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The Association’s current concerns and proposals include the following,
often inter-related, key issues.
Need for adequate and
sustained investment in our defence
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For much of the 20th Century the amounts
Australia spent each year on social security, health, education and defence were
roughly approximate. Over the last 30 years this situation has changed
dramatically.
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Counting both federal and state spending,
each year we now spend about 8.5 times more on social security, about
4.5 times more on health and around 4 times more on education than we
invest in our defence. This is not to say that these areas are
unimportant ― merely that defence is important too. The best schools and
hospitals are not much good if someone with a different view of our
place in the world can take them away from us or otherwise affect our
use of them.
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Defence spending is the only one of the
above categories that is wholly a federal government responsibility. For many years
it was the
single largest Commonwealth outlay but is now only fifth. In relative
terms, defence spending has declined or remained relatively static for decades,
while spending in these other areas continues to rise faster than
growth in both general expenditure or GDP.
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Even when governments recognise they are
not investing enough in defence the levels of investment promised are
not delivered. The ADA notes, for example, that the gap between the
funds promised in several defence white papers since 1987 and the funds
actually delivered is now at least $107 billion.
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In a situation where there has clearly
been serious underinvestment in the ADF for at least three decades, the Association believes defence funding
needs to be
maintained at not less than two per cent of GDP or 8-9 percent of the
federal budget whichever is the greater. While the Howard
government has been increasing defence spending by about three per cent
annually in real terms over the last few years, and the Rudd government
has agreed to continue this until 2016, these increases are really only
catching up for the preceding decades of under-investment, and in some
cases outright neglect, under governments of all political persuasions.
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While the problems being experienced in
re-equipping the ADF are the result of a number of causes (see below), the
bottom line remains that Australia is not allocating enough of its
resources to its defence. We are, in effect, gambling with the future of
our children and their children.
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No major additional funds should be committed,
however, until the Department of Defence is reformed (see below) and the
people of Australia can be confident the money will be spent wisely.
Need for a National Security Council
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The Association considers that Australia
needs a small, statutory, National Security Council to better control and co-ordinate
national security issues and initiatives. The council would have an
executive role subordinate to the National Security Committee of Cabinet
and accountable to that standing Cabinet committee.
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This council would combine relevant ministers, senior
ADF commanders and senior officials in both executive and consultative
roles. Some or all the state premiers or territory chief ministers may be invited to attend on
occasion when matters concerning their state or territory are affected.
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Current inter-departmental structures and
processes are too bureaucratic and cumbersome. They are also too subject
to confusion in the delivery of information to Cabinet and with
integrated collective ministerial direction to departments, the defence
force and the law enforcement, intelligence and security agencies. This situation is even
worse where joint federal-state action is required.
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The Office of National
Assessments (ONA) has long been an intelligence staff masquerading as an
intelligence agency. ONA should be disbanded as a separate agency with its
responsibilities and staff becoming the intelligence staff of the
National Security Council.
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The Secretary's Committee
on National Security (SCONS) would be revamped and become a
sub-committee only of the National Security Council.
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The ADA does not believe Australia needs
a department of homeland security as in the USA. The risk is that this
would just create another bureaucratic monstrosity like the Department
of Defence and reduce the effectiveness of agencies such as ASIO and the
Federal Police, not least by inserting intermediate levels of
bureaucracy between agency heads and the responsible Minister.
Thorough reform of the bureaucracy in the
Department of Defence
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The defence force must
always be subject to civil
political control. But this does not mean it should be plagued by so much civilian
bureaucratic interference in clearly military professional matters. Civil
bureaucratic "supervision" is not civil political control and is, in fact,
inimical to it. The Department of Defence should exist only to support
the ADF and its supervising Minister.
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The structure,
culture and practices of, the Department of Defence are fundamentally
flawed and require urgent and thorough reform. No other comparable country
organises the management of its defence like Australia does – for the excellent
reason that it does not work.
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The Association believes that the
department in its current form and attitude prevents ministerial ‘grip’,
prevents ministers from having sufficient and regular contact with ADF commanders and
their staffs, is unnecessarily bureaucratic, has unclear chains of command
and authority, and diffuses responsibility and accountability to the
extent that major time wasting and bungling is endemic.
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Moreover, the people we expect to fight with the
weapons and equipment we buy for them surely have a right to a fair say
in what those weapons, etc, need to be. This does not occur at present
and defence force expertise is not utilised sufficiently in strategic
policy, capability development and procurement
decisions. The result is too often moral, operational and financial
failure.
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The Department of Defence
is simply too big and too complex for any one minister or one and a half
ministers. For over a decade the ADA has argued that reform has to start somewhere and a good place is with
greater and more dedicated ministerial supervision. The Rudd government
finally accepted the thrust of the ADA's argument and substantially
increased (from 2˝ to 4) the number of supervising ministers and
parliamentary secretaries on assuming office. The ADA continues to
maintain that there should be
three, full-time (no other portfolio responsibilities) ministers in the
defence portfolio:
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a senior minister
responsible overall and particularly for national strategy, departmental
corporate performance and integrating defence matters into a wider
whole-of-government approach to national security;
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a junior minister for
defence science and procurement responsible for the Defence Science and
Technology Organisation (DSTO) and the Defence Materiel Organisation
(DMO); and
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a junior minister for
the defence force responsible for day-to-day operational matters and all
the supporting intelligence, capability development, personnel and
administrative support to the defence force.
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Three ministers would
also allow a better career path to groom junior ministers, some of whom
might be expected to eventually return to the portfolio as the senior
minister after appointments in other portfolios. It would also help
prevent the frequent situation over recent decades where Prime-Ministers
have neglected Defence by either allocating the part-time junior
minister position in the Defence portfolio to short-term appointments of
capable ministers who are soon promoted or, to the opposite extreme, to
loyal (party) duds, or marginal seat holders needing extra profile for
electoral purposes, who are left there for long periods to the severe detriment
of the defence force and the workload of the senior minister.
Let commanders
command
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The ADA considers that the bureaucratic
structure and culture that has progressively engulfed the Department of
Defence since World War II unnecessarily inhibits defence force commanders in the
performance of their statutory and professional duties, and in their
professional and moral obligations to the men and women under their
command.
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The current structure and culture of the
department also impedes effective command and control of operations.
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Under overall ministerial control and
parliamentary oversight we let police and fire service
commissioners run their respective services without undue bureaucratic
interference but saddle the defence force
with a largely unnecessary, overly large and "managerialist" public
service bureaucracy.
Robust processes for developing strategic
policy
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The Association notes that one of the
reasons we have such problems in funding and organising our defence is
because Australia (and the Department of Defence in particular) does not
have intellectually or professionally robust structures and processes for
assessing our strategic situation and consequently deriving and
implementing defence strategy.
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Far too often ADF capability development
decisions are driven by strategic ‘fads’, narrow ideological imperatives,
academic pet theories, party-political 'pork barrelling'
and perceived funding constraints, rather than genuine strategic need.
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These flaws are exacerbated by the 15-25
year frames involved with developing and maintaining defence force capability development and sustainability too
often clashing with party-political and bureaucratic perspectives driven
by our three-year federal electoral cycle.
Integrated national security white paper
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The Association has long advocated a holistic
approach to national security assessments and planning – as is done in all
comparable countries. For example, the production of separate, poorly
co-ordinated foreign affairs and defence white papers should be avoided.
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We should have a
co-ordinated series of national security
white papers covering all such matters in an integrated and coherent
approach.
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The Rudd government
appears to have accepted ADA arguments in this regard and is tentatively
moving in this direction.
Reform of
Public Affairs Responsibilities in the Department of Defence
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As the imbroglios over the so-called
"children overboard", "Abu Ghraib" and many other incidents demonstrate, the Department
of Defence’s
structure and approach for handling public affairs has been a disaster for both the ADF and the
people of Australia.
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The organisation, culture and processes
of the department's approach are based on several flawed theories of public affairs.
Defence's public affairs division is regarded as inept, at
best, by the vast majority of professional journalists.
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The ADA believes that the overly
centralised, overly politicised and unduly restrictive approach to defence public affairs
should be ended. The responsibility for most public affairs should be decentralised and
returned to ADF commanders at all levels as an integral part of their command
and operational responsibilities.
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