Policy Discussion Paper - Australia Defence Association

The higher defence organisation has two fundamental tasks. One is to provide advice on defence to the government, the other is to ensure that the Australian Defence Force has what it needs to carry out such tasks as may be expected of it by that government. It cannot be over-emphasised that the task of the organisation is to produce and sustain an effective Australian Defence Force that is capable of meeting the government's demands for military assets. There will always be considerable tension between the desire of governments to have as many options as possible at the least possible cost. There will always be further tension between the demands for both efficiency and effectiveness. Effective war fighting is inherently inefficient so the demand must be modified to ensure that the effectiveness of the ADF is maximised through the most efficient use of resources. In the process, the defence controllers must be made responsible and accountable to authority, the fundamental source of which is the Australian people.

The current government's focus on achieving the efficient use of resources arises from a perception that the higher defence organisation is wasteful and badly managed. In this respect, the government as a responsible authority is merely giving voice to perceptions that have been held for many years both within and outside the organisation. Yet despite repeated attempts at reform and improvement, the manifestations of waste and mismanagement continue. The government has been increasingly unhappy not merely with what is commonly regarded as simple inefficiency but a continuing failure to present government with credible military options in the shape of combat-ready fighting units.

The problem is not merely one of delays in acquiring key combat elements such as the submarines. That project's high profile distracts from a wide range of modernisation programs that have been delayed or deferred. In the most recent case, the acquisition and upgrade of two heavy landing ships has resulted in long delays and a massive cost blowout which has been funded from other important defence programs. The government is willing enough to provide Defence with more resources but is yet to be persuaded that the organisation is able or even willing to spend what it has to best effect. Defence management has been under fire incessantly since the establishment of the 'reformed' departmental and military structure by Sir Arthur Tange in 1973-75. A parade of internal and external investigations, reviews and studies by a multitude of groups have each produced incremental change which, for the most part, has resulted in ever increasing costs and diffusion of responsibility. The 1997 Defence Efficiency Review offered one notable break with the standard practice by introducing the notion of accountability. This threat to tradition was soon overcome, however, by the establishment of a new senior committee structure that made for a decision-making collective that sharply diluted the concept of responsibility and accountability.

At the core of the problem is the concept of the diarchy of military and civilian management and advice to the government. Tange introduced the diarchy which institutionalised a nominal equality of the military and civilian public servants. Every review of the defence structure has offered obeisance to the diarchy without ever justifying that near religious devotion. Under the latest manifestation of the diarchy, the Chief of the Defence Force is the government's principal military adviser and the Secretary of the Department is its principal civilian adviser. Nowhere is any clear division of actual responsibility stated and the separation of roles is effectively neutralised by making the secretary jointly responsible for the administration of the ADF and the CDF jointly responsible for the administration of the department. In effect, the structure now makes it impossible for the government to receive conflicting advice from its principal advisers so that, where conflict does occur, it is managed at the bureaucratic level usually at the lowest common denominator of agreement.

The unstated justification for the diarchy was to ensure civilian control over the military. What happened in effect though was that the very proper political control of the military was replaced by an improper public service control. This fundamental weakness resulted in more than two decades of conflict between the military and the public service which, if it has subsided, is due as much as anything to the conversion of senior military officers into bureaucrats. Moreover, it takes a courageous and powerful minister to control the organisation as it has evolved over a quarter of a century.

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Restructuring Defence

In the Association's view, there is an urgent need for a reorganisation of the higher defence machinery that abandons many of the assumptions that underpin the present system. Given the inability of the existing organisation to effectively reform itself, it may be necessary to establish an external commission to implement the necessary changes. Thus, the military and the public service have proper and complementary roles rather than parallel ones. If the task of the military is to do the fighting, the public service role is to support the capacity to fight. Senior soldiers are trained and required to command in war rather than to manage a resource in peacetime. Of course, there will be overlapping of responsibility and adjudication of conflicts will be necessary. That is the duty of commanders and, at a higher level, ministers.

In the Association's view, any reorganisation should be driven by the following basic principles:

The minister should be the primary decision-maker in fact as well as principle. The current structure tends not to provide options for the minister and Cabinet.

The object of defence policy should be to provide government with a wide range of options for the employment of military force in support of foreign policy. Over-defining the task of defence is fundamentally wrong.

The process should be more transparent. Most of the secrecy practised in Defence is designed to protect against official embarrassment.

Policy-making and administration should be separated as far as possible in both Defence Headquarters and the department.

To facilitate the development of effective co-ordination between the main security departments, there should be political/military cells in Defence Headquarters and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Administration of personnel matters should be brought closer to the people being administered. In our view, military personnel management should be the responsibility of the single Service offices acting in accordance with broad policy directives issued by Defence headquarters.

There should be a strict division of responsibility between the military headquarters and the department. The sharing of responsibility between the CDF and the Secretary is bad in principle and should be terminated. Such a division does not prevent military personnel being seconded for duty within the department of civilians being appointed to positions, especially management positions, within the military headquarters.

In the Association's view, strategic policy and capability development should be the responsibility of the Department while Plans, Intelligence, Equipment and (military) Personnel policy should be handled by Defence Headquarters.

In the acquisitions field, there ought to be a division of responsibility between the customer (the ADF or DoD) and the supplier (DoD or a new department). This is necessary to reduce sharply the amount of costly interference, oversight and revision of specifications in the acquisition process.

Command of operations should be vested in Commander, Australian Theatre (COMAST) with minimal oversight from ADHQ. The CDF, as strategic level commander, should exercise directive control only and, apart from a small operations staff, his headquarters should be concerned generally with policy issues.

The current defence executive must be disbanded. The pursuit of collective leadership and the resultant diffusion of responsibility and accountability on the part of the CDF and Secretary is probably contrary to the Defence Act and is bad in principle.

Subject to directives from the CDF, the single Service headquarters should be made responsible for raising and training formed units for allocation to COMAST for operations. The individual Services are very different in their roles and, commanded as they are by the professional heads of the Services, must be given the responsibility for producing efficient units. Joint commanders will then be responsible for higher and joint training. In the same way, the Service offices should be responsible for development of single Service doctrine.

The single Service environmental headquarters - Maritime, Land and Air - should disappear, being absorbed into Headquarters, Australian Theatre (HQAST). Similar streamlining is required in the Support Command headquarters. Both headquarters currently boast four two-star officers each with three nominally subordinate to an officer of equal rank.

There should be no two-hatted positions with officers appointed to fill two designated positions. All too often, this practice leads to confusion. However military officers may be appointed to fill positions in the department and vice versa.

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