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?
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-placed, 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.