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Major Furphy
Musings by the sometime
The following excerpts from Major Furphy's diary were smuggled out of Russell Offices over recent months for publication in Defender : Cultural Revolution Redux: Air Marshal Stoush eschews post-modernism and resorts to subtlety and satire about the self-criticism sessions of the Maoist Cultural Revolution when confronting those who pursue so-called 'financial efficiencies' with no regard for their effects on the overall strategic and operational efficiency of our defence force and, indeed, Australia's national security. They also serve who only stand and wait: Air Marshal Stoush, as acting CDF, is summoned to brief the prime-minister and carefully organises some detailed logistic sustainment arrangements in order to do so. Splits, Kilts, Understudies and the Hindu Kush: Air Marshal Stoush sheds his responsibilities for joint operations so he can better understudy the CDF and perhaps others. Proust for Dummies: Air Marshal Stoush regrets the Minister ignoring the Proust Report, tackles the Secretary about the unprecedented doubling of deputy-secretary positions in the Department of Defence and explains how many defence force personnel have been wearing hijabs for years. Gnashing Teeth all Round: Why have so many occupants of the Deputy-Secretary Strategy appointment in the Department of Defence previously served on Kim Beazley's personal political staff, and why do Defgrams multiply like rabbits? Tange Dynasty Daydream: What might happen if a future prime-minister allowed a CDF to do to DFAT what former diplomat Sir Arthur Tange did to the Department of Defence and the ADF? Floored by Events: While the ADF is busy fighting several wars the Department of Defence seems overly concerned with minutia Slipped Disks, Gamesmanship and Elephants: Air Marshal Stoush wins again at bureaucratic games while others lose sleep over who will be the next Secretary of the Department of Defence The Games We Play: Why do so many Deputy Secretaries responsible for strategic policy come from backgrounds that positively avoid tertiary qualifications or formative experiences in things strategical? Cutting, Plotting, Inter-dependence and Noblesse Oblige: As the VCDF's Christmas present will the new Deputy Secretary Strategy be a jet-ski or just another pair of light-weight nylon socks? Political Interaction at the Highest Levels: Why did Mark Latham nickname Air Marshal Stoush "Porter"? A Long Drop From the 5th Floor: The winds of change stir along the corridor of power at Russell Offices Dr Who Joins Defence: Some musings on the new Defence Capability Development Manual (DCDM) Sensitivity is Touching Both Ways: The opportunities for travel afforded by EEO training Intelligence Failures: The problems perpetuated by the bureaucratisation of our intelligence agencies The Wisdom of Solomon: How Defence accounting really works As I may have mentioned once or twice in the past, my boss Barney (Air Marshal Barney Stoush, the VCDF) is renowned among Russell Hill’s corridor cognoscenti for his dry but ready wit during bureaucratic flaps. This especially comes to the fore when the mills of bureaucracy grind particularly slowly or noisily, our political masters again fall prey to the delusion that one of their current obsessions is an original thought that has never failed before, or some allegedly new doctrinal innovation in the ADF is trumpeted as an absolute war-winner but is merely just new wine in old bottles labelled with Powerpoint.
The current pursuit of one billion dollars in annual ‘savings’ for the next decade from the Defence allocation has hit two of these hot buttons. Barney, of course, was not taken in for a minute by the promise that capability development and operations were ostensibly quarantined from the chase. ‘Just watch’, he counselled the Chief-of-Staff and me quietly, ‘how the bureaucratic classifications and descriptions of various longstanding functions and activities will now mutate to cancel out common-sense’s inoculable or prophylactic effect’.
After surreptitiously checking my dictionary I found he was unerringly correct as usual. This latest mutation of the Salem virus was soon raging on all six floors in R1. Even the most isolated and remote corners of far-off R2 and R3 provided none of their usual immunity to the infection and its frenzy for ‘cuts’, 'cuts' and yet more 'cuts'.
Within the first few days various second-order, but undoubtedly operational and capability-related, functions were adjudged as merely administrative at the stroke of a pen; with no thought to the hard-won lessons of experience, both operational and bureaucratic. The murderously orphaned functions were then thrown on the block for arbitrary slicing and dicing. Even more tenuously argued proposals soon followed – especially as there was no shortage of ambitious candidates keen to join the senior evasion service – and plenty who scented the air and threw options and themselves forward whenever they encountered a Minister, Secretary or CDF.
Returning from one particularly bloody committee session of the most high, Barney described the parade of willing officials proposing cuts as ‘redolent with the atmosphere of a Maoist self-criticism session at the height of the Cultural Revolution – but without the degree of personal restraint shown by the Red Guards’.
Born in the 1970s, and largely educated by post-modernists, I nodded vaguely at the factual allusion – with the result that the Chief-of-Staff added yet another history book to my weekend professional reading list. Barney, a firm believer in humour as the second line of defence against stupidity, then sharpened his point about the resurgence of ultra-Maoist cultural practices. Hunting up the old high-ceremonial jacket he wore when defence adviser in New Delhi many years ago, he prominently hung it on his office hat stand, surmounted by a flat cap and a little red binder.
The first two or three bureaucratic butcher boys, popping in to brief the VCDF on their latest sinew slicing forays, missed it entirely. Feedback via the brew-crew rumour mill revealed that the next enthusiastic butcher boy to visit was just as insensitive to subtlety. He apparently thought the prominently displayed jacket was something to do with the annual gripping controversy, fought by heated emails to and fro across all six floors, as to whether the colder weather temperature setting in R1 should be 19.5, 20 or 20.5 degrees Celsius.
It was not until the third or fourth visit by a keen knife-wielding functionary that Barney was actually asked about the significance of the ancient jacket and its symbolic accoutrements. The question had come at the end of a briefing where Barney was told that all overseas exchange postings were now regarded as both administrative and expensive and therefore a prime target for savage cuts.
Now a positively seething Barney is a rare sight. Like all fighter pilots he is famous for his equable and even temperament, but he struck and he struck hard. Pointing to the rounded edges and shape of the jacket’s Victorian-era high collar, Barney noted its strong resemblance to the Mao suits worn by victims during Cultural Revolution self-criticism sessions. Building on the analogy he pointed out China’s inwards-looking marked decline as a result of such measures. He further reminded his questioner that overseas postings, in fact, saved money, lives and national reputation. ‘How else’, Barney boomed, ‘could we ensure comprehensive inter-operability with allies and friends, operationally benchmark ADF professionalism effectively, and acquire key professional experiences and qualifications simply not available or feasible within our own resources’. ‘Moreover’, he slammed, ‘overseas postings generally achieved all this at a fraction of the financial and operational costs of the alternatives’.
Both his rage and his unrelenting stream of logic were a wonder to behold. After the butcher boy in question had fled the power suite, disarmed and in some terror, Barney throttled back, applied the flaps and made a text-book three-point landing. His usual introspection soon followed, coupled with his penchant for ably passing on lessons to the successor generations. ‘Self-inflicted jerk injuries to the knee’, he mused at last, ‘need surgeons not butchers and men not boys’.
They also serve who only stand and wait Late one week recently, Barney (my boss, Air Marshal Barney Stoush, the VCDF), had set aside most of the day to lead some brainstorming on joint capability development. As secretary to the gathering I sat up the back busily scribbling down the ideas as they spilled forth thick and fast. Up the front, standing on a chair, the Chief-of-Staff to the VCDF was kept just as busy organising the serried ranks of suggestions on a very large whiteboard.
Our hive of cerebral activity was interrupted by the ADC bringing news of a summons from the Prime Minister. Barney adjourned the meeting, being Acting CDF while the Chief was away overseas with the Minister sorting out Western European recalcitrance over matters in the Hindu Kush.
‘You’d better come along’, Barney directed, as we strode back to the power suite to grab our headwear. We were subsequently joined in the lift by the Secretary, a recipient of the same summons, who was sharing Barney’s car in keeping with his campaign targeting departmental extravagance and waste. Absent-mindedly I noticed that he was carrying a large pilot’s briefcase instead of his usual stylish leather valise.
Now I generally tag along with the VCDF to Parliament House for anything to do with protocol, ceremony or parliamentary oversight, but this was the first time in the case of a prime-ministerial summons. My curiosity was somewhat piqued and I eagerly anticipated the possibility of some first-degree exposure to the Sun King and his thoughts.
On our arrival in the M-G-8 ante-room we were met by a young staffer who greeted us politely and explained that the PM would be ready for us shortly. Barney and the Secretary sat down and traded chit chat about this and that. I took the opportunity to retreat out of immediate earshot, as all good PSOs do, and spent 40 minutes or so checking out the artworks spread around the extensive walls.
Time passed. Another young adviser emerged and advised us that the PM was still unfortunately tied up but would be finished shortly. Idly I wondered if it was a telephone call from President Bush or some other world leader.
More time passed. Yet another youngster appeared to advise further issues requiring the PM’s immediate attention had unfortunately arisen, but that these would be quickly fixed and that the PM was sorry for any delay.
Barney, a veteran of numerous Senate estimates hearings in his previous job, was not at all perturbed by the wait or the prospect of not much to do for a while. He stretched out a bit in his chair as the chat around the coffee table began to peter out. The Secretary, a diplomat by trade and with several challenging third-world postings under his belt, appeared even more imperturbable and began to flip through various briefs.
After another half hour or so the Secretary paused from his reading and opened his briefcase; producing a thermos and several disposable cups. ‘Coffee’, he enquired, before filling one for each of us.
Eventually, a different young staffer materialised, with further advice that the PM was nearly finished dealing with the urgent matter at hand and that we would soon get started.
Sometime during the next half an hour the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade appeared, accompanied by a couple of minders. Our Secretary poured more cups. Barney was by now deeply immersed in a voluminous brief on new ADF recruiting strategies. Various others concentrated on their crackberries. More people from several departments and agencies kept arriving; our little group was herded closer together as the room filled and milled.
Presently, the gentle hum of activity was disturbed when the thermos ran dry. Barney despatched me to Aussies, the building’s in-house café, to bring back more caffeine hits. The walk down from the summit to the other end of the building, and towards the real world, was somewhat refreshing.
After my return with steaming refreshments for an increasingly crowded ante-room, another young adviser pushed through the growing throng with an update on our coming confab. ‘Not long now’, he counselled, before being lost to view in the swirling movement to and fro. He looked vaguely familiar but, apart from his apparent youth, I could not be certain whether he was one of the earlier heralds or someone new.
Before long, probably under half an hour, Barney sent me back to Aussies for more supplies. The rationing order this time was somewhat bigger, necessitating a scribbled list, so a lass from the DFAT party offered to help. It was during our long, well-laden, walk back to the Ministerial Wing when revelation struck me. The reason Barney had brought me along was to organise the efficient logistics of long-term sustenance along military lines.
Not long afterwards, about another three quarters of an hour, Barney and the Secretary were able to brief the PM while I stayed outside and tidied away the mountainous pile of paper cups in our corner of the ante-room. We were soon back at Russell Hill and again engrossed in planning the future ADF.
The next day, a Friday, Barney passed on two tickets for a play at the ANU Arts Centre. Waiting for Godot, as I remarked to Pandora after the show, seemed quite a fitting end to my rarified experiences that week.
Splits, kilts, understudies and the Hindu Kush As I forecast under a single handful of columns ago when the VCDF first became CJOPS as well, they have had to split the job in half so he is just Vice Chief again. Barney (my boss, Air Marshal Barney Stoush, the VCDF) has adapted with aplomb as he does to all the many ups and downs of life, bureaucratic death and organisational resurrection at Russell Offices. I have mixed feelings about the change. My workload has dropped markedly but at the price of the variety narrowing considerably too. Now a much greater portion of the interminable meetings I have to sit through with him are much less interesting, even allowing for the rarified atmosphere and intrigues of the fifth floor. Barney, being a fighter pilot and a natural leader of men (and women), soon noticed my change of mood. He subtly floated whether a posting for me might now be in order. ‘After all’, he remarked a bit too comfortably, ‘I can’t monopolise your many talents up here with me forever’. As he spoke a shiver ran up my spine as I imagined having to move into R2, or even worse, somewhere in Fyshwick, Fern Hill or Bungendore. Then thoughts of a regimental job struck home and I happily daydreamed momentarily about serving with diggers full-time again. ‘Go home and think about it’, the VCDF commanded, ‘and let me know by the end of the week’. It was no go domestically as I suspected. Now the eldest has his name down for Grammar and the youngest has started at Telopea Park, Pandora was not keen to leave the nation’s capital just yet. Not that she is a Kingston foreshores yuppie by any means, but eight moves since we married 12 years ago have had some inertial effect. She doesn’t mind me deploying operationally somewhere of course, so this gave me the best professional escape route. I waited for my moment. It came when Barney was distracted trying to decipher Defgram 493/2007, the Enterprise Application Roadmap promulgated by the Directorate of Application Design (whoever they are, whatever they do and whatever an application taxonomy category might be). Ever so carefully I raised the subject that the latest reorganisation of the VCDF’s responsibilities probably meant continuity in his staff support structures was even more important than usual. ‘Perhaps next year, boss’, I ventured, ‘you could release me to go back to the sharp end’. Barney chewed on this option for a while, but now he thinks it was his idea he has embraced it wholeheartedly. ‘There’s no great hurry, I suppose’, he mused later, ‘you young fellows are going to be needed up in the Hindu Kush for a long time yet’. Having hived off his responsibilities as the Chief of Joint Operations, the VCDF can now concentrate on his strategic-level responsibilities understudying the CDF and relieving him of some high-level and time-consuming duties. Being a helpful team-player at heart in the (again) new ADHQ, Barney also offered to understudy his fellow occupant of the power suite. His kind gesture to the Deputy Secretary, Strategy, Co-ordination and Governance was based on the ever-lengthening, and dissonantly diverse, functional responsibilities listed in the latter’s title. The offer was politely declined, no doubt because of the interesting precedent it might set, but also because some sensitivity still lingers about this role. Fifth-floor rumour has it that when the need to split the VCDF and CJOPS positions became obvious, and various options were being considered, the Minister himself had wondered aloud at one meeting whether DEPSEC SC&G might not provide a suitable compensator for the extra military three-star needed. Stunned silence followed by prolonged gurgling noises had greeted the idea. The eruptions apparently stemmed from vigorously suppressed mirth on the part of the uniformed members within earshot, bubbling-up horror on the part of the senior public servants present, and even considerable surprise among the ministerial staffers – not least because one of them had suggested the idea the week before half in jest. Luckily the bells rang. The Minister was called away for a division before the idea could take firmer root or anyone suffer injury from choking. An important strategic-level priority is national protocol. As an aside, Barney had been most impressed by the CDF’s new ceremonial kilt and wondered whether he should get one too. I gently broached the subject that unlike the Chief’s moniker, Stoush did not sound particularly Scottish. Being orphaned quite young, the VCDF is unaware of his family’s earliest origins in Australia. As a proud Furphy from County Armagh, via Shepparton, I suggested that his family name perhaps denoted an origin on the other side of the Irish Sea, as with the likes of Hooligan, Skiddy or O’Brawl. But he was not to be put off lightly and dispatched me to the library to see if there was a Stoush clan tartan. Being a younger generation than the VCDF, a quick web search served even better to dash his hopes in detail. But Barney brightened noticeably at my compromise suggestion of the RAAF tartan, in its very fetching dark blues, instead. The CDF is apparently now quite put out as he has discovered his kilt is the Army tartan. Such are the delicate problems of protocol, kilts and splits. One thing never fails to impress me about working on the 5th floor of Building R1 at Russell Offices. I am regularly struck by how widely read the senior officers of the ADF can be. Take for example my boss, Barney (Air Marshal Barney Stoush), the VCDF. When the Minister tried to sneak the Report of the Defence Management Review, 2007 (the Proust Report) out very late on the Thursday afternoon before the Easter holiday break, Barney swiftly quipped that the whole episode was ‘very Proustian’ in its timing as was the Government’s reaction to the report’s recommendations. ‘All very le temps retrouvé‘ he muttered, obviously to himself as neither the ADC nor I speak French. The Chief-of-Staff, a much more well-rounded officer, had laughed immediately however, and not out of obsequious 5th floor habit. When the VCDF left he explained to us both that Barney’s remark was in fact a clever Stoushian allusion, referring to the seventh and final volume (The Past Recaptured) of Marcel Proust’s la recherché du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past). Since the release of the Proust Report Barney has become quite insouciant and no longer dissembles much about the heresies he harbours. Being VCDF he is, of course, a principal victim of ever-increasing diarchic mutation, whereby the diarchy at the top does not stay there but keeps grinding away to lower and lower levels each year. Now Barney, as a fighter pilot and a man of action, holds little truck for amorphous management structures. His ever-firmer conviction that diarchic principles are an anathema to effective command, control and administration of a defence force mean he is now unlikely to ever be considered for promotion to the smaller half of the two top jobs. His reasonably relaxed resignation at curtailed career paths has only served to sharpen his quippery. Noting the installation of a much bigger table in the 5th floor conference room – to cater for the half dozen or so new Under-Mandarin positions in the mill – Barney had another Proustian moment. He told the Secretary that the production of deputy secretaries and their equivalents should be formally added to the list of Defence outputs, given that the department will soon have so many of them. One of the new Under-Mandarins is to be a sort of super-duper chief-of-staff for the newly formed Office of the CDF and Secretary, or is it Secretary and CDF? Barney fears the worst. ‘The problem will be’, he mused, ‘that a chief-of-staff in a headquarters should be one rank lower than the principal subordinates to the person in charge, otherwise they are prone to believe that they are primus inter pares instead of just a behind-the-scenes facilitator of inter-commander effectiveness’. Demonstrating his command of jointery, he cited the time-tempered examples of brigade majors being one rank lower than unit commanders in a brigade, and the chief-of-staff in a divisional headquarters being one rank lower than the brigade commanders in a division. But the VCDF has remained philosophical about the latest round of bureaucratic empire building. His Proustian view is that only time will tell. Noting previous departmental history, he observed that we are now only 18 months or so away anyway from the start of the next review of higher defence management – and that yet again it will undoubtedly be ostensibly intended at fixing all the unintended and ignored faults of current and previous reviews. But it is hijabs, or rather the perceived lack of them in the defence force, that is now catching the 5th floor by the throat so to speak. The president of the Lakemba Sports Club is ostensibly encouraging young, hijab-wearing, Muslim women to become ADF reservists. He hopes to change what he fears is the apparent negative image of Muslim-Australians among the wider community. Barney, of course, was well ahead of debate when tackled by the first of many intrepid SBS and ABC reporters about the proposal. He calmly noted that our sailors of both genders have been wearing quite fetching hijabs at sea for many years when at action stations. He also cited the custom in downtown Baghdad for our diggers to wear a modest hijab whenever driving their armoured vehicles outside the green zone. Only the air force, he conceded, might appear at first somewhat culturally insensitive in this regard. Although in their defence, he explained, anti-flash hoods are not much use aboard aircraft or in air-conditioned environments. Later he regretted the air-conditioning quip, remembering the tendency for the hyper-sensitive to misconstrue any such remark as somehow constituting snide criticism of the air force. ‘Cross-cultural sensitivity is so important’, our Proust-reading VCDF noted to us subsequently. ‘Luckily’, he added, ‘our long experience with integrating the three Services will hold us in good stead. Seeking to convince the good mothers and fathers of Lakemba to let their nubile daughters mix for weeks on end unchaperoned with unbearded, non-Muslim, fellow diggers will be easy’. ‘After all’ he concluded, ‘look at all the long beards in the navy, and if we could eventually get sailors permitted to wear DPCU occasionally – without admirals suffering apoplexy at the sight – we can easily sort out the hijab issue’. The Chief-of-Staff had again laughed long and hard. When the ADC and I looked puzzled he told us to go away and look up the original French derivation of chaperone in the dictionary. Barney, Proustian as ever, had put his finger right on the nub of the issue. Next week he and I are off to Sydney for exploratory talks on the matter with both admirals and Lakemba locals. The CDF and Secretary’s joint Christmas drinks this year was a bit of a fraught experience. I had thought that the passage of time since my intrepid spouse’s letter to the editor was published in the Spring issue of Defender would have meant that all was forgotten, if not really forgiven, come Yuletide. But some of the Under-Mandarins, and the cockier Deputy Under-Mandarins who had cracked an invite, still gave us the cold shoulder despite Pandora’s daringly low-cut frock and dazzling smile. My boss Barney (Air Marshal Barney Stoush, the VCDF) misses little, especially when it relates to the atmosphere of the fifth floor and the welfare of his staff. He later consoled us with the observation that it was probably nothing personal, merely their pre-occupation about the brand new Secretary. While the Under-Mandarins and their acolytes were quite expecting the Prime-Minister to appoint another diplomat, they were apparently not at all prepared for one who actually appears to understand the defence force and appreciates why we need to have one. Having two diplomats in a row, and having two who can get on with the ADF, has quite unsettled their world view, particularly among the department’s more traditionalist and long-in-the-tooth officials Barney has been taking great delight in this of late by subtly massaging the paranoia of various senior departmental officials when they visit the power suite. He allows himself to be seen studiously absorbed in books written by the new Secretary’s father, a famous war correspondent for over three decades. The VCDF even offers to lend his copies to the more noticeably uncomfortable visitors. It is at times like this when I understand how Barney has managed to climb to the most senior echelons of the ADF and stay there so long. The VCDF’s long memory and apolitical strategic nous is coming to the fore more often. He has, after all, been around the top even before R1 was built. Long enough, even, to remember the last change of government and the predilections of the other side when they were last in charge. In a rare quiet moment the other day Barney cheerfully asked us all had we heard a strange noise echoing along the lake shore? Confronted by looks of puzzlement all round, he had claimed to hear the distinct gnashing of teeth from far off Acton after the new Secretary’s appointment was announced. Barney now thinks that I am not attuned enough to nuance. He has taken to sudden questioning forays to keep me on my toes as he flies by my desk on his way out to attend briefings. A recent poser, no doubt prompted by the change-over in the leadership of the federal Opposition, was for me to name the only incumbents of the Deputy Secretary Strategy appointment since the Bicentennial year who have not served on Kim Beazley’s personal political staff at some stage? This required some thought and was much harder than his previous toe-tipping query – how many of them have ever had formal academic or military qualifications in matters of strategy? Even Pandora was able to work that one out quickly. While the VCDF was out I sat and pondered. The immediate previous denizen of the other big office in the power suite came from an intelligence background so he was one. His predecessor had nominally been a scientist beforehand so he was probably another. The recently retired Secretary soon also sprang to mind as did, after a bit more thought, his unlamented predecessor. But then it got harder. I closed the door, stood at the whiteboard and began to fill in the big gaps. After marking up recent times I was then back in the mid and early 1990s. This was long before my time but an era of which I had heard much, while gathered around the endex campfire as a callow platoon commander, as my elders recounted many horror stories about untrammeled bureaucratic triumphalism. When Barney returned, I informed him of my answer. He positively beamed at me. ‘Well done’, he said, ‘but you had better clean that whiteboard pronto before the neighbours see it'. This week’s special discreet task from Barney was on the subject of Defgrams. These are a reliable trigger of his impatience with convoluted departmental process and the one on ocky-strap safety had sent him right off. ‘What’s next’, he thundered, ‘one directing staff to exercise commonsense’. The Assistant Secretary Corporate Renewal (third, incidentally, in last month’s ‘find the silliest job title competition’), has been tasked to investigate the marked decline in the rate of increase of Defgrams promulgated during 2006. The Under-Mandarin (Corporate Affairs) had noticed that only 703 Defgrams had appeared by Christmas whereas 696 were promulgated in 2005. He was apparently worried that a mere one per cent annual increase might cause people to wonder whether the department was busy enough. After I sussed out the figures for him, Barney’s view is that the UM-CA is merely pining for the halcyon days of 2001 and 2002 when the annual increases were 29 and 21 per cent respectively. In a triumph of hope over experience the VCDF tried to convince the UM-CA that the less Defgrams there were the better. But the Under-Mandarin was having none of it, and stuck to his guns that it was a serious failure of output-based accounting. Barney now fears that an extra pine plantation will now have to go in order for another tsunami of paper to wash over the department in 2007. Defender's review of Peter Edwards’ biography of Sir Arthur Tange reminded me of an interesting daydream Barney, (my boss, Air Marshal Barney Stoush, the VCDF) once recounted. This involved a Government ‘doing a Tange’ back on DFAT from whence Tange originally came. A newly-elected prime-minister with reformist pretensions, and perhaps spurred on by an anti-diplomat mindset, authorised the CDF to completely reorganise Australia’s entire diplomatic and trade facilitation structures, on his own, and without having to consult with anyone or be accountable for his actions, ever. With such mandarin-type powers our CDF abolished, amalgamated and gutted DFAT divisions and branches willy nilly. He appointed former and serving ADF officers as high commissioners and ambassadors as he liked, and ordered the diplomatic finishing school to replace negotiation skills with infantry minor tactics training. In an enduring masterpiece of empire building he quadrupled the number of SES positions and appointed ex-ADF officers to nearly all the new jobs. All the senior and experienced diplomats who opposed his wholesale changes and wanted genuine reform instead were retired. He then convinced the prime-minister to appoint a weak and compliant senior diplomat as a type of under-boss and gave him the glorified title Chief of the Diplomatic and Foreign Service (CDFS). Finally, he imperiously decreed that there would be no reviews or changes to the new structure for seven years. After a short time the urge to interfere itched stronger and the CDF thoroughly reorganised the total diplomatic establishment. He closed down diplomatic posts in countries he did not like and fiddled with every small detail of how Australia’s diplomats undertook their roles and tasks in everyday action. In so doing he suffered not the remotest twinge of self-doubt. Obviously he instinctively knew best how diplomats actually undertook frontline diplomacy under any and all circumstances. Our rampaging CDF and his willing ex-military minions throughout the department chose how our diplomats walked, talked, dressed and toasted. To emphasise their superior knowledge about even the most obscure technical aspects of diplomacy they specified what cars deployed diplomats were to drive, how many they needed, what colours they could be and whether they really needed luxuries such as spare tyres, door-locks, jacks or street directories. They also instituted a new policy of buying vehicles fitted-for-but-not-with heaters for embassies such as Moscow or Beijing, and then introduced the same policy concerning air-conditioning for the cars to be used in Riyadh and Delhi. When frontline diplomats complained of the safety, security or operational utility problems incurred our zealous CDF sent them scornful memos and sacked the loudest complainants. Others were exiled to Lagos, Harare and Rangoon. Whispering campaigns were instituted to destroy the promotion prospects of incipient critics by claiming that they were recalcitrant types who simply 'could not get on with the military’. The more persistent complainants were told time and time again that their desire for a spare tyre or a door-lock was thoroughly unreasonable and was ‘gold-plating’ the requirement. Finally, our omniscient CDF insisted that all car-jacks bought be made of cheap plastic as an economy measure, and that only ten-year old photo-copies of street directories be purchased. When questioned he snapped that there was no sound operational requirement for more up-to-date ones as everyone knew none of the cars would ever be used in action anyway. Soon the new DFAT structure became dysfunctional under the weight of all the internal contradictions inflicted. But our CDF dynast relied on his trusted ex-ADF officers, and a few laterally-recruited pet academics, to defend his legacy and the career structure he had entrenched them in. When his former ADF acolytes started referring to themselves as a ‘diplomatic priesthood’ he applauded and encouraged this as the status quo. Critics among the real diplomats were simply derided as mere malcontents and troublemakers. The masterpiece of his reorganisation over the long term was his careful selection and grooming of some careerist diplomats who saw which way the wind was blowing and changed course accordingly. These ‘Uncle Toms’ were promoted to higher and higher rank. They could then be relied on to discreetly punish junior diplomats who protested the destruction of diplomatic professionalism and the decline in Australia’s proud diplomatic capabilities. Of course not everything went swimmingly with Australia’s international intercourse. For decades, every few years, various parliamentary and official inquiries were regularly needed to tinker with the unworkable DFAT structure. Luckily his disciples were able to rely on the short attention span of Cabinet. This coterie of ex-ADF officers, academics and Uncle Toms were able to keep snowing thoroughly over-worked Ministers as to the real cause of DFAT’s by now deep-seated cultural and structural problems. Barney's daydream reverie was eventually disturbed, however, by the simple reality that no responsible Prime-Minister would ever allow a CDF such destructive latitude and then ignore the subsequent problems for decades. Neither would any Minister for Foreign Affairs with integrity preside over or defend such an enduring national scandal. After all, this would be just like authorising an arrogant diplomat with no real military experience to have an unfettered mandate to ignore military professional expertise and completely change the way Australia planned and managed its defence, how the defence force was structured and equipped, and how it should actually have to fight. That would never do would it? A big reshuffle has occurred here on the fifth floor at Russell Offices. The strategic policy staff have been exiled from the centre of power down to the lower levels and replaced by the public affairs operations centre. As my boss Barney (Air Marshal Barney Stoush, the VCDF) noted, with his inimitable penchant for pithy analogy, few events better exemplify where the emphasis lies at present. Barney, as always, has hit the nail on the head. After all we now live in an era where the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence is tasked to formally open the new vehicle washpoint at Lavarack Barracks, rather than the area RSM’s daughter. Not to mention this event being trumpeted in a full media release to a less than spell-bound press. We seem to be truly spinning among the froth and bubble of form over substance. Yesterday evening after Barney had saddled up and left, and as we have now had to do for some time, I dutifully dusted his desk and emptied his co-mingling boxes (recycling bins in departmental management-babble) into the one area rubbish receptacle now provided for the whole power suite. When mopping out the kitchenette I was struck by the thought that the new cleaning regime at Russell also paints a good picture of departmental priorities and how the little things can get very big and out of hand very quickly. The new nine-year corporate services contract for the Canberra area has meant quite a hiatus in the building being cleaned – as the incoming contractor waits for their cleaners to be security-cleared. Apparently this will take some time as only holders of 457-visas from the third-world are available to work for the new wages on offer and checking their backgrounds is naturally difficult and time-consuming This morning, I was a bit late for work and did not get in until 0715. By this hour, of course, all the Russell carparks were full and I had to park down past the spooks. As I hiked up to R1, the lengthy time involved allowed me to mull over some recent departmental fatwas and spot the connections. The zeal about co-mingling, the perpetual problems with out-sourced contracting and the micro-managing of Defence’s public image started to mesh together in my mind. As I made the long trudge up the hill, and into the final straight around Blamey Square, I heard a far-off whinny and was reminded of a further example, the department’s new ‘travelsmart’ program. This apparently involves (as Defgram 465/2006 breathlessly informed us) travel options plans tailored to the needs of Defence’s Russell Offices, and features a number of measurable options and incentives to use healthier, more sustainable ways of travelling to and from work. This too struck me as yet another case of the departmental habit of excessive effort over minutia and the mundane rather than concentrating on Defence’s core business. Barney, of course, had been pithy on this contrast too. ‘Don’t these people know there are several wars on’, he had barked several weeks ago, when scanning Defgram 465/2006 on its swift passage to the relevant co-mingling box. Later though, he had brightened up when planning how to hoist them on their own petards. Now Barney, as VCDF, gets to live on the stellar street of heritage-listed senior-officer married quarters in nearby Duntroon. The diggers call it the Milky Way because of all its three and four-star denizens. In a spirited and practical manifestation of ‘travelsmart’, Barney now rides his wife’s mare over Mount Pleasant to Russell each morning and tethers her up to graze on the hill behind R1, in full view of all the big offices on the fifth floor. He also tried to stable her each afternoon in his VIP parking space in the basement but this proposal did not get far. One of the numerous deputy secretaries apparently vetoed it because he feared the door panels of his adjacent Beamer were vulnerable to a swift equine kick (not that my boss would encourage this of course). Barney is more inclined to believe it was fear that Hornet (the mare) might make a suitable, defgram-like deposit, on the gleaming duco. My special discreet task from Barney this week has been to check out which Australian musicians have not chickened out of going to Iraq to entertain the troops at Christmas. My boss is an authority on all types of modern music, both country and western, so he firmly believes finding braver singers and dancers should not be a problem. ‘Just ignore all that horse-#*&! about some of them only refusing to go because they claim to oppose the Iraq war’, he counselled, using a more well-known euphemism for a defgram-like substance. Ever so carefully, I suggested that while musicians to his taste were invariably possessed of more of a get-up-and-go attitude to life, this was not necessarily always the case for their apparently less adventurous, city-bound and generally more cacophonous counterparts. More dangerously, I risked the opinion that perhaps the diggers were not all C&W fans, although probably not so picky about the musical genre of the female dancers. Barney, as usual, had the last word. ‘The show is not over till the fat lady sings’, he mused, perhaps in a subconscious response to the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, a prominent American pop-commentator on the Iraq War. Slipped disks, gamesmanship and elephants My boss Barney (Air Marshal Barney Stoush, the VCDF) has copped his share of flak lately about departmental and defence force bungling. His consequent pronounced slough of despond was not helped when he was consulted, more as a matter of form than for any responsibility he has, on a proposal to renegotiate Defence’s travel contract with Qantas. Slipped into the fine print was a clause that allowed travelling one-star officers to be readmitted to the airport Chairman’s Lounges they were summarily expelled from downwards in 1994. Barney, of course, has a good eye for fine print and soon spotted the plot although most had missed it. This discovery was followed sharply, in the VCDF’s inimitable manner, by the demand for an explanation. The initial and quite plausible explanation came from the relevant staff officer, an ambitious up-and-coming wing commander now at home packing for his upcoming posting to Woomera. He put it down to just the usual desire from the bottom of the top pile to avoid what some saw as slumming it in the standard Qantas waiting room. Barney, to give him his due never a careerist or a rank snob himself, smelt a rat more strongly. His suspicions (and posting decision) were confirmed when a smoking-gun email from this officer was soon uncovered. This argued that wearied but cosily relaxing business magnates were much less likely to go running to Derryn Hinch with any defence computer disks inadvertently abandoned among the cognac balloons and the caviar. The VCDF’s mood picked up though later in the morning when he handed me DEFGRAM 295/2006 and claimed victory in our office’s monthly cannibal-defgram hunt. Now, as all good personal staff officers know, defgrams are simply a form of internal bureaucratic memo that record decisions or other information that requires extensive promulgation. The rules of the game are simple. The winner has to produce a defgram that announces a decision cancelling something out within the previous 300 defgrams. (It started off at 500 but this was found to be too easy given the usual passage of time before the itch for managerialist fiddling is scratched). Now 300 still might sound difficult but the Russell Hill monolith churns them out in large numbers at an average of two or three a day, or one and a half trees a month. Barney had noticed that 295/2006 cancelled out parts of 82/2006, the latter being a big one whose subject was a traditional Department of Defence favourite, re-organisation. I objected that his claimed examples (cadet policy and the location of the Chief Information Officer) were not really cancellations of note but mere re-arrangements. Now my boss is a hard man but a fair one and he agreed to adjudication. We deferred, by telephone so as not to waste time, to the Inspector-General as he is the original inventor of the game. Alas he came down for Barney’s interpretation. To his further joy Barney then noticed that 82/2006 also mentioned Joint Logistics Group. This is to be reinstated as a proper command at last and separated out from its latest bureaucratic foster parent, after being a bit of an organisational nomad for the last decade. After a quick rummage in his bottom drawer Barney triumphantly pulled a coffee cup ring-stained minute he had written as a two-star recommending strongly against the original merger of the then Commander Support Australia with the then Defence Acquisition Organisation in 1998. ‘Was it so short a time ago’ he had mused? I suspect his relish in this instance was magnified by him also being the one who had pointed out that the JLG had fallen off the new-beaut departmental wiring diagram promulgated in late February (and due to take effect on 01 July). This loss had been somewhat embarrassing for the department. Fortunately, just before the end of the financial year, the Australian National Audit Office had managed to find the missing organisation and kindly returned it to Defence undamaged. It was clearly a day where Barney’s luck had turned around. He went off quite cock-a-hoop for the regular afternoon coaching sessions on things strategical he provides the new DEPSEC–Strategy. These apparently continue to go well because he is bombarding several floors with emails and minutes on such matters ― to the extent some have fled the bombardment. The new deputy secretary I mean. Bombarding is just not Barney’s style even though, like most senior Air Force officers, he has a touching belief in the universal efficacy of bombing as a strategic panacea. But the elephant wandering around the fifth floor with ever-heavier tread is the succession to the mandate of heaven. With the Secretary due to retire at the end of the year the under-mandarins are unusually nervous. Oddly perhaps, in a department of state with six deputy-secretary equivalents (a Public Service all-time record by the way Barney noted) there is not even the remotest prospect of an internal candidate. Their nervousness apparently stems from not knowing who the next Shogun will be and, given the PM’s penchant for diplomats, fearing the worst. None of this worries my boss of course. Like generations of Air Force officers he has long put considerable thought and effort into the comfort of his bed and has the thickest mattress money can buy. The nightly discomfiture of tossing under-mandarins is not for him, physically or bureaucratically. Wearing his second hat as the Chief of Joint Operations, and because you cannot keep an ex-Melburnian away during the pre-season practice matches, Barney (my boss, Air Marshal Barney Stoush, the VCDF) thought it best that he extensively inspected the defence force’s support to the staging of the Commonwealth Games. Of course this also allowed him to view the odd sport involved. He was particularly drawn to the caber tossing and shinty – two ancient Commonwealth sports that have contributed so much to higher committee processes at Russell Offices. On the operational front, all those attending the games would have felt even safer if they had but known that Barney had personally flown one of the protective fighter sorties on the afternoon of the closing ceremony, at least before it got too dark to land safely at his age. Then again, they might not be comforted, particularly if they realised that his sortie owed as much to our shortage of experienced fighter pilots as it did to his professional determination and mid-life cockpit crisis. I got to see a few minor events too, although my main job was carrying and frequently referring to the VCDF’s copy of the Guidelines on the Participation of Australian Public Service Employees, Statutory Office Holders and Appointees and Ministerial Staffers in the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games, just to check that the VCDF did not accidentally contravene its strictures. As Barney remarked afterwards, it was a pity that its authors did not get the job of writing the code of ethics for AWB Limited or BHP Billiton. A new Deputy Secretary Strategy has now occupied the other big office in the power suite. Barney has been busy at times teaching him the rudiments of strategy, starting off with a discourse on the elements of national power and the differences between ships and boats. It is, of course, a bit easier this time around, especially after all the practice Barney has had with some previous occupants. Now some may find it strange that the deputy secretary in the Department of Defence responsible for managing the development of the nation’s defence strategy is a common-or-garden variety public servant, rather than a defence strategy specialist such as a senior and experienced ADF officer. Some readers might be further puzzled to learn that most occupants of this post have come there by a path that positively avoided tertiary qualifications or formative experiences in things strategical. I used to ponder the meaning of this too. One day, after reading a particularly shallow draft strategic update in Barney’s in-tray, I asked my boss why. Knowing my mid-career pride in membership of the profession of arms, and ever so gently, he appraised me of the lingering power of deference, ancient tradition and form over substance. ‘It’s a bit like the powdered wigs on judges and barristers’ he counselled. As always with Barney, this explanation was reassuring. Later on I realised that he had commanded a squadron, wing, and a joint force on operations, and also studied progressively at the RAAF Academy, RAAF Staff College, Joint Services Staff College, the Royal College of Defence Studies and two universities, just so he would be adequately prepared to coach senior public servants in both strategic policy and the ways the defence force could or could not execute it. A heretical thought has kept creeping into my head though. Perhaps someone like Barney should do the strategy job instead, or perhaps the public servants might be similarly career-groomed, trained and academically (and otherwise) qualified before being appointed to the position. These thoughts may have been subconsciously prompted by my recent reading matter: the newly published biography of Sir Arthur Tange, (appropriately but perhaps inaccurately titled Last of the Mandarins); and the book Sea Control and Maritime Power Projection for Australia. Not that I was especially interested in the latter topic at first, but it was written by Barney’s new Chief-of-Staff Operations, a Navy captain, so I thought it politic to bone up a bit. The tome makes eminent sense on several weighty force structuring and strategic problems. No doubt when this is discovered all the Russell Library’s copies will ‘be disappeared’ and the author treated similarly by being posted as Defence Adviser at our High Commission in New Zealand. Another tradition regularly exercised in the Department of Defence – massive re-organisation – is occurring again, albeit a bit late from the biennial norm. The particular bureaucratic beauty of this one is that it manages to cancel out most of the bits of the last two re-orgs rather than just the usual last one. This will add renewed spice to one of the highly competitive games played among Russell Hill’s personal staff officers to the great and good: find the most silly job title in the Defence bureaucracy. I thought I had this month’s match won with ‘Corporate Identity & Popular Culture Co-ordinator’ (R8-LG-060) but it was not to be. I was trumped completely by the Flag Lieutenant to Chief of Navy with ‘Assistant Director Green Buildings’ (BP3-2-B089). I should add that to play the game you have to record the physical location of the incumbent to prevent competitors just inventing sillier job titles than the real ones – if that were indeed possible. Cutting, plotting, inter-dependence and noblesse oblige Barney (my boss, Air Marshal Barney Stoush, the VCDF) returned from his sojourn in Mesopotamia lighter in weight but, it must be said, somewhat heavier in spirit – although he continues to wear the mantle of command with his accustomed air force style. Now the VCDF doubles up as the Chief of Joint Operations (CJOPS) the responsibilities of day-to-day high command fall virtually unimpeded onto his three-starred shoulders. Fortunately they are still strong enough to wield the impending axe to higher command structures with vigour, not that this will concern me. Yesterday I sneaked into his office at lunchtime and wielded the delete-key with equal vigour to shield my position from the long list of proposed cuts. Now the Secretary has been extended for two years, and DEPSEC-S has moved upstairs and morphed back into the DEPSEC I&S from whence he came, the fifth floor rumour mill has been running at full tilt concerning who might soon get to share the power suite with Barney. Even Barney claims not to know although I did catch him highlighting names in what looked like the DFAT telephone directory the other day. The level of plotting and the scale of the deception planning behind this decision have been impressive. But with Christmas gift-giving now not too far off, hopefully Barney will soon know whether his new partner at the top of the policy tree will be, metaphorically speaking, a jet ski or just another pair of light-weight nylon socks. The real highlight of my week has been the publication of an authorative tome recounting the history of the family firm’s great contribution to Australian history and philosophy. Furphy: The Water Cart and the Word records the traditional Furphy approach to our proper place in society and the large portions of noblesse oblige this has always involved. Written by Andrew, my third cousin, twice removed, on my orphaned-at-birth step-mother’s side, the book tells the noble story of the noted foundry, J. Furphy & Sons of Shepparton, and how their famous cast-iron water tanker carts greatly added to antipodean critical discourse through first the military, and then the general, Australian argot. Luckily my distant cousin, being a retired businessman and grazier of note, can write much better than I can. He was assisted by an emeritus professor of English no less as co-author. Professor John Barnes is also the biographer of my most well-known ancestor, the distinguished 19th Century author Joseph Furphy, writer of the great Australian novel Such is Life. A great read in itself and the inspiration, no doubt, for the 1880-style organisational vision statement uttered by Ned Kelly as the noose was slipped over his head. My wife is always at me to emulate my forebear and write the great Australian novel of the 21st Century. This topic especially comes to the fore at the time of year my annual MSBS statement arrives and she contemplates our likely penury in retirement. Mrs Furphy has even been known to observe ruefully that it is a great pity I come from the notoriety rather than the sobriety side of the family. At least she has correctly interpreted the temperance messages in Pitman’s shorthand long emblazoned on the end of Furphy water carts. My only answer at such times is to gesture at the serried ranks of our attractive and well-behaved offspring gambolling at our feet, and counter that this is the price we must pay as members of a minority group – monogamous, happily-married, Anglo-Celtic couples in the Queen’s service. She could, in theory, re-arrange her domestic and legal circumstances to avail herself of the new Defence policy enunciated in DI(G) PERS 53-1 Recognised Inter-dependent Partnerships, which extends the ostensibly generous conditions of our married bliss to all types of coupling, excluding pets (at least of the furred or feathered variety). The absence of further sired offspring such a step usually entails would definitely assist savings plans for retirement. Luckily she still sees her future bound with me personally and, indirectly, with my glittering career prospects as a denizen of the fifth floor with the ear of the VCDF. Political interaction at the highest levels I have been holding the fort while Barney (my boss, Air Marshal Barney Stoush, the VCDF) has been off visiting our contingent in Mesopotamia and surrounding lands. We are not permitted to discuss the latter lest their crucial assistance to the allied cause results in diplomatic embarrassment or worse. Suffice to say they all appear to have standards of living and day-to-day security far higher than in the reputed cradle of civilisation. Before his departure, Barney, ever the optimist, gave me the task of making a preliminary examination as to how we might improve the quality of information the ADF provides during Senate Estimates hearings. As a responsible and apolitical senior ADF officer, not a departmental functionary, Barney professes great loyalty to the concept of legislative oversight of the executive. Its the practise of it that sometimes leaves him cold. Before the last estimates session, as I walked him through his briefing pack, he confided that perhaps all sides of the table needed to try restoring a semblance of constitutional decorum to the proceedings. Now the ruling regime controls the Senate, at least today and until the Queensland Nationals get restive again, Barney believes an opportunity exists to tinker a bit to try and improve the tone of such hearings. Improve for whom, I thought; remembering the times I have been used as a crutch by politically shell-shocked senior officers and bureaucrats, as they staggered from their seats at high table to the adjoining anteroom for a restorative caffeine infusion. Defence’s appearances at estimates hearings are generally led by the Minister and choreographed, backstage, onstage and front-of-house, by a senior official with the somewhat Orwellian title ‘Head Co-ordination and Public Affairs’. Now in one of those notable ironies that bolster the case for the theory of Intelligent Design, and indeed for the suspicion that the designer has a considerable sense of humour, this particular individual is of a loquacious bent. He presides, however, over the public affairs function whose very purpose, manner and effect belie the title and role of those involved. This particular irony is not lost on the 30 odd journalists who regularly cover defence matters, particularly among the one or two who still bother to seek facts from the department when writing an article. Barney is also of the firm belief that the Minister being a senator adds a certain frisson to estimates hearings. It certainly personalises and sharpens the inquisitorial edge of the Opposition. Watching from the fourth rank of chairs, as I get to do, it reminds me of the comforting way that a mother hen shepherds her chicks as the foxes circle the chookhouse. Luckily Barney is away for some time. This greatly helped in thinking up enough excuses why the task is well above my pay scale. While majors in units may be vested with huge responsibilities, a mere major at Russell Offices is generally treated as if they had finished university only last month, especially by the graduate entrants into the Public Service who did but who are now acting EL1s in policy-making positions (or even substantive ones in International Policy Division). My conscience clear I turned instead to the task of weeding Barney’s appointments diary of the more extraneous clutter. At least now the VCDF has lost most of his responsibilities for capability development, there are far fewer courtesy calls by gun runner teams boasting the obligatory recently-retired two-star. This satisfying task was interrupted by a telephone call from one of the numerous mid-level public affairs functionaries. ‘Why’ she demanded, ‘is the VCDF nicknamed Porter in The Latham Diaries?’ Not having had the time to join the long conga line at my local bookshop on Saturday morning I had not yet been able to peruse a copy. I had also not noticed any mention of my boss in the excerpts considered worthy of serialisation in the newspapers. Probably because Barney is not considered important enough to be showered with copious bile. I was stumped. Explaining that the VCDF was away I advised the PA guru that I would get back to her. True to my immediate suspicion, the nearest copy of the book I could get to quickly was the strategic-guidance copy held by the Chief-of-Staff to the CDF. Barging to the front of the normal queue of supplicants (being staff officer to the VCDF does have some privileges) I begged him for a quick look. Among the passing parade in the CDF’s anteroom I sat down, scanned the well-thumbed index for ‘Stoush’ and quickly turned to the single entry listed. Alas, the mention of Barney and DEPSEC Intelligence and Security briefing the then Opposition Leader was somewhat sparse, in keeping with the succinct nature of the briefing. Barney’s epithet was explained ambiguously ― hence the confusion in public affairs. I rang her back. ‘Perhaps’, I tentatively ventured, ‘it is an unimaginative reference to his gold-braided, dark-blue uniform’. She seemed satisfied with the guess. Later it struck me that it might have been a bit more cryptic, perhaps a play on Barney’s somewhat portly physique or, more darkly, the author’s apparent taste when trying to digest defence complexities. A long drop from the 5th floor It is a perhaps little known manifestation of the post-DER principle and practice of devolved diarchy, but since we all moved into the new R1 Building in 1998, the VCDF and the Deputy Secretary ostensibly handling strategy matters share a suite of offices strategically located on a corner of the 5th floor. This veritable tenants-in-common situation has long fuelled my sense of irony, mainly on organisational effectiveness and culture grounds, but also because we have watched deputy secretaries come and go while my boss, Air Marshal Barney Stoush, the VCDF, remains seemingly ever-ensconced in this page and on history’s stage in virtual perpetuity. Such a degree of cheek-by-jowl comparative bureaucratic luxury also allows the respective personal staff to discreetly monitor the comings and goings into the other office. Many a sticky situation has been nipped in the bud by keen observation of the timings, identity and mood of the passing parade. Last week, for example, Barney had a visitor who aroused some discreet but definite interest on the other side of our shared ante-room arrangement. The visitor was a mid-level manager from the Defence Personnel Executive and one well known among the retirement-planning cognoscenti. This mainly relates to his shadowy status as the person who needs to know when your spouse decides you need a redundancy package ― without, of course, you actually volunteering for one openly to anyone and thereby disqualifying yourself under the law. My most neutral expression of greeting was displayed as I showed the discreet visitor to the waiting nook, well out of sight of passers by in the corridor. I noticed in passing that some previous denizen had somewhat subversively reorganised the publications atop the coffee table, leaving the well-thumbed issues of Defender and Viewpoint on top. Our visitor discreetly ignored both publications, no doubt in recognition that it might be construed as somewhat tactless to read them with DEPSEC-S so close by. Instead he started to half-heartedly leaf through a copy of the much more discreet Defence Science instead. When I tapped on the door to advise the VCDF his visitor had arrived Barney was himself leafing half-heartedly too, but through the far weightier departmental Co-ordination and Public Affairs Manual. He looked up from his desk with a finger stuck in what I recognised upside down, as all good staff officers do, as the voluminous Guidelines for Defence Involvement in Interdepartmental Committees or Like Joint Government Agency Groups. Barney had apparently been attempting to cross-reference a high-level policy edict therein with a pronouncement in Working Together: Principles and Practices to Guide the Australian Public Service. He sighed in relief at the interruption to his thankless task, and slammed the volume shut with the type of definitive action that has catapulted him to the highest echelons of the Defence organisation. Now Barney, as VCDF, has little involvement thankfully in day-to-day personnel policy or related administrative matters. As a three-star officer he also has a definite use-by date in his employment contract, so the discreet visit was obviously not about him personally. As I ushered the ever-discreet visitor in to Barney’s sanctum I momentarily wondered as to the purpose of the meeting, especially as it had been booked at quite short notice by the DPE Nabob. No noise emanated from behind the closed door, especially no begging, sobbing or even howls of joy. Eventually the visitor quietly emerged, on his own, and discreetly slipped away down the back stairs. When I took in his next brew, Barney was beaming broadly, humming quietly as he gazed out the window and looking like the proverbial cat with the cream. This is probably why the CDF won’t let him play poker when socialising with visiting South East Asian VIPs. Obviously he had heard some very good news but the discretion was apparently highly contagious and Barney, for once, was giving absolutely nothing away. In an attempt to sniff out what was going on (discreetly) I later raised a mundane personnel policy matter for an opinion. Barney did not take the bait. My foray did, however, evoke his never long dormant penchant for team-boosting anecdote. Barney remarked that he had not seen such enthusiasm for providing ministerial briefings on personnel issues since the last time the female junior minister was a good-looking blonde of a certain age ― and he was only a callow and bachelor squadron leader at the time. Later that week, I noticed workmen building a new scaffold in the R1 courtyard. As I paused in the corridor outside the VCDF Suite, to watch the workers rig the ropes and test the mechanism with carefully measured sandbag weights, I felt a distinct breeze blowing. Oddly it was not coming from the adjacent stairwell but from the other direction. Change is definitely in the air I thought as I soberly breathed in deeply from the heady atmosphere of the 5th floor. No doubt the new window cleaning gantries are to supplement the renewed emphasis on passive solar heating during the forthcoming Canberra winter. The grime-free windows will be especially needed. The heating system is to be switched off during the day, in line with the new methodology for reducing electricity bills which Corporate Services and Infrastructure Group have so valiantly pioneered from afar in the digger’s accommodation at Lavarack Barracks. The new ADF command and control structure has meant they have had to give Barney (Air Marshal Barney Stoush, my boss the VCDF) a colonel to act as his chief-of-staff when Barney wears his new second hat as Chief of Joint Operations. I now no longer have to always be the bag carrier when Barney attends briefings. The downside is that I still cop all the meetings that keep Russell Hill humming but often so unproductive. Another downer is that I no longer get to accompany Barney as often, when he is periodically able to flee the great grey sponge to visit real live sailors, soldiers and airmen doing what they’re meant to do. The other day Barney and the colonel, luckily a cavalryman who knows LAVs upside down and inside out even before they are blown up, were away sorting out the PM’s sudden change of tack over reinforcing our commitment to Mesopotamia. I took the opportunity to make a brew, reached into the in-tray to extract the shiny new Defence Capability Development Manual 2005 hidden there, and sat back to read. While obviously not yet a bestseller at Angus & Robertson, the manual provides ‘authorative guidance’ (of course) to the dark and mysterious processes, whereby strategic guidance from our political masters, when it emerges, translates into deciding which things will most efficiently kill the Queen’s enemies. Of course this does not mean the most effective kit is necessarily then bought. That is the role of procurement, a completely different and often unconnected process, with its own separate bureaucracy and a host of competing imperatives. The most important of these potential saboteurs to operational effectiveness is the cheapest and/or most nefarious tenderer, followed closely by the manufacturer or importer who can best rig a connection to a factory or a glorified boat-building ramp in a marginal electorate. A raft of inter-state rivalries, ideological fixations, academic pet theories, financial formulae, project management gobbledygook and terms of trade mumbo jumbo also apply. The end result of the development and procurement processes sometimes produces neat ‘solutions’ for the managerialists but no-one else. One such lurk is to buy kit fitted-for-but-not-with all its component parts, including weapons. As Barney remarked when the Al Muthanna announcement was made, this inevitably means the ADF have to scramble to find, buy and fit the missing bits when the troops have to be suddenly rushed off to some crisis involving the proverbial two-way firing range. Inevitably the new manual is already known as the DCDM. At least this rolls off the tongue much better than its predecessor, the acronymically dissonant Capability Systems Life Cycle Management Manual (CSLCMM). Even more usefully its list of applicable acronyms and abbreviations is down to a two page menu for alphabet soup comprising only 74 ingredients. Mercifully only three of them denote committees; although I noted the department’s senior capability decision-making committee has changed its name again. No doubt to further the illusion of genuine reform. This reminded me that I had once asked Barney what the Chiefs of Staff Committee now did seeing that the Defence Capability and Investment Committee, among others, had usurped its role. After some thought he confessed to a degree of puzzlement on the question himself, but perhaps that’s because he is only an invited member. Eventually Barney proffered the judgement that maybe it just hadn’t been abolished yet, or transmuted into legal limbo ― like the old inter-departmental defence committee and the statutory defence council, which became zombie organs of state because the civvies felt outnumbered when the CDF had the Service Chiefs present to back his professional judgement up. Sipping my brew I noticed that someone old enough to remember pre-dinner ABC TV in the 1970s and 80s has even managed to slip the acronym TARDIS into the list. Perhaps they figured a timelord from the planet Gallifrey was needed to make sense of The ADF Requirements Development Information System. This naturally triggered a recollection of one of Barney’s horror stories of the bad old days of capability development during and after the Tange dynasty. Barney had commented in passing that 1980s Force Development and Analysis Division types were nicknamed Daleks by those too polite to openly question the legitimacy of their ancestry. When I asked why, Barney said he thought it came from the timeless philosophical dichotomy where the Daleks always referred to themselves as ‘the supreme life form in the universe’, whereas everyone else called them ‘the most evil life form in the universe’. After flipping through the manual’s ten-page glossary of technical terms, about 20 per cent of the total text, I turned to reading up on the ‘Needs Phase’. This began, fittingly, with a great photo of our obsolescent and soon to be scrapped patrol boats, followed by a diagram illustrating the strategic capability planning process. The accuracy was admirable, being circular and predicated on the pious hope of receiving the strategic guidance needed to initiate the cycle. Luckily the phone then rang to rescue me from further exertions on the comprehension front. Barney and the cavalryman were now returning earlier than anticipated. I quickly hid the manual back in my in-tray lest Barney see me reading it and post me to Capability Development Group. Sensitivity is touching both ways For those of us whose intellectual life support mechanisms are nourished by an appreciation of irony the Department of Defence, and Russell Offices in particular, can be seventh heaven at times. There are simply moments when you can do nothing but kick back and ride the slide from the sublime to the ridiculous. A few weeks ago, Barney (Air Marshal Barney Stoush, my boss the VCDF) and I were required to undergo one of the mandated regular seminars in sensitivity training. I can’t remember exactly which type it was ― gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, multicultural appreciation, recognition of sexual harassment, cross-species awareness ― and it really doesn’t matter, they all appear the same after a while and have similar results anyway. Luckily this one was in a conference room with a window so I could partly pass the time by watching the smokers and the shivering sparrows in the R1 courtyard idle another morning away. This soon unconsciously transitioned into an efficiently time-zapping daydream about floating the case for compulsory non-smoker sensitivity training. My reverie in this regard was eventually broken by the now deeply-programmed guilty thought that my automatic appraisal of these bludgers sunning themselves was probably judgemental and therefore insensitive and no doubt illegal. It just goes to show how all this sensitivity training eventually seeps into your paranoia glands. There didn’t seem much point broaching the ethical dilemma with the contract zealot giving the presentation so when a break was called I diplomatically woke Barney to seek his senior officer opinion. Before I could raise the matter we were interrupted by Barney’s secretary summoning us back to the office urgently. I wasn’t sure whether Barney had pre-arranged this rescue or it was a genuine one, but on returning to the VCDF suite we were met by one of the many departmental functionaries responsible for public affairs. The PA guru was clutching a canvas laundry bag which at least cut down on the intensity of the hand wringing. Apparently some tabloid had printed a years old spoof formal photo gone wrong, staged by some Townsville diggers, in which the said laundry bags were used to imitate Ku Klux Klan hoods. Barney, who being a senior ADF officer has no public affairs authority or responsibilities until something goes wrong, immediately smelled a rat. It seems they wanted Barney to front an ABC interview program in order to grovel and try and put the spoof photo in context. Barney ducked this obvious PC ambush by suggesting that a senior Army figure might have more weight, especially in a case of apparent gallows or black humour. After the spin doctor had left, Barney fell into one of his increasingly frequent philosophical moods ― perhaps his retirement as rumoured in The Canberra Times is not far off. As one of the few senior air force officers with a real experience of jointery, Barney is a fount of considerable wisdom on the dark and mysterious corners of ADF culture. No doubt prompted by thoughts about the likely impending witchhunts to scapegoat the supposedly insensitive, he fell to musing on one of his pet fixations, the department’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) branch. As his eyes swept the badge of my hat on its stand, Barney sought my observations about the presence of inequality in the defence force. I mumbled the usual deeply programmed mumbo jumbo about needing to do more to adapt to modern Australian culture but Barney, as usual, cut my waffle short. ‘Have you ever considered the irony’ he asked, ‘that we spend inordinate amounts of time, money and effort in stamping out perceived inequalities that are just as common in the rest of society but miss absolutely those which are most virulent and most peculiar to our own profession’? Warming to his topic he went on. ‘After all, as they mentioned again this morning, unlawful discrimination is the making of arbitrary judgements as to someone’s worth, effectiveness and career prospects based on unjustified stereotypical perceptions rather than their individual merit’. Going to full throttle he explained, ‘the glaringly worst cases we have are the way fighter pilots treat everyone else in the air force as automatically and permanently inferior, followed closely by the blind snobbery of Arms Corps officers in the army. Not to mention the way Principal Warfare Officers just assume everyone else in the navy is there to enhance their career and are incapable of deep professional knowledge or an original idea’. As Barney’s analysis tapered off I found myself nodding in agreement and not just because I’m the personal staff officer to a three-star. ‘Perhaps’, I tentatively ventured, ‘we could insist the EEO people look into it’. Barney was silent for a full 20 seconds ― often a characteristic sign of suppressed outrage in senior officers, then muttered something about ‘that crowd not being able to find a large item of their anatomy with both hands’. A thought then apparently struck him, out of left field, as they say. ‘Draft me a minute to the Secretary recommending a team of EEO advisers be sent to Baghdad to ensure the embassy security detachment are interacting with the local community appropriately during a war. That should solve several problems at once’. As an afterthought he added, ‘make sure they are issued Kevlar laundry bags in case they appear on Al Jazeera’.
The phone call came in at 0630, an ungodly hour. Normally I would not be in the office so early but now that Barney is Chief of Joint Operations (CJOPS), as well as VCDF, life grows ever more interesting. Luckily Barney and I will only have to sit it out until the next change in ADF command and control is announced. On past form this should be in about three weeks. The caller identified himself as the Chief-of-Staff to the prime minister and asked to be 'put through to CJOPS'. I immediately wondered whether Barney had been ambushed by reporters during his morning walk with his dog. Needless to say, Barney was not in yet. However, the caller was very polite and asked that Barney return a call to the PM ASAP. When Barney rang back, I thought it best to listen in on the conversation. It went something like this: ‘Stoush, did you see Mateline on the ABC last night?’ That was a bad start; Barney never watches television apart from war movie reruns. He claims films like Tora Tora Tora or Midway or are more informative and accurate as well as entertaining. ‘I missed that one, prime minister. I was representing the CDF at one of those endless diplomatic receptions’. ‘Well, according to Mateline, there has been a coup in Upper Kunjingini. I’ve asked ONA about it and they say they’ve never heard of the place so it must be a defence matter. Find out why we weren’t warned and let me have a report’. To cut a long story short, Barney set up a committee to investigate the affair with himself as chairman and me – you guessed it – as secretary. The first meeting was a bit of a farce. Foreign Affairs did not send anyone because no deputy secretaries were available to represent them, at an appropriate protocol level, at a meeting chaired by an ADF three-star. International policy division in Defence was represented by an acting EL2. The lad in question was really a newly qualified graduate trainee who had been no further afield than a post-exam holiday in Fiji the year before. Barney assumed IP had sent him because of his unusually detailed expertise on the region within the division. The DSD representative said that Upper Kunjingini had no external communications. Their radio transmitter had broken down and their telephone had been cut off for failure to pay the bill. ASIO’s rep said it had nothing to do with them because it was a foreign country. The ASIS rep said their closest thing to a man on the spot, in next door Lower Kunjingini, had been expelled because his cover as a Maserati salesman was exposed when he declined to hand over a new model to the president for a mere $LK250. The relevant DIO area desk officer – a newly transferred-in Arabic (not Kunjingin) linguist – was not yet completely across all the countries on her new beat. She did, however, produce an email referring to a briefing that had been organised some years previously for a military mission to the Kingdom of Upper Kunjingini. The two ONA reps were triumphant (they now always attended meetings in pairs to ensue a witness to any advice offered). They knew that the fault was not theirs. It was truly a Defence matter – and they could tell the prime minister so. Barney scratched his head a bit at all this. I could see that, accustomed as he was to bureaucratic buck-passing (and not a bad exponent of it himself), he was faced with the awful prospect of explaining yet another apparent INTELLIGENCE FAILURE to the prime minister. That was when I won my CSC. I whispered to Barney that an intelligence analyst from the Joint Operations Intelligence Centre in Sydney had just arrived. Perhaps, I told the VCDF, our new arrival could solve the problem. Some present expressed scepticism. Probably because they had read the recent voluminous opinion articles in the newspapers by retired senior officials claiming ADF intelligence specialists can never know anything about strategic intelligence matters. Sergeant ‘Bulldog’ Drummond was duly summoned. Despite the name, Drummond was a slight, clerkly looking and not very smartly presented. Barney, being an air force type, was not too concerned about appearances. ‘Do you know anything about this coup in Upper Kunjingini?’ he asked. ‘What coup, sir?’ The confident query stunned the gathering. ‘Mateline said there has been a coup’, argued Barney, ‘and that a new bloke called Akepa is in charge’. ‘How would you know anyway?’ sneered one apparently inveterate newspaper reader. Being an analyst, Drummond was silent momentarily as he pondered, but then smiled at the doubting bureaucrat. ‘Well, ladies and gentlemen, when I interpreted for the military mission to Upper Kunjingini, I became pretty friendly with the King who enjoys a beer or three. I Iater looked after his son some weekends when he started at Canberra Grammar’. ‘He told me recently that his father wanted a bit of time off to go hunting. Following an old Kunjingin custom he called in all his brothers and cousins to draw straws to work out who would stand in as King for three months. Cousin Akepa drew the short straw. There hasn’t been a coup, gentlemen.’ Barney had the last word. ‘Perhaps’, he suggested, ‘the committee could recommend an inquiry into the operations of Mateline.’
Barney (my boss, Air Marshal Barney Stoush, the VCDF) was in a twitting mood when I finally reported on my overseas deployment. 'Have you absorbed some of the wisdom of Solomon?' he asked with what I took to be a jovial smirk. 'If you haven’t gained something, you’ve certainly lost some of that waistline.' He was right. Three weeks spent checking out our latest overseas deployment had featured hard slogging through the jungle, some pretty ordinary food (and not much of it) and all without the benefit of some relaxation to pick up a tan. Still, I felt as fit as I have ever done. Barney had sent me off as his personal envoy to see how the boys and girls were managing in a pretty difficult part of the world. Now, of course, it was back to reality; he wanted my report straight after lunch. At least, I’d got out of the habit of lunch in the past three weeks but I’d also got out of the habit of writing reports for our bureaucratic and political masters. You see, I’d been living with people whose language was forthright to the point of rudeness and who reported what was happening rather than what they wanted to happen. Barney told me he wanted a classified version and an unclassified version of my report. This is pretty difficult to achieve these days. Once upon a time, it was enough to do the full classified job and then trim out the classified bits for the unclassified version that could go to the media and the politicians - same thing, really. One difficulty with this process these days is that the unclassified version has to demonstrate that everything is going to plan so that no awkward questions will be asked, least of all by the politicians who might even realise that real wars are not fought by press releases. The other difficulty is that someone is likely to leak the classified version to the media so that politicians will be asked awkward questions. That’s another reason why the classified version has to be kept from the politicians because they are the most likely leakers. In a deployment like the current one, the politicians need to be told that the populace loves us unreservedly when actually they couldn’t care less, at least out in the villages where they have not seen any form of government for 20 years. It’s a bit different back in the capital where the local spivs are enjoying making money out of us and while those who can speak English line up for the flood of journalists looking for some quotes, useful or otherwise, before the afternoon plane leaves for Australia. But back to the report. Barney wants a cost estimate to be included so I went over to see the Supervising Finance Officer in charge of overseas deployments. He was blunt. 'Do you want the real figure, the leakable figure or the PR figure?', he asked. I said I thought he ought to give me all three with the explanation for each and I’d leave it to Barney to decide. He explained. 'The real figure is what the deployment costs over and above the standing costs we would have to pay for the troops in barracks here in Australia. We subtract the costs of the training exercises they would be doing back here but add the food, fuel and so on consumed for the deployment. We even add the travelling expenses for your inspection trip. Of course, we also add in the pay supplement which adds quite a bit.' 'The leakable figure is the real figure to which we add the ordinary running costs of having the troops back here while the PR figure adds the standard departmental overhead charge which is a fixed 500 per cent. This means that the real cost does not look too stingy and adds credibility to the politicians’ claims to be saving civilisation in the region.' I objected that, if this were taken to its logical conclusion covering all projects, we would spend the defence budget three or four times over each year. He demurred. 'We can’t do that because the money isn’t in the bank. Of course, it’s mostly a case of paper shuffling and no one stops to add it all up together. Anyway, it’s an accounting convention and you have to have an MBA to understand that.' I wondered aloud if we were not heading in the same direction as the old Soviet Union which fudged its figures to such a degree that no one knew what was going on. He tried to reassure me. 'My dear chap, we always know what the real figure is. We may have to delude the public but to delude ourselves would be corrupt. We can’t have that, can we?'. |
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