 January 2010)

Hesitant as I am to comment on an exchange between the Chief-of-Army (Letters, January 4) and the national president of the Defence Reserves Association (“Defence warned reserves will quit”, December 30, p.3), I suspect there is some general confusion involved.

It is also probable that the “second-class” quote about reservists attributed to General Barry was misreported from quite a different context to that assumed by General Gillespie.

But the real issue here, surely (and generally), is why the specific funding now allocated to ADF reservists is insufficient to meet their training and development needs for other than high-priority tasks (now that it can no longer be topped up each year using the salary vote surplus from those full-time ADF personnel not actually able to be recruited when the economy was booming).

Numerous army and parliamentary studies of the Army Reserve over the last generation or two, for example, all agree that army reservists need a minimum of 28-32 days annually to maintain basic standards of operational effectiveness and utility.

If current funding does not sustain such effectiveness then surely the only practical and long-term alternatives are to increase the direct funding or again cut the size of the Army Reserve (and move it fully to a Ready-Reserve model).

While the 3^rd AIF-in-waiting model of the 1950-2000 Army Reserve is rightly no longer appropriate for strategic, demographic, technological and budgetary reasons, the smaller, more specialised and integrated reserve forces we now have still need to be adequately sustained.

Otherwise we risk further accelerating the general and generational death spiral afflicting the Army Reserve as a whole.

Sunday 03 January 2010

Letter to The Australian

(not published)

In two recent articles on continuing problems with the Navy’s Armidale class patrol boats Michael McKenna has rightly noted how it is unusual for naval vessels to be constructed to commercial rather than warship standards.

But he has gone on to blame the Navy incorrectly for this, and for the associated long-term constraints on defence and border protection operations, rather than slot home the real responsibility.

These boats were wrongly built to a low funding cap arbitrarily set by the early Howard government, then in full thrall to flawed theories of running our defence force like a commercial business, instead of the boats being designed and constructed to the operational capability logically derived and clearly required - as the Navy and the wider ADF professionally and appropriately advised.

The Armidales are sadly not warships. Their only military characteristics are effectively their (one) gun, electronics suite and grey paint scheme.

This works for some border protection duties, and in fictional television series where the incoming fire is only blanks and the need for battle-damage control can be ignored, but means they largely cannot be used in most wider defence roles especially in helping deter or fight shooting wars involving missile-equipped adversaries (such as virtually all other navies in the near and wider regions).

The clear lesson, once again, is that Australia’s strategic and operational requirements always need to drive defence equipment procurement, not the funding thought to be available politically or various absurd theorising by ideologues, bureaucrats, academics and business figures who have never seen a shot fired in anger, spent an hour on the open sea or experienced any of the other day-to-day realities of defence force operations.

31 December 2009

Letter to The Australian

(not published)

In an otherwise timely opinion article Carl Ungerer, “Spooks caught with their pants down”, The Australian, 31/12, p.12, omitted discussion of another key constraint on intelligence agency effectiveness.

In Australia we have filled our intelligence and security agencies with too many “intelligence analysts” at the expense of not enough intelligence officers with through-career  experience in the intelligence profession, especially regarding hands-on intelligence gathering and mastery of intellectual tools such as the formal intelligence estimates needed to adequately understand and counter security threats and then guide consequent intelligence collection.

This is akin to trying to run our hospitals with paramedics only and having few or no doctors and nurses at either the working or managerial level.

Compounding this problem is that many of those employed as “intelligence analysts” or their managers are really academics and Public Service generalists filling such positions merely as a short-term box-ticking exercise in pursuit of wider bureaucratic, diplomatic or political career aims.

That only one, and possibly two, of the heads of our six intelligence and security agencies would qualify professionally for membership of the Australian Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers illustrates the extent of the problem – as does the entrenched bureaucratic unwillingness to even acknowledge this deficiency and fix it.

With even wider consequences, the proven inability of many senior personnel in such agencies to develop a formal intelligence estimate or, even worse, their failure to recognise that there is a personal, professional and agency inability to do so – and that this is a serious problem – are major process flaws in the development and execution of all national security policy.

21 December 2009

Letter to The Canberra Times (answering two responses that day to the ADA letter dated 11 December 2009)

(published 24 December 2009)

Michael McCarthy (Canberra Times, Letters, December 21) asks “what proportion of Australia’s intelligence officers are in the 007 category”?

The clear answer, factually, conceptually and professionally, is none - and so it should be in a democracy ruled by law with intelligence and security agencies employing professionals.

But Michael’s gung-ho and cinema-centric confusion only further illustrates my original point.

In the real world continual and sloppy media use of the term “spies” only confuses effective and informed public debate on intelligence and domestic security matters, even ignoring how it also prompts unnecessary fears based on syllogistic arguments such as those of Peter Harris (Letters, December 21).

And to reinforce my original point, it is highly probable that the only real spies in Australia are Australian traitors illegally working for foreign intelligence officers (mainly based here under diplomatic cover).

In domestic security matters where ASIO intelligence officers may be directly or indirectly assisted by fellow Australians in monitoring extremist threats, those helping are, in legal, professional accountability and moral terms, either informants, agents or even alert members of the general public, never “spies”.

11 December 2009

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published 14 December 2009)

Surely we should expect better of “The Canberra Times” than the lazy tabloid headline “Spy school” (Friday, December 11, p.3) over an article reporting the planned establishment of the Government’s new national security college as a joint venture with the Australian National University.

Moreover, your national affairs correspondent Philip Dorling, of all people, surely knows better than to inaccurately and narrowly describe its intended student body as “Australia’s spies and security experts”.

Would it not have been better instead to address some of the meaty issues involved, such as why the new college is being established as part of the ANU rather than independently - or with another university or the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies at the Australian Defence College?

After all, the college of diplomacy is already at the ANU and some healthy intellectual separation in how we educate our diplomats, strategists, intelligence officers and broader national security policy-makers is clearly desirable to avoid groupthink and Canberra-centric perspectives.

This is especially so when we see the damage done to Australian policy, and to the diversity of thinking in various government departments and agencies, through the ANU’s existing strategic and defence studies centre having developed such an unyielding ideological bias and narrow activist focus to its research (and too many of its academic courses) over recent decades.

Finally, sloppy misuse of the term “spies” does nothing to bolster confidence that your paper really knows what it is talking about when it discusses national security matters in the broad. For example, the operational staff of both ASIO and ASIS are intelligence officers not “spies”. Those Jjournalists and indeed readers unable to understand the difference conceptually, professionally or legally are simply unqualified to comment on intelligence and national security matters.

Such inaccurate terms also do nothing for informed public debate about the relatively prominent location of the new ASIO building [in Canberra].  Every little bit helps in educating the more paranoid objectors who claim this location is somehow inappropriate. because Tthey do not grasp the clear distinctions between the purpose and arbitrary powers of “secret police” in a totalitarian state and the fundamentally different role, status and checks and balances governing the security-intelligence agency of a liberal democracy.

02 December 2009

Letter to The Daily Telegraph (Sydney)

(published in part on 04 December 2009)

Noting his longstanding consistency for factual error, outdated jargon and inexpert or wild claims your so-called “defence writer”, Ian McPhedran (“In a war with no rules, there are no losers or winners”, Daily Telegraph, 02/12/09, p.75), again misunderstands war in general and the Afghanistan war in particular.

Australia has definite strategic interests in defeating Al Qa’eda and the Taliban.

Furthermore, we are not Western Europeans and should never bludge on the greater actual and proportionate commitments of our US and British allies.

The bottom line in moral and strategic terms is that we should never risk our diggers’ lives in any war unless we intend to win it.

If we need to commit more troops in order to help win – and to reduce our casualties and shorten the duration of our commitment over the long haul – then we should do so.

We can legitimately ask our diggers to risk their lives for an ideal or in our national interest. Neither of which justify token contributions aimed purely at “alliance management”, nor simplistic or defeatist calls to quit that would simply leave the people of Afghanistan in the lurch.

Finally, could Ian Mr McPhedran substantiate his absurd claim that there are supposedly “warmongers” arguing that the level of Australia's our military commitment to Afghanistan should be increased because the ADF has had “only 11” fatalities fatal casualties.

29 October 2009

Letter to The Canberra Times

(not published)

Your Thursday (29/10) editorial and the adjoining column by David Barnett neatly juxtaposed the two extremes of uninformed public exchanges concerning asylum seekers and encapsulated why informed public debate on this subject is so difficult.

Moreover, in somewhat of an achievement, the editorial was based on even more factual errors and fallacious assumptions than your token (far) right-wing columnist.

Both polemics chose to ignore the international law and longer-term strategic issues involved in order to make politically-partisan or emotional points.

Consistency in applying law and principle, however, is the only way to move forward on any international issue posing difficult moral, strategic and diplomatic dilemmas.

As with those aboard the Tampa who - when rescued in Indonesian waters illegally forced its captain to divert to Christmas Island rather than sail to the nearest Indonesian port - the asylum claimants aboard the Oceanic Viking are clearly the responsibility of Indonesia under international law and long-established international moral custom.

If Indonesia does not accept this, any vessel transiting Indonesia’s zone of international search and rescue responsibility will be most reluctant to rescue distressed seafarers for fear of being marooned forever in Indonesian waters.

Such an outcome would be a genuine humanitarian tragedy with significant wider consequences to long-established international treaties and practices governing safety of life at sea and asylum seeking.

That those rescued now and in the future may be heading for Australia to claim asylum is irrelevant, as should be their desperate or calculated use of emotional blackmail to undermine the applicable international law.

Despite another round of political and moral posturing in Australia over “Pacific” or “Indonesian solutions”, the real underlying moral and strategic problem remains that only six countries between the Aegean and Arafura Seas are signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention and only one of them, Cambodia, is in South-East or South Asia.

The Australian Government is therefore faced with a very delicate diplomatic task in negotiating with Indonesia because our overall strategic inter-relationship, Indonesian “face” and some frankly racist views or politically-pandering by some provincial Indonesian officials are involved.

Those Australians undergoing apparent crises of conscience about our approach to refugees might instead expend commensurate moral and intellectual effort in demanding that Indonesia and other regional states respect or sign the Refugee Convention – and ask why such states just keep passing all the moral buck for a supposedly universal humanitarian responsibility to Australia in seeming perpetuity.

Our news media might also try not actively undermining Australian diplomatic and humanitarian efforts by suggesting short-term pseudo-solutions to Indonesian officials, either well-minded or racist, that will only make matters worse for everyone, including asylum seekers, in the long run.

17 September 2009

Letter to Crikey.Com

(published 18 September 2009)

Excluding his odd belief that Japan’s attack on Australia in World War II “had its origins in European imperialism” rather than Japanese racism, militarism and home-grown imperialism – or indeed his wider ideological stances on the war in Afghanistan and Australian strategic policy - Guy Rundle (“Women at war: the mother of political betrayals, September 17, item 3), exemplifies key flaws permeating most recent public and media commentary about females in combat.

First, women serving in combat positions today throughout the ADF – as you read this issue of Crikey – are getting increasingly annoyed to say the least at so many silly and indeed insulting suggestions that they somehow do not or should not exist.

Second, they cannot understand why so many on either old-fashioned extreme of the debate, such as Greg Sheridan opposed to any women in combat or Eva Cox arguing for no limitations in any circumstances, get so much publicity when their public comments demonstrate little or no understanding of, or willingness to consider, the many complexities and nuances involved and neither is an expert on fighting wars anyway.

Third, they also cannot understand why virtually every new or old media article or program on this issue over the last weeks has been so riddled with sensationalist slants, factual errors, mistaken assumptions and omission of counter-argument inconvenient to its “theme”.

Finally, the vast majority of females in the ADF agree that operational capability, not conservative or feminist ideology, must be the prime determinant of defence force employment criteria, not least because they understand that battlefields are a unique workplace (if indeed they are a workplace at all in the civil sense).

If you don’t believe me, check out http://www.ada.asn.au/Recent.Comment_files/Comment.Women&Combat.htm

13 September 2009

Letter to The Weekend Australian

(not published)

James Miller (Letters, Weekend Australian, September 12-13) incorrectly, and worse recklessly, claims that 4000 Italians were somehow “held in concentration camps in Australia during World War II for the sole reason of their ethnicity”.

In fact the lawful detention of Italian (and German and Japanese) nationals was based solely on their citizenship and presumed loyalty as enemy aliens during time of war.

Such wartime detention was and remains fully consistent with international law and commonsense practice.

But even more importantly, there is a huge difference in fact, practice, law and morality between a detention camp run properly by a liberal democracy according to the Geneva Conventions as a temporary wartime emergency measure and a concentration camp run for any period by a dictatorship in breach of international humanitarian law.

Mr Miller’s confusion is yet another example why so many trying to comment on the lawful detention (if not subsequent criminal trial) of David Hicks after his capture as a belligerent (not arrest as a civilian) in the Afghanistan War so often ignored the necessary specialist international law applying to wartime detention of enemy belligerents [such as Hicks] and enemy civilian citizens.

28 July 2009

Letter to The Canberra Times (following a letter to the editor which seriously misunderstood previous ADA commentary)

(not published)

David Roth (letters, July 28) claims international humanitarian law (IHL), including the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) based on the Geneva and Hague Conventions and the UN Charter, are arcane and obscure laws but this view would not be widely shared and nor should it be.

Unless we have universal legal standards and consistency in their application, through understanding and acceptance internationally, abuses of human rights and the incidence and violence of war itself will always increase not decrease.

Moreover, in terms of universality and practical implementation, IHL moves forward when those respecting such laws are rewarded (especially when compliance is difficult) and those contravening them are disadvantaged even when punishment is postponed or impossible.

IHL also moves forward when its basic principles, such as universality and consistency, are widely understood and discussed free of ideology, emotion, misplaced national loyalties or personal prejudices.

As an example, IHL applies to everyone - including Australians. The lawful detention of David Hicks under LOAC after his capture, not civil arrest, when fighting in the Afghanistan War was not somehow unlawful, improper or immoral just because he was an Australian or a dill, nor because some mistakenly think he was a civilian and not a combatant in that specific war, nor because some might disagree with Australia’s participation in this UN-endorsed military action.

Finally, unnecessary confusion to David Roth at least, has resulted from editing of my last letter, especially the removal of explanations concerning the differing IHL situations governing the detentions (but not any criminal trials or lack of them) of Stern Hu, David Hicks, Mamdouh Habib, the Uighurs improperly detained at Guantanamo Bay and German prisoners-of-war and interned civilians in World War II.

As with all ADA letters, the complete version may be read on our website at www.ada.asn.au.

21 July 2009

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published in part on 24 July 2009)

Various correspondents, columnists and public commentators are mistaken in drawing purported comparisons between, and supposed wider inferences from, the detentions of Stern Hu and David Hicks.

Mr Hu is detained, without charge at this stage, by the Chinese authorities under Chinese civil law.

Whatever else is involved, his arbitrary treatment and certainly his detention under civil law appear to be clear breaches of the specialist international law applying, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

David Hicks on the other hand was never arbitrarily detained, "held without trial" or "held without charge" for a single minute.

Nor was he detained under civil law (and in breach of the covenant ICCPR) until, arguably, following his separate criminal conviction and prison sentence for terrorist offences.

Notwithstanding the controversy over the validity or not of his separate criminal trial, conviction and sentence by a US military commission, Hicks' lawful detention as a combatant member of a combatant organisation after capture in the early stages of the Afghanistan War was fully consistent with the specialist international law applying, the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC), and especially the Geneva Conventions.

Although not qualifying for prisoner-of-war status under the Third Geneva Convention, or indeed as a non-combatant under the other three, Hicks was protected under Common Article 3 of all four Conventions. His detention was just as lawful, and in its earlier stages at least, just as operationally justified as with all the German military personnel and civilians Australia detained in World War II.

The right and responsibilities of the US, as the capturing power under the Geneva Conventions, to detain, but protect, enemy personnel captured in war was confirmed by the US Supreme Court in the June 2006 Hamdan decision. 

Indeed this seminal ruling has been the basis for most subsequent court decisions extending further LOAC or ICCPR protections to those detained at Guantanamo Bay - and especially in directing the release of those not captured in a war (such as the Uighurs).

It is also, incidentally, why the detention of Mamdouh Habib by Pakistan, Egypt and the US probably did contravene the ICCPR because his arrest in Pakistan was effectively a civil matter, not capture of a combatant in the Afghan theatre of war as that theatre was then conventionally defined and understood.

19 June 2009

Letter to the Australian Financial Review (following an ahistoric opinion article by Brian Toohey)

(not published)

While Kenneth Mortimer (AFR, letters June 19) makes some good points about the technical, financial and strategic risks of the F-35 joint strike fighter, his general thrust is based on several invalid assumptions and incorrect historical examples – and it is always somewhat foolhardy to quote your generalist columnist Brian Toohey on defence issues due to the selectivity and polemics invariably involved.

In particular, surface warships are not automatically sitting ducks for missile attack and bigger ones are not somehow necessarily more vulnerable than smaller ones.

The opposite is often the case as the widespread trend in modern navies away from small frigates and back to bigger destroyers shows. Furthermore, it is systems of hulls, fleets, equipment and operational doctrine, not individual warships, that are important.

Mr Mortimer especially misinterprets 1982 Falkands War examples and ignores subsequent developments. Five AM-39 Exocets were fired in that war with two missing completely. Two hit different ships to the ones targeted (eventually sinking HMS Sheffield and the cargo vessel Atlantic Conveyor) but in both cases the ships were not tactically deployed nor equipped to defend against missile attack.

HMS Glamorgan was hit by the only Exocet to actually hit the ship it was fired at but survived to keep fighting (not least due to the size of her hull and ability to absorb battle damage). Sheffield also did not sink until under tow six days later, largely because of the distance to a safe port of repair.

Similarly, in the only other case where tactically-fired Exocets have hit a warship it was not sunk. In 1987 the USS Stark, an Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate (FFG) – as are four of the RAN’s ageing warships – was mistakenly targeted and hit by two Iraqi Exocets but survived.

War naturally means any weapons platform (or other target) on the sea, on land or in the air is vulnerable under some conditions. But, even assuming we have a strategic choice in every instance, that is no reason not to ever employ any weapon – and you do not deter or win wars, or preserve peace, by such general disarmament anyway.

The real lesson is to make sure any weapon system or platform is fit for purpose, equipped adequately for self-defence and, where necessary, deployed strategically and tactically to minimise vulnerability or defeat attacks respectively.

16 June 2009

Letter to The Canberra Times (concerning an opinion article by Nic Stuart)

(published 19 June 2009)

Nic Stuart (“Faulkner faces a torrid battle”, Opinion, June 12) makes good sense about the high hopes for the new Faulkner-Combet combination overseeing the Department of Defence.

But Nic’s his remark that “the military edifice is just too huge for any one person to make a difference” again highlights that the department’s size (in all respects), complexity and importance has long needed three full-time ministers and at least one full-time parliamentary secretary.

If Treasury has 3½ ministers, and Health and Ageing has four (plus a parliamentary secretary), why does Defence only have 1½ ministers plus half a parliamentary secretary – especially given the longstanding and near-constant publicity about its governance difficulties?.

The Rudd Government started off well by allocating two full-time ministers and two full-time parliamentary secretaries to Defence but then blew it when the day-to-day politics of reinforcing Penny Wong with 1 ½ of the parliamentary secretaries won out over proper long-term governance.

Greg Combet’s new workload, for example, is obviously absurd. He inherits all Warren Snowdon’s ministerial responsibilities, plus his old parliamentary secretary responsibilities for defence equipment procurement, and is still stuck with an unrelated climate change rescue role.

Two junior ministers, one for science and procurement and one for the ADF as a whole (not just its personnel issues), respectively, are clearly required (as the UK British model shows).

Nic’s Stuart's throwaway term “military edifice” also highlights another part of the problem in that “Defence” is not, and should not be, a military organisation.

The bureaucratic edifice that is the Department of Defence is a deeply flawed hybrid structure stemming from decades of unsuccessfully trying to cope with a massive ministerial workload, and, at times, attempts to divert, disguise or excuse the constantly insufficient (and sometimes poor) ministerial supervision.

Splitting the department and the strategic military headquarters, but under the one senior minister as the Kiwis do very successfully, would greatly improve ministerial supervision and governance generally, as well as allow deep cuts in both the civilian and military bureaucracies.

It might even reverse the near tripling of deputy secretary equivalents from 5 to 13 over the last decade.

11 June 2009

Letter to The Australian Financial Review (concerning an opinion article by Mark Latham)

(published 12 June 2009)

Mark Latham (“Better off away from it all”, AFR, 11/6) describes those serving in our defence force as “meatheads” with “limited intelligence” and “primeval interests in life”.

As the ADA has pointed out before with similar rants in The Latham Diaries (p.193), this is simply abuse unsupported by facts, argument or coherent philosophy and surely well below intellectual and wider community standards for acceptable public debate.

Latham is also only free to make such comments because of the exertions in uniform, over generations, of better men and women than himself.

This irony is no doubt lost on him.

His parading of such nasty prejudices perhaps stems from some form of shame about his own contribution to Australian society in comparison - and of envy about the community respect in which our diggers and their antecedents are generally held.

His comments undoubtedly transgress AFR standards for opinion articles and surely should have earned an editorial kick, not tick, at the drafting stage.

Shame on you for publishing such a cowardly attack – and on a group not allowed to answer him back.

11 June 2009

Letter to The Sydney Morning Herald (concerning a very poorly argued and subjective editorial)

(not published)

SMH editorials on defence issues (11/6) would have credibility if they avoided Vietnam-era undergraduate prejudices about supposed Department of Defence “fiefdoms” and did not include silly recommendations such as the army’s tanks being “mothballed” as they are “unlikely to be used except in all-out war”.

The definition of “all-out” is as unstated as it is irrelevant. Australian experience of the necessity of at least some tanks is derived from hard-won combat experience from all types of war in all types of conditions – both in our region (Malaya, PNG, Bougainville, Borneo, Vietnam) as well as further afield (Libya, Greece, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan).

The obvious question of how and who might be able to maintain complex defence capabilities when “mothballed” and then operate them effectively when they become needed, particularly at short notice, also hangs in the air - as does any apparent understanding that in the case of the Army’s few (59) tanks they are primarily intended for credible combined-arms contingencies by small sub-units in our immediate region, not major wars further afield (where we do not have enough tanks to contribute anyway).

No tanks mean dead infantry. This is why our highly comparable Canadian cousins currently use tanks as an integral component of their combined-arms battalion group-level operations in Afghanistan and have again rejected amateur or ivory-tower notions about tanks somehow not being necessary in modern warfare.

If you really think our army does not need at least some tanks, feel free to take the incoming enemy fire instead.

05 June 2009

Letter to The Australian (following the resignation of Joel Fitzgibbon as Minister for Defence)

(published 06 June 2009)

The resignation of Joel Fitzgibbon as defence minister [Minister for Defence] offers an excellent opportunity to reform, modernise and increase ministerial supervision of this large, complex and important portfolio ("Fitzgibbon blames 'Judases' for dramatic demise", 5/6).

In an act of bureaucratic triumphalism, when the defence group of five departments were merged in 1974 the responsibilities of their five ministers and four statutory management boards were invested in one minister, later assisted at times by half to one junior minister and more recently by half to one (and briefly two) parliamentary secretaries.

Despite at least some hardworking ministers (Robert Ray, Robert Hill, Brendan Nelson, Joel Fitzgibbon) this structure has become increasingly unworkable. Ministerial briefs, for example, have increased 11-fold over the last 12 or so years.

It has also caused a massive increase in the Defence bureaucracy in Canberra, in both size and seniority of positions, as the department has both tried and failed to cope with, or exploited, insufficient ministerial supervision.

This in turn has resulted in much professionally improper bureaucratic interference in military professional matters and in constitutionally proper civil control of the military by ministers and parliament on behalf of the electorate.

There has also been a stark increase in defence equipment procurement bungles since 1974, largely through the loss of the statutory boards chaired by ministers.

Even without our current combat operations overseas the size, scope and complexity of the workload is now beyond any one minister no matter how competent, motivated or hardworking they are.

As with the British model, effective ministerial supervision of such a large and complex portfolio has long needed a senior minister, two full-time junior ministers (not even half the Minister for Veterans Affairs tried under the Howard government) and two full-time parliamentary secretaries. One junior minister for technology (DSTO) and procurement (DMO) and one for the ADF (not just its “personnel” issues).

A proper structure of junior ministers with real responsibilities would free the senior minister from the minutiae, allow him or her to devote more effort to financial and corporate or military strategy issues, would better suit constitutional and professional structures in how defence is organised and needs to function nationally and internationally, and would also better prepare the talent pool for future senior ministers in the portfolio.

It would also help with downsizing the Defence bureaucracy – both civilian and military.

29 May 2009

Letter to The Canberra Times (responding to a letter about the new headquarters building being constructed in central Canberra for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation)

(published 02 June 2009)

Andrew Schuller (letters, 28/5) may or may not be right about the feared aesthetics of the new ASIO building but his comparison of the building’s profile, and of ASIO’s role, with that of the secret police in totalitarian societies surely ignores the important distinction that ASIO is a security intelligence agency not any form of police force.

As with the other principal Westminster-system democracies ASIO rightly has no powers of arrest, although the recent institution of questioning warrants for terrorist offences (and their associated secrecy provisions) has unfortunately diluted this principle, if not ensuing practices to a significant degree, and resulted in increased community confusion about the distinction.

Andrew Schuller also seems to miss that the existing headquarters of all six of our intelligence and security agencies are already within the parliamentary triangle.

This should be welcomed not regretted. Surely it is better for any liberal democracy that such organisations have an open (but not overwhelming) national profile rather than being hidden away from even general public awareness.

Every longstanding, and more to the point successful, democracy has some form of security intelligence organisation because democracy is not immunity itself immune from threats of espionage, extra-legal foreign interference or terrorism.

Moreover the very freedoms democracy affords can be misused and undermined by some bent on subversion and terrorism unless a realistic balance between community security and civil liberties is maintained.

The answer, as always, is comprehensive checks and balances, including our understanding as a community of what ASIO really is, what it really does and must not do, and why we really need it.

07 May 2009

Letter to The Australian (in answer to a disgraceful front-page article by Mark Dodd)

(published in part on 12 May 2009)

Australian troops in Afghanistan are professional soldiers fighting in a UN-endorsed war and they comply fully with the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC).

They are not “assassins” or “operatives” as wrongly described by Mark Dodd on your front page ('SAS "assassinate" Taliban leader', 7/5).

The term assassin untruthfully implies murder – and of unarmed people unawares in a civil law context.

Mullah Noorullah, on the other hand, was a willing and armed combatant member of a combatant organisation (which, incidentally, treats LOAC with contempt) in a war and was killed, in combat, by lawful and professional military operations.

Deliberately emotive and incorrect terminology such as "assassins" or “operatives” instead of soldiers, gratuitous and ahistoric reference to the Phoenix Program in the Vietnam War, and implying that the common organisational acronym SOTG (Special Operations Task Group) is somehow a sinister synonym for unlawful activities, are serious lapses in journalistic professionalism.

Such unprofessional reporting of such basic issues is unworthy of anyone who professes to know what they are talking about in defence force matters or who aspires to the title "defence correspondent".

Our diggers are professionals. At the very least they deserve that reporting on their activities be as professional, unbiased, factual and showing full awareness of the moral base, and the legal and operational contexts of their actions.

In a globalised information world, no Australian reporter or newspaper worthy of the name, or the nationality, should provide such baseless propaganda smears for misuse by the enemy or their apologists.

This is not just a matter of sloppy and unprofessional reporting and editing, or indeed just a question of balance or fairness.

It is a serious moral failure by The Australian and necessitates an immediate and public apology to our troops and censure of the journalist, sub-editors and editors involved.

26 April 2009

Letter to The Canberra Times (replying to a long letter from Paul Varsanyi about the right and perceived ability of the ADA to comment on defence issues)

(not published)

The Australia Defence Association has no objection to former Defence officials or indeed anyone else trying to defend their policy legacies or ideological stances.

But, as the impending Defence White Paper will no doubt implicitly acknowledge, this surely needs to recognise the context that our actual strategic circumstances, and ADF operations since East Timor in 1999, have undoubtedly proven the many serious strategic policy failures and other problems that plagued Defence throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Nor do we deny anyone’s right to argue about the increasingly necessary and major strategic-level reforms the ADA advocates regarding defence funding, ministerial oversight, the size, structure, processes and culture of the Department of Defence, and strategic policy outcomes generally. We do reject the opinions of those, such as Paul Varsanyi (Letters, April 24), who question whether these are strategic matters.

But surely we should have such debates without the pompous condescension, faux moral outrage and querulous claims that any criticism of former senior Defence officials, even as a class, is somehow impertinent, automatically invalid or even improper.

Both Paddy Gourley and more recently Paul Varsanyi have misrepresented ADA positions, accountability processes and comments, and largely resorted to straw man arguments, misquotation and personal attacks.

We did not, for example, accuse Paddy of being disloyal to the ADF, nor did we as Paul alleges, “publically critique individual past members of the defence organisation”. In fact the only persons named were acknowledged for their genuine achievements.

It is also surely a peculiar viewpoint when Paul feels qualified to opine, or that it is even relevant, that no ADA board member, including respected former VCDF Rob Walls, has had “senior-level exposure to strategic security issues”.

Or his equally arrogant fixation that the ADA Board of Directors is somehow deficient because it includes “not one Defence civilian”, when no public-interest guardian organisation board ever includes a complete cross-section of that body’s available expertise or diversity of opinion.

But to allay his fears, the predominantly civilian ADA membership includes former Secretaries and other retired senior Defence officials, as well as former ministers and politicians from both sides of politics, and many other retired scientists, diplomats and intelligence officers who believe in informed debate - and who all think that national defence is important beyond their own personal records and opinions.

We are happy to compare the diversity, and intellectual depth and ferment of our membership, against say, the staff of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at ANU or any of the lesser cliques of former Defence officials.

19 April 2009

Letter to The Canberra Times (replying to a further letter from Paddy Gourley which again did not really answer the questions posed in the ADA letter of 07 April below)

(published 21 April 2009)

Paddy Gourley finally lists his alternatives for the ministerial advisory panel on the Defence White Paper but again fails to argue why their currency, expertise or alleged independence from current government service are supposedly better than the incumbents.

The ADA acknowledges the previous governmental service of those Paddy lists and indeed the intellectuals among them are, as you would expect, Association members.

But, with the exception of Ric Smith, none have anywhere near current experience and the government could hardly appoint Mr Smith given he was the immediate-previous departmental Secretary and had been already commissioned to make a separate major study of national security structures and processes.

A number Some of those Paddy suggests were also intimately involved in the now proven failure of previous Defence White Papers, and broader defence policies,. These failed to prepare the ADF and our national strategic thinking adequately for the crises and operations Australia has actually had to face during and since the 1999 East Timor intervention.

Others, with the obvious exceptions of Peter Gration, Rob Walls, and perhaps Chris Barrie, may have been senior ADF commanders but are not known as great strategic thinkers or as persons with an active interest in current public debate on national security issues – a story in itself about the too frequent inadequacy of ADF higher promotion processes.

Finally, holding the appointment of having been deputy secretary – strategy in Defence at some time is surely not reason alone to assume much related expertise. After all, virtually all the public servants appointed to this position Most of these in recent decades have lacked formal qualifications and previous experience in this regard and, even more importantly, actual hands-on experience in executing strategy in military or diplomatic operations overseas.

This bizarre belief that no qualifications or experience in strategy is necessary to steer development of our national defence strategies is without doubt the single greatest cause of the long-term and major failure of the 1987, 1994 and, to a lesser extent, 2000 defence white papers. The second greatest cause is the narrow and flawed methods of their development – although this is yet again really just one more result of the inadequate knowledge and experience of the officials concerned and that of others to recognise, acknowledge or fix it.

11 April 2009

Letter to The Canberra Times (in reply to a letter from Paddy Gourley which still did not answer the questions posed in the ADA letter of 07 April below)

(published 14 April 2009)

Although some explanatory detail and polite niceties were unfortunately edited out of my letter (09 Apr) on the ministerial advisory panel for the defence White Paper, this still does not excuse Paddy Gourley’s reply (Letters, 11 Apr) playing the man and not the issues.

Paddy needs to name the “six to eight” national security thinkers with “deeper relevant achievements at more senior levels in the Public Service and the ADF than those already on it” [the panel].

And he needs to explain why each of his relatively large number of supposedly omitted experts would be more qualified, and why they are “completely independent of government service”, compared to the existing panellists?

Only then can his original claim, the strategic currency and overall merits of each thinker, and the advantages and disadvantages of their potential contribution, be assessed objectively.

If Paddy remains obdurate in his refusal to name the supposedly missing expertise, we can only assume he is referring to those responsible for the strategic dead-end thinking of the last three Defence White Papers.

07 April 2009

Letter to The Canberra Times (replying to completely unsubstantiated claims in an opinion article by Paddy Gourley in the Public Sector Informant liftout section)

(published 09 April 2009)

Among other old-fashioned ramblings your sometime Public Service columnist, Paddy Gourley, (“Understand the limits of war, or our military will take us nowhere”, The Public Sector Informant, 07 April, pp12-13) oddly claimed that the ministerial advisory panel on the Defence White Paper included none of the “country’s best national security thinkers”.

The three-man panel is deliberately comprised of those independent of current government service and includes the director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (a retired major general and former head of Defence’s strategic policy division during its most dynamic and relevant era), Australian academia’s best defence finance expert, and a former head of both the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre and the Kokoda Foundation (with broad Defence, academic and defence industry credentials).

Moreover, when the panel was announced, the Australia Defence Association noted that the really encouraging thing was who was not on it – and indeed how the Rudd Government finally appeared to be moving Labor on from the late-Cold War thinking of the Beazley era.

Perhaps Mr Gourley, a long-retired Defence bureaucrat of the discredited “divide-and-conquer the three Services” school, could suggest just who he thinks has been wrongly excluded and why.

I think we should be told.

04 April 2009

Letter to The Age (replying to an opinion article by Russell Skelton)

(not published)

Russell Skelton (“Chinese whispers”, The Age, 04 April) may know his ALP politics but commenting on defence and intelligence issues is obviously not his forte.

Unfortunately for informed public debate, he is not on his own. Most such comment by generalist journalists/commentators over recent weeks has been so inaccurate regarding facts, context and historical background as to be dangerous to the national interest.

Skelton, for example, ignores the external KPMG audit and just regurgitates the flawed assumption that Joel Fitzgibbon was responsible for the bungled implementation of the new pay structure for the Special Forces (not just the SASR by the way as the terms are not synonymous).

Anyone who knows how Defence works (and should work) realises the problems were largely structural, would have happened under any minister or government and will re-occur unless the department’s structure is thoroughly reformed. As indeed will the constant, institutionalised and unhelpful tensions between the Department of Defence and any Minister.

Skelton is also wrong about Nick Warner, being appointed Secretary by Fitzgibbon when this occurred during the Howard Government.

And rather than the appointment of a career diplomat as Secretary being “curious”, Warner replaced another able diplomat. Being outsiders, they have both done much to reform a poisonous departmental culture.

Moreover, throughout his diplomatic career Warner has worked extensively and successfully with the ADF on major overseas operations. He has a better understanding of the real work of the defence force than most career Defence bureaucrats.

This is one reason why there is no obvious internal candidate to replace Warner - even among Defence’s unprecedented (and ridiculously top heavy) baker’s dozen of deputy-secretary equivalents.

31 March 2009

Letter to The Australian Financial Review (replying to an editorial on defence issues)

(published 02 April 2009)

It is a sad irony that the AFR, which has one of the only four knowledgeable journalists dedicated to covering defence issues, should get an editorial on the topic (March 31) so thoroughly wrong.

Your criticism of Defence’s Secretary, Nick Warner, was particularly misplaced and you have fallen victim to rumour-mongering by those undermining him.

As with his predecessor (also from DFAT), Warner has done much to reform the previously poisonous institutional culture whereby ambitious civilian bureaucrats deliberately exacerbated inter-Service rivalries deliberately [sic] in the ADF for their own ends and contrary to the national interest.

Old guard bureaucrats hate Warner - and the successful, modern, integrated joint command structure of the defence force - because it means proper civil control of the military by ministers and parliament, not a reversion to the perverted civilian bureaucratic reign of the 1974-2002 period which so hollowed out our defence capabilities, weakened ministerial supervision and delayed or diluted effective joint command of the ADF.

Finally, much that still goes wrong in Defence is structural and goes wrong under all governments, all ministers, most CDFs or Secretaries, and despite the 14 failed reviews of the department since 1981.

Real reform means greater grunt in ministerial supervision with one senior and two junior ministers (one for the Defence Science and Technology Organisation and the Defence Materiel Organisation and one for the ADF as for the UK model), abolishing Defence’s silly diarchical (two-boss) structure, and separating the department under the Secretary and the ADF under the CDF (as for the NZ model) so both can concentrate on their core business and better serve the Minister for Defence and the country.

31 March 2009

Letter to The Australian (replying to articles by Cameron Stewart)

(published 01 April 2009)

Cameron Stewart’s articles on ADF deficiencies ("Military not ready for war", "Our defenceless force", 31/1) strangely blame the victim, the ADF, and not the perpetrator - governments of both political persuasions ever keen to divert defence funding elsewhere to buy votes.

He also misses the context and sadly much of the detail involved when governments rob Peter to pay Paul, especially when both are ADF personnel.

In the absence of limitless funding, all defence capability development means striking a constant balance between being able to handle two types of contingency.

First, are defence force operations that can occur frequently, arise with little or no warning, often cannot be deterred, mean risk to ADF lives during the electoral life of the government involved - but are not major or existential treats to our national sovereignty or freedom of action. These normally also involve cheaper and less complex weapons and equipment.

Second are one-in-a-hundred-year flood-type future threats such as conquest which are catastrophic should they occur. At any one time these are usually unlikely but not so unlikely as to be impossible and even then might be deterred. They normally involve longer warning times. The risk to ADF lives through obsolete [sic] obsolescent or insufficient equipment (bombers, fighters, submarines, etc) is far in the future so it can be electorally ignored by the current government.

Because there are generally no votes in defence (until it is too late), all governments fail to invest in defence on an adequate and sustained basis unless they receive a shock such as the very near-run East Timor deployment in 1999.

This wake-up call improved things for a while. But now, ten years later, the lessons are again being forgotten or simply not understood by a country where so few citizens have ever served in the ADF or even know someone who does.

This allows the same myths to be peddled by political and academic barrow-pushers and simply regurgitated rather than challenged in the media. These include the fibs that adequate and sustained defence investment is not needed, that major cost financial “efficiencies” (where money might be saved but lives undoubtedly risked) are possible, and that ships, aircraft and armoured vehicles can once again be bought fitted-for-but-not-with the bits they need for actual fighting.

18 March 2009

Letter to The Canberra Times (replying to an opinion article by Nic Stuart)

(not published)

On a day when another soldier was unfortunately killed in action protecting our wider national interests, Nic Stuart (“Rudd prepares blitzkrieg”, CT, March 17) eschews a practical or factual approach to discussing Australian defence strategy and instead regurgitates long discredited isolationist slogans.

In particular, his main but false assumption about the need to “introduce coherence to the ADF’s force structure” is simply bizarre in its ahistoric and ideological posturing.

The difficult process of rebuilding the ADF is exactly what has been occurring since the very close-run success of the 1999 East Timor deployment.

This indisputably proved how underfunded, unsuitable, unbalanced, “fitted-for-but-not-with”, hollow and narrowly focused the ADF had become, under neglectful governments of both persuasions, throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Furthermore, while structural reform of the Department of Defence is certainly needed, it would not be in the national interest to return to the poisonous Public Service-ADF relations encouraged by some short-sighted politicians of both stripes, and wrongly exploited by a clique of ambitious and arrogant bureaucrats and ivory-tower academics, throughout the 1974-2002 era.

Indeed the current and immediate past Secretaries of the department, both reared outside Defence in DFAT and with practical experience of actually working with the ADF overseas, are to be congratulated for their personal, professional and intellectual efforts in restoring a proper relationship.

Finally, Nic’s comments about “reforming” Defence simply ignore the herd of elephants in the room – the inefficient "two-boss" diarchy, an unworkable burden of ministerial oversight and the bureaucracy that keeps expanding in attempts to cope.

Since 1981 there have been 14 reviews of departmental structure. Each promised nirvana. All have largely failed where it counts over the long term.

The so-called 1997 “Defence Efficiency Review”, for example, recommended Defence needed only two not three deputy secretaries and two more equivalents. Several "reviews" later, however, the current number of civilian deputy secretary equivalents is 14.

It is surely now time to stop perpetually reviewing, rearranging and increasingly “Chief Indianing” this ever-burgeoning civil and military bureaucracy unsuccessfully.

We should instead adopt and adapt the successful New Zealand model of a smaller, focused and separated department and strategic-level military headquarters - both with defined, measurable and accountable responsibilities to the same minister (supported by two full-time junior ministers, one for the DMO/DSTO and one for the ADF).

We should also immediately give the Minister for Defence back the one and a half of his two able parliamentary secretaries abruptly removed earlier this month to reinforce Penny Wong politically (but at serious cost to good governance).

06 March 2009

Letter to The Sydney Morning Herald

(not published)

Cynthia Banham (SMH, “Strangled by chain of command”, 06 March) unfortunately misunderstands three important points about the constitutional principles and practices governing the organisation of our national defence.

First, civil control of the military is and must always be a political not a bureaucratic function.

As with our police and fire services, the defence force rightly has no “civilian head” other than the Minister for Defence and the Defence Act clearly states this.

The Secretary of the Department of Defence has an important role in supporting the ADF but is not, never has been and never should be some sort of “civilian head” of the defence force as Cynthia wrongly believes.

Second, without a disciplinary code and a chain of command you have a dangerous armed rabble not the apolitical, professional and constitutionally obedient defence force of a parliamentary democracy.

Cynthia’s idea that the military chain of command is somehow a serious problem, or could perhaps be abolished, is plain wrong.

The chain is by no means perfect but most recent foul-ups (“Children Overboard”, Abu Ghraib, Kovco, etc) have been caused by the military chain of command being ignored, bypassed, hijacked or muzzled by bureaucrats and ministerial staff wrongly interfering in it, or in other military professional matters which are and must be by nature apolitical.

Third, careless use of the ambiguous and slippery term “defence chiefs” instead of the proper term “Service Chiefs” unnecessarily confuses and conflates separate departmental and defence force functions and responsibilities.

Much that goes wrong in the Department of Defence occurs in the bureaucracy but it always seems to be a senior ADF officer who has to front the cameras and take the heat not a "departmental chief".

Finally, the current Secretary, Nick Warner, and his predecessor, Ric Smith, have done much to eradicate the poisonous and unprofessional Public Service-ADF relationship of the 1974-2002 period.

That both have been undermined and slandered by former and serving bureaucrats immersed in the failed, destructive and often politicised institutional culture of the past can be expected, but should not be encouraged by the media or politicians for commercial or party-political expediency.

26 February 2009

Letter to The Canberra Times

(published 02 March 2009)

The Department of Defence (including the ADF) is the biggest portfolio in government in terms of employees and departmental assets such as land, plant and equipment. It is also one of the biggest spenders of revenue (although by no means the biggest) and certainly one of the two or three most complex portfolios in terms of the governmental responsibilities concerned and their long-term national importance.

The size and complexity (and an unwieldy and inappropriate departmental structure) of this bureaucracy has produced persistent problems in administration, policy implementation and indeed clear thinking for decades. Fixing this needs to start somewhere and the logical place to start has always been with its ministerial supervision – in both quality, numbers and longevity of portfolio office.

A major and long overdue reform the Rudd Government introduced on winning office was to finally increase the amount of ministerial supervision in the Defence portfolio.

Under the Howard Government there was only one full-time minister, half a junior minister and one parliamentary secretary (who was often a lightweight given the job to boost their profile in a marginal seat). Furthermore, four of the five senior ministers who held the Defence portfolio were on their terminal tour in parliament and with three of them this really showed.

Rudd realistically put in two full-time ministers and two full-time parliamentary secretaries (the ADA has always argued for one senior and two junior ministers plus two parliamentary secretaries). The results to date of this increased supervision have generally reflected and rewarded this increased ministerial effort – especially in the area of defence procurement.

The recent reshuffle of parliamentary secretaries has unfortunately resulted, hopefully by prime-ministerial inattention or political accident and not design, in Defence now having only half a parliamentary secretary.

Surely after two days of parliamentary squabbling over administrative stuff-ups in the Department of Defence, and the perceived role or otherwise of the portfolio minister concerned, the irony of the Prime Minister drastically culling the amount of ministerial supervision in that portfolio by removing one and a half of its two parliamentary secretaries should not be lost on anyone.

Why should the men and women of the ADF have to suffer so governmental effort elsewhere can be reinforced?

Surely further reform of the Department of Defence for the long term should not be sacrificed for short-term party-political expediency?

Hopefully the next reshuffle is not far off and will boost rather than further dilute ministerial supervision of the Department of Defence