This archive contains letters-to-the-editor submitted by the Australia Defence Association between 01 January and 31 December 2011.
Wednesday, 28 December 2011
Letter to The Australian Financial Review
(published Tuesday, 03 January 2012)
Brian Toohey's ”Adelaide to Detroit, the underwater route” (December 28-January 2 is again underwater in his fixation on European submarines, but not in his scepticism about political pork-barrelling by federal and state politicians ever eager to divert the defence budget elsewhere to buy votes. And in rejecting the supportive claims by feather-bedding interests in commerce, the unions and indeed parts of academia.
Can we therefore summarise recent debate on replacing our Collins-class submarines (which is meant to start in the mid 2020s).
ASPI’s estimate of up to $36bn (over decades) for an Australian build could be somewhat high but they are correct about the technological, industrial and budgetary risks of another local indigenous project. The Kokoda Foundation’s estimate of $18bn seems on the low side at first glance but their study (when released in full) might justify it.
Toohey's Brian’s off-the-shelf European submarine alternative, however, will not work; except perhaps as a four-boat interim option because they cannot really meet the capability needed in the long term unless greater numbers than 12 are procured.
This would increase the $9-12bn claimed for this option substantially. It would also be harder to crew and operate the larger but less suitable fleet needed.
If no-one else is building the type of conventionally-powered submarines we need, and the task might be too big for us to build them again, then the option of leasing Virginia-class nuclear-powered boats from the US also needs to be examined. Much fewer than 12 boats would then be needed (greater range, endurance, speed, etc) and the cost differential between nuclear and conventionally-powered boats continues to drop anyway.
They would be the most modern submarines available, a tested commodity, and fully compatible with our major ally operationally and logistically. The Americans would look after the reactor, thus negating our limited nuclear engineering capacity (and paranoia among some about nuclear energy).
No-one credible seems to doubt that the class that replaces the Collins replacements will be nuclear powered (and probably leased from the US).
We should at least look at jumping a generation directly.
Wednesday, 28 December 2011
Letter to The Australian
published Thursday, 29 December 2011
Argument about replacing our Collins-class submarines (meant to start in the mid 2020s) can be easily summarised.
Ignore the renewed pork-barrelling claims by federal and state politicians ever eager to divert the defence budget elsewhere to buy votes. And also the supportive claims by feather-bedding interests in commerce, the unions and indeed parts of academia.
ASPI’s estimate of up to $36bn (over decades) for an Australian build could be somewhat high but they are correct about the technological, industrial and budgetary risks of another indigenous project. The Kokoda Foundation’s estimate of $18bn seems on the low side at first glance but their study (when released in full) might justify it.
The off-the-shelf European submarine alternative is unlikely to work ("Half-price super subs tempt navy", 26/12). Except perhaps as a four-boat interim option because they cannot really meet the capability needed in the long term unless greater numbers than 12 are procured.
This would increase the $9-12bn claimed for this option substantially. It would also be harder to crew and operate this the larger but less suitable fleet needed.
If no-one else is building the type of conventionally-powered submarines Australia needs, and the task might be too big for us to build them again, then the option of leasing Virginia-class nuclear-powered boats from the US also needs to be examined. Fewer Much less than 12 boats would then be needed (greater range, endurance, and speed, etc) and the cost differential between nuclear and conventionally-powered boats continues to drop anyway.
They would be the most modern submarines available, a tested commodity, and fully compatible with our major ally operationally and logistically. The Americans would look after the reactor, thus negating our limited nuclear engineering capacity (and paranoia among some about nuclear energy).
No-one credible seems to doubt that the class that replaces the Collins replacements in the 2040s will be nuclear powered (and probably leased from the US).
We should at least look at jumping a generation directly.
Thursday, 22 December 2011
Letter to The Canberra Times
(not published)
Recent public argument on asylum seeking continues to be mostly flawed. Even ignoring the emotion or ideology on both sides, most protagonists falsely assume the issue is a domestic rather than a strategic policy issue.
In particular, Australia’s geo-political situation and its implications should not be ignored.
Nor should the original intention of the Refugee Convention (and Chapter VIII of the UN Charter). This is to pressure neighbouring states to resolve conflicts so refugees can directly and swiftly return home, rather than be marooned permanently in refugee camps watching their society, polity and families destroyed.
Asylum policy also necessarily involves Australia’s wider strategic relations with neighbouring states. Including not letting them pressure us on this and wider issues by facilitating extra-regional refugee flows or not.
It is also axiomatic that any effective regional mechanism to protect refugees must involve “offshore processing” in an Australian context, particularly with such extra-regional flows.
But we are our near and wider region’s only effective signatory to the Refugee Convention. Even NZ is mostly able to avoid responsibility because of its location.
The nearest real signatories to our north-west are Israel and the EU. To the north-east it’s the USA and Canada. To the north its no-one.
Australia is also a highly desirable first-world country and one of only four with a mass immigration program, a diverse society and no national ID card.
We have resettled over six million immigrants since 1946. We have also permanently resettled, rather than just temporarily sheltered (as the Convention requires), nearly one million refugees.
Our near and farther neighbours have no incentive to sign the Convention, or otherwise care for refugees, not least because they regard us (and the EU) as their permanent solution. And now we cannot even send bogus asylum seekers home with deportation rates sinking to as low as two per cent.
These are all the major pull factors that must be targeted to destroy the people smugglers’ business model.
And the main push factor is not conflict per se ? as some are prone to claim reflexively ? but that the Convention is not universal, especially in our near and wider regions.
Current numbers of unauthorised arrivals are manageable but the strategic, operational and humane effectiveness of current policy, including sustaining public confidence, is wholly dependent on the numbers remaining low and slow.
But there is no longer any criminal, economic migration, refugee flow or international travel complexity rationale for this to continue.
We also continue to let our neighbours off the hook by being not only the region’s soft touch but it’s only touch. And by wrongly assuming in our domestic arguments that our neighbours are somehow blameless or not involved.
Meanwhile, genuine refugees continue to suffer overseas.
[Editor's Note: The ADA's comprehensive discussion paper on asylum and refugee policy can be read here].
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Letter to The Australian Financial Review
(published Thursday, 17 November 2011)
For many years the Australia Defence Association has argued that India should be rewarded for not proliferating nuclear weapons technology in practice, rather than punished in perpetuity for not acceding to the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty on principle.
Dave Sweeney from the Australian Conservation Foundation (Letters, November 16) criticised the selling of uranium to India, even under strict NPT-type safeguards. But his simplistic and sensationalist claims actually inverted the real strategic implications.
India is a great power, a democracy and generally a much more responsible international actor than, say, NPT signatories Russia and China.
Rewarding India would be stabilising not destabilising in terms of both the regional and global nuclear balances. And in reducing the risks of nuclear war through progressing arms control and eventually disarmament in practice.
Rewarding Indian restraint also sends a powerful strategic message to serial proliferator and sub-continental rival, Pakistan. Stop and recant or your marked strategic inferiority to India can only get worse.
Finally, the ADA does not intrude into the ACF’s commensurate public-interest watchdog responsibilities for environmental matters. Perhaps the ACF should think twice before again straying into national security policy when so clearly lacking the perspective and expertise to do so.
Tuesday, 01 November 2011
Letter to The Canberra Times
(published Thursday, 03 November 2011)
Debating war is always difficult, especially as Australia is generally a junior partner in complex coalition wars. It is now much more difficult as so few Australians have personal experience of military service or war, even in extended families.
But all wars end when one side gives up so anti-war arguments need to be reasoned and evidence-based, not merely ideological, emotive, simplistic or plain defeatist (letters, November 01). Moreover, thoughtless arguments, however inadvertent, actually assist the enemy and unnecessarily complicate the job of our diggers on the ground.
Since the ADF deployed to Oruzgan in 2005 the Australia Defence Association has regularly warned that our governments were not adequately explaining the strategic rationale for our military effort there and that public support was waning leaking away. Overly-tight ministerial control of defence force public information activities and often poor media coverage exacerbates the problem.
Much of the ensuing vacuum in informed debate has been filled by emotive or ideological stances, or by arguments that are well-meaning but dependent on misconceptions, over-simplifications and outright myths.
David Lewis (Letters, November 1) is simply wrong. The international effort in Afghanistan is not illegal, immoral or an “invasion” in law or practice. It has always been underwritten by numerous UN Security Council Resolutions and, as numerous independent polls show, a significant majority of Afghans.
Patricia Saunders (Letters, November 1) misses that Australia has strategic interests in helping fix Afghanistan as well as our responsibilities under the UN Charter and our wider alliance and moral commitments as an activist liberal democracy.
Alan Stretton (Letters, November 1), who should know better, omits that warfare is inherently dynamic. Strategic objectives and the potential to attain them necessarily change over the course of any war.
The relevant strategic calculus is surely that the longer-term and wider geo-political risks of quitting still remain greater than the costs of persevering (for both Australians and Afghans). If this was not so, the ADA would obviously insist on withdrawal.
Just as we lead criticism of lip-service justifications, formulaic condolences and other political grandstanding whenever the price for the security all Australians enjoy is sadly paid by our diggers.
Wednesday, 19 October 2011
Letter to The Sydney Morning Herald
(published Thursday, 20 October 2011)
Steve Biddulph ("its time for the truth to allay, or confirm, our fears about SIEV-X", SMH Opinion, October 19) unfortunately adds to the confusion and paranoia surrounding the October 2001 SIEV-X tragedy.
Some survivors report their abandonment by unidentified naval vessels following the sinking. The majority do not.
What Biddulph Steve should have pointed out anyway is that as the nearest Australian naval (or other) vessel was some 250 kilometres away they were definitely not ours.
And Moreover, an Occam’s razor analysis indicates that the sinking is much more likely to have been a wholly Indonesian activity no matter what their motivation.
The reluctance by Australian authorities to hold a Royal Commission into SIEV-X is therefore probably for four reasons.
First, a lack of legal or other jurisdiction as this Indonesian vessel left an Indonesian port and did not sink in Australian waters. sank in Javanese waters well inside Indonesia’s internationally designated zone of search and rescue responsibility.
Second, given the undoubted involvement of corrupt Indonesian officials in organising the voyage, there was a decision to prioritise our long-term strategic relations with Indonesia rather than further complicate them by publicly exposing the extent of Indonesian criminality involved.
Third, there was a belief (largely justified by subsequent Indonesian actions to clean up their act), that holding Indonesia responsible forcefully via diplomatic channels instead would achieve more for everyone over the long-run, including preventing further victims in future.
Fourth, both Australia and Indonesia are a signatories to the November 2000 Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air of the UN Convention on Transnational Organised Crime. It is surely better that consequent law enforcement measures taken to disrupt people smuggler activities in Indonesia legitimately are undertaken jointly with the Indonesians than by them alone.
Finally, to infer thatAustralian AFP, ASIS or ADF personnel would somehow deliberately or recklessly kill women and children as some form of deterrent or punishment is despicable.
So is the inference that they would somehow cover it up if the Indonesian authorities they were working with had done so for whatever reason.
Wednesday, 12 October 2011
Letter to The Canberra Times
(not published)
Professor Bill Maley, Australia’s top academic expert on Afghanistan, appropriately rebutted the wilder claims of Howard Carew and John Coochey (Letters, October 11).
But Bill’s citing of the lack of Refugee Convention signatories between Afghanistan and Australia also needs to be turned on its head.
Asylum seeker flows (and the conflicts causing them) are and always should be a regional problem, not Australia’s protection and especially resettlement dilemma alone.
There will be no effective solution, and increasing risks of broader strategic instability, until more than 7 of the 35 countries between the Aegean and Arafura Seas sign and respect the Refugee Convention.
India, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia would be a good start, both morally and strategically. No opportunity should be lost in pointing out their hypocrisy, and strategic and moral buck-passing, to any Indian, Singaporean, Malaysian or Indonesian you meet.
After all, as the comprehensive ADA discussion paper on this issue notes, there is a good take-up of the Convention regionally across South America, the Caribbean and much of Africa and Central Asia.
Thursday, 29 September 2011
Letter to The Canberra Times
(published Monday, 03 October 2011)
Few juxtaposed letters expose flawed argument so comprehensively as David Kibbey does to Judy Bamberger (Letters, September 28). And indeed to the adjoining editorial ("Equal opportunity taken to front line", September 29, p16).
Kibbey, a distinguished war veteran with experience of close-quarter infantry combat, was later the commandant of the Army’s recruit training centre when it integrated females to achieve gender-neutral training. Moreover, through serious injury in military training to a female family member, the Kibbey family have sadly experienced all dimensions of this complex issue.
ADF experience in even carefully planned peacetime training is that load-bearing injuries to females are much greater than to men at ratios between 5:1 and 7:1. This is more due to bio-mechanical differences between the genders than a matter of females not being able to achieve combat task-dictated physicality standards.
Kibbey logically cautions against the simplistic belief that integrating females into the last few combat roles can ignore bio-mechanical differences between men and women. This particularly applies to combat roles, such as the infantry having to carry heavy loads, where technology or other means cannot render integral tasks gender-neutral bio-mechanically and often physically.
In stark contrast, Bamberger’s confused ramblings seriously misunderstand the whole issue. Especially the legal, moral, OH&S and operational needs to avoid the risk of equity intent ? inequitable result paradoxes.
Injuring, wounding or killing our female diggers disproportionately to our men doing the same job would be inequitable, unfair, operationally inefficient and unacceptable to the Australian community.
We need to maximise female employment in the defence force but the complexities and risks sometimes involved cannot be wished away by ignoring or denying them.
Thursday, 29 September 2011
Letter to The Australian
(published with editing that unfortunately partly changed the meaning on Saturday, 01 October 2011)
David Kibbey (letters, 29/9) is a distinguished war veteran with experience of close-quarter infantry combat. He was later the commandant of the Army’s recruit training centre when it integrated females to achieve gender-neutral training.
Moreover, through serious injury in military training to a female family member, the Kibbey family have sadly experienced all dimensions of this complex issue.
ADF experience in even carefully planned peacetime training is that load-bearing injuries to females are much greater than to men at ratios between 5 and 7:1. This is more due to bio-mechanical differences between the genders than a matter of some females not being able to achieve combat task-dictated physicality standards.
Kibbey logically cautions against the simplistic belief that integrating females into the last few combat roles can ignore bio-mechanical differences between men and women.
This particularly applies to combat roles, such as the infantry having to carry heavy loads, where technology or other means cannot render integral tasks gender-neutral bio-mechanically and often physically.
For many legal, moral, OH&S and operational reasons the ADF needs to avoid the risk of equity intent ? inequitable result paradoxes. I injuring, wounding or killing our female diggers disproportionately to our men doing the same job would be inequitable, unfair, operationally inefficient and unacceptable to the Australian community.
We need to maximise female employment in the ADF but the complexities and risks sometimes involved cannot be wished away by ignoring or denying them.
Or indeed by ministerial fiats issued to distract public attention from other issues.
Wednesday, 14 September 2011
Letter to The Canberra Times
(published Thursday, 15 September 2011)
Sylvia Miners (“Gender degradation”, Letters, September 14) exemplifies the prejudices, flawed assumptions, misinformation and worse that continually hinder effective public debate on matters affecting our defence force.
She does not appear to realise that Duntroon cadets have long been of both genders, that the Australian Defence Force Academy and the Royal Military College Duntroon are separate institutions, and that the disgraceful April filming incident was at the former not the latter. She Sylvia also oddly misses that even this incident is quite atypical at either institution using any objective measure - or indeed any statistical comparison with civilian tertiary institutions.
The forthcoming independent report into ADFA by the federal sex discrimination commissioner will hopefully open Miners' Sylvia’s blinkered eyes.
Thursday, 08 September 2011
Letter to The Age (Melbourne)
(not published)
At the very least, Leunig’s cartoon in Wednesday’s “Age” (September 7) demonstrates his intellectual and moral detachment from his citizenship responsibilities to the diggers our country sends to fight its wars.
They are our Special Forces not “the” Special Forces. They are fellow Australians, not somehow “someone else”, and are lawfully deployed by our Government to fight a war on behalf of us all.
It is particularly despicable for Leunig to provide the enemy with propaganda fodder by incorrectly claiming that our Special Forces “murder” anyone. Either in combat with the enemy under the Laws of Armed Conflict or at any other time.
Leunig unprofessionally and immorally ignores the longstanding principle underlying any debate on Australian participation in any war, whether you oppose it or not. Every Australian always has a responsibility to avoid increasing the risks our diggers have been sent to face.
Argue with the Government all you like but do so responsibly, not by targeting our troops.
Thursday, 25 August 2011
Letter to the Newcastle Herald
(published instead as a longer opinion article here)
We can all hope that Jeff Corbett (“Finding reason in war”, Newcastle Herald, August 25, p.10) did not intend to be so thoughtlessly offensive.
Jeff’s notions that the soldier died just “doing his job”, and was not “driven by a noble cause”, confuse several key differences to civilian accidents or illnesses.
First, the soldiers death stemmed from him doing his duty, on behalf of all Australians, when lawfully deployed to a UN-endorsed conflict by our elected Government.
Second, an enemy deliberately killed him when doing so. His death resulted from no random accident or illness, no matter how sad or untimely.
Third, our diggers do believe in a noble cause because every day they witness, first hand, the benefits they help bring Afghans at village level, even if Afghanistan overall is still a mess.
Jeff’s further false moral equivalence of an Australian soldier, who applies force only in accordance with the Laws of Armed Conflict, with the Taliban who immorally do not comply with international humanitarian law generally, is simply despicable.
To cap it all off, Jeff then claims, simplistically, that the digger “died in vain”. This is deeply insensitive to the soldier’s family and friends in their initial grief.
By all means debate our participation in the Afghanistan War, but wait a week or so and then do it responsibly instead.
Finally, the Corbett diatribe aptly illustrates the dangers in a liberal democracy when the troops on the ground understand the war, and believe in their mission, much more comprehensively than the people back home who sent them.
Monday, 15 August 2011
Letter to The Australian Financial Review
(published Tuesday, 16 August 2011)
Geoffrey Barker, “New bid to rein in Defence”, AFR, August 15, oddly forgets that Defence’s old Force Development and Analysis Division (FDA) did not just “decline in the late 1990s”.
It’s abolition was a major recommendation of the businessmen-led 1997 Defence Efficiency Review. This found FDA’s function to be counter-productive institutionally, and its personnel and organisational culture a major cause of the decades-long, poisonous relations between the public service and the defence force that made the whole department so ineffective when developing new defence capabilities.
The Defence Department's Force Development and Analysis Division (FDA) FDA was abolished so such development could instead be focused, collaborative and driven by operational priorities, not divisive, time-wasting, expensive and insufficiently linked to executing strategic policy (“New bid to rein in Defence”, opinion, August 15).
Far from your columnist Geoff Barker's Geoff’s mythical “iron colonels” being the problem in Defence, the entrenched problem has generally been four real and destructive myths.
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First, that all All or most problems in “Defence” are with the military, not the ever-burgeoning and very top-heavy department.
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Second, that our Our Australian Defence's Force's defence force’s widely acknowledged professionalism in the field during war and peace-keeping is somehow irrelevant when examining departmental problems and their reform.
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Third, Tthat it is somehow improper or inefficient ? the opposite of the truth ? for military officers to offer professional advice to gGovernment as to what weapons our defence force actually needs to use to deter wars, and win them if necessary without unnecessary risks to our own troops.
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Fourth, Tthat the essential constitutional principle of “civil control of the military”, properly exercised only by Ministers and Parliament, somehow justifies civilian public servants supplanting civil control by Ministers or trying to exert pervasive bureaucratic interference in military professional matters.
Bringing back an FDA-type function, without reining in bureaucratic arrogance and departmental mythology, will be just as disastrous as it was last time.
Saturday, 06 August 2011
Letter to The Australian
(published instead as a longer opinion article in the Inquirer section of the Weekend Australian on Saturday, 13 August 2011 (see here)
Peter Van Onselen ("Former terror suspect is being denied justice again", Opinion, August 6) mistakenly views the David Hicks saga backwards by not applying the relevant international and Australian law in that order.
As a belligerent captured fighting in a war, Hicks was lawfully interned under the Laws of Armed Conflict as the specialist international law applying. Whatever the perceived international legality of his subsequent, and separate, criminal trial and sentence by US Military Commission - and whether or not profits from his book or other activities are the proceeds of crime or not (and can or should be forfeit) - his internment until at least his trial did not constitute “imprisonment” or being “held without trial” for a single minute.
Even more relevantly, treachery remains a crime in Australia. Under our reformed (post-Hicks) treachery laws anyone doing now what Hicks did then can have their day facing an Australian court. We owe our diggers no less.
Hicks’ actions in 2001, after the 9/11 attacks, in fighting against a UN-endorsed international force (including Australia) could not be prosecuted only because of the Burchett loophole. Australia’s then archaic treachery laws required a war to be “declared” before serving with the enemy was an offence. But declarations of war had been invalidated by the UN Charter from 1945.
Moreover, we now know from the contradictory accounts written by and about Hicks, Mamdouh Habib and Jack Thomas, that they cannot all have been “mistakenly” involved with Islamist terrorism.
Given the extensive omissions, evasions and tendentious claims in Hicks’ diatribe to the gullible, he remains morally guilty of both treachery and of profiting from it.
If Hicks gets to keep his profits it will only be by another legal technicality, not justice.
Friday, 05 August 2011
Letter to The Canberra Times
(published Wednesday, 10 August 2011)
Your editorial "pursuit of Hicks a tad vindictive" (August 5, p16), incorrectly described David Hicks as being “arrested” in Afghanistan in 2001. Such mistakes contribute to the endless confusion for some as to the international and Australian law applying to Hicks.
Hicks was instead captured as a belligerent fighting in a war. He was consequently legitimately interned under the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) as the specialist international law applying. He did not qualify for conventional prisoner-of-war status under the Third Geneva Convention because the force he served with, the Taliban, did not adhere to LOAC and international humanitarian law generally. But as the US Supreme Court confirmed in the June 2006 Hamdan ruling, as a captured and interned belligerent he was protected under Common Article 3 of all four Geneva Conventions.
Whatever your views of the legality of his subsequent and separate criminal trial and sentence by US Military Commission, and whether or not his book's profits resulted from a criminal offence and can or should be forfeited, his internment as a captured belligerent until that trial did not constitute “arrest” or being “held without trial” for a single minute.
Four Some other points are worth noting.
First, Hicks was morally guilty of treachery but saved from Australian prosecution only by an archaic legal technicality.
His actions in 2001 in fighting against a UN-endorsed international force (including Australia) were not then criminal offences in Australia only because of the Burchett loophole in our existing treachery laws. These pre-1945 laws required a war to be “declared” before serving with the enemy could be an offence, but declarations of war had been invalidated by the UN Charter after 1945.
Second, under our updated treachery laws, anyone doing now what Hicks did then can have their day in an Australian court.
Third, if you read the inter-related and somewhat contradictory accounts written by and about Hicks, Mamdouh Habib and Jack Thomas, at least one of them has to be lying about their then commitment to terrorism.
Third Fourth, given the extensive omissions, evasions and tendentious claims in Hicks’ diatribe to the gullible, he remains morally guilty of profiting from his crimes and would keep his book profits only by another technical escape from the law.
Monday, 01 August 2011
Letter to The Australian
(published Wednesday, 03 August 2011)
Various correspondents ignore the particularly damning expert testimony to the Royal Commission into the Black Saturday bushfires from Major General Jim Molan and Dr Nick Jans concerning high-level leadership and how to command and run an operational (as opposed to a bureaucratic) headquarters.
Molan was invited to testify by the Commission as an expert witness based on, among other things, his experiences of commanding a battalion, brigade and division, being our Defence Attache in Indonesia during the 1999 East Timor crisis, and having been the Chief-of-Operations for the army-level joint headquarters conducting the coalition effort during a crucial stage in the Iraq War.
Jans, an academic specialist from the ADF’s Centre for Defence Leadership and Ethics (note the integral inter-relationship) is a retired brigadier and war veteran. He also nearly lost his house in Marysville to the fires.
Christine Nixon’s failure in command was not just her absences at critical times on the day, her lack of effective deputisation, her lack of contactability, or indeed her unwillingness to subsequently accept responsibility by trying to attribute criticism of her performance to perceptions of politics, gender and obesity.
As the expert testimony spelled out in detail, her disastrous record before, during and after the crisis encompassed failures to ensure the communications and staff systems of her emergency headquarters were capable of coping with a crisis, failures in exercising and testing them adequately, and failures as the overall commander in not setting an example to every level of her staff, and later the people of Victoria, by necessarily making command decisions and accepting absolute responsibility for everything.
Not that this should be surprising. Police across Australia have long joked that the easiest way to get Nixon to leave any informal professional discussion was to introduce an operational policing topic.
Monday, 01 August 2011
Letter to The Canberra Times
(not published)
Rod Olsen (Letters, July 31) seems to have fallen into the same historiographical traps that so ensnared Bernard Davis and Peter Marshall (Letters, February 8 and 12).
As well as avoiding the distortions of hindsight, folk memory and political bias, we always need to be aware of what historians refer to as “presentism” and the “condescension of posterity”.
The first wrongly applies contemporary perspectives to explaining past events, rather than placing them in their historical context, especially where current political opinions are projected into past strategic debates. The second falsely assumes that, because we now know what happened, we are either smarter than past Australians or would undoubtedly have then thought differently to them.
In 1914 and 1939 most Australians were just as intellectually and strategically aware as we are now. They considered that Australia would suffer greatly in strategic, economic and liberty terms if Germany and later Japan won those wars.
Whether they were correct or not, and no matter what some might think now of their decisions then, their heavy sacrifices should continue to be honoured in a non-partisan manner by all Australians. Due commemoration is not glorification of war nor militarist inculcation.
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
Letter to The Canberra Times
(not published)
John Simmons (Letters, 19/7) touches on some problems with the way the ADF promotes officers to middle and senior ranks but starts at the wrong end (the top) through omitting the history and complexity involved.
The generation, for example, who pioneered genuine joint-Service approaches in the 1980s and 1990s largely sacrificed their careers in doing so because the three Services then largely ignored or severely under-rated performance outside the Service concerned. Especially where single-Service dinosaurs resisted moves to “jointery” and punished those who excelled in furthering it.
Angus Houston was unique among the current generation of senior officers in having held two genuine joint jobs below one-star rank. Most have not had a single, even nominal, joint job below that rank.
Moreover, the recurring inequity of promotion in the Army above major-equivalent being generally harder than in the Air Force and the Navy remains largely insoluble in an increasingly integrated defence force that will always need synergistic but distinct Service professional specialisation.
There is merit, however, in four bottom-up reforms.
First, the purported equivalence of military ranks to Public Service grades should be updated to reflect reality, especially the career-experiences and post-graduate training and qualifications actually involved.
For example, a staff college graduate commander, lieutenant colonel or wing commander whose 15-20 year career has included a range of sub-unit and then unit command, teaching and progressively more senior staff positions is clearly far superior in experience and overall organisational value than virtually all EL1, and probably many and perhaps most EL2.
This is why "civilianising" ADF positions, supposedly to save money, so frequently backfires. With a lieutenant colonel, for example, within a few years there are often two EL1s (or even an EL2 and two EL1s) doing the same or similar job at much greater expense and at perhaps some operational cost.
Second, officers whose further promotion is eventually vetoed should have the right to challenge the promotion board concerned directly, face-to-face around the table, to guarantee greater fairness, integrity and transparency of such decisions
Third, within limits, officers should have the right to challenge selections for unit and higher command appointments and commensurate senior staff positions.
Fourth, wherever possible, one-star and above vacancies should be advertised, especially joint-Service ones.
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
Letter to The Canberra Times
(published Friday, 17 June 2011)
Several recent letters [to the Canberra Times] unfortunately exemplify what happens when some in our community become so disengaged from fellow Australians serving in our defence force that they are unable to debate national participation in a war responsibly. To the extent some correspondents seem unable to realise why such responsibility is necessary, some are not even able to recognise irresponsibility or try to excuse it, and one even somehow denies Australia is fighting a war in Afghanistan.
The Australia Defence Association has not once suggested or implied that Australians cannot or should not debate the war in Afghanistan or Australia’s contribution to it.
But, as the relevant public-interest watchdog, we will continue to remind the thoughtless or the ideologically rigid that debate and dissent on this topic needs to be undertaken responsibly, and that sensitivity is needed at times to avoid magnifying the worry or grief defence force families in our midst have to endure.
At least in the case of a war, no Australian has unlimited licence to engage in any form of dissent. Especially dissent that unfairly or improperly risks increasing the dangers our diggers face on the ground in Afghanistan. This was widely understood in our previous wars, up until the withdrawal from Vietnam in 1972, because many Australians had personal, close-family or community knowledge of such risks through fighting or living through World War II.
Our reformed treachery laws rightly strike an appropriate balance between personal liberty and the reciprocal national responsibility to our troops of every Australian. These laws rightly outlaw acts that assist an enemy our government commits our defence force to fight, on behalf of our country, where such assistance is intentional.
Irresponsible debate merely strengthens the case for further reform to outlaw reckless acts of assistance as well.
Friday, 10 June 2011
Letter to The Canberra Times
(published Monday, 13 June 2011)
Recent debate on the Afghanistan War continues to demonstrate the longstanding ADA observation that most arguments against the war have a factual deficit and most in favour have a conceptual one. But whether you are for or against this war several things about any war always need to be borne in mind.
First, Australia is at war, not just our defence force and the families of its personnel. We are all involved.
Second, our governments commit our defence force to war so criticism, and ensuing actions, should be directed at the former not the latter.
Third, all wars are ultimately contests of will and end when one side gives up.
Fourth, there is a moral, legal and intellectual line between legitimate and responsible dissent from such a government decision and assisting the enemy we send our diggers to fight. Every Australian needs to observe this line carefully because encouraging the enemy to believe Australia and our allies might be giving up, however unconsciously or recklessly, unfairly disadvantages our troops in the field and those Afghans on our side.
Fifth, in the era of the Web, blogs, social media – and the ensuing avalanche of accessible views on each side ranging from balanced to downright ignorant or biased – the risk of assisting the enemy (even accidentally) is much greater than in our previous wars.
Finally, most Australians now thankfully lack personal experience of war or defence force service, even in their extended families. But this has unfortunately led many to become intellectually and morally disengaged from their citizenship responsibility to debate our nation’s wars responsibly. Indeed some now even deny such a responsibility.
Too many are also now so insensitive to the grieving families of our war dead that they brutally exacerbate such grief rather than respect the individual and family sacrifice involved. By all means debate the war, but not when such grief is at its initial height and never by thoughtlessly claiming our diggers are dying in vain (even if you believe this).
Moreover, such a claim is usually just as morally and conceptually invalid as its opposite – that we must continue to fight a war or else such sacrifices would be wasted. And just as disgusting as the increasingly formulaic condolences to the grieving families from too many of our politicians and civic leaders.
Thursday, 19 May 2011
Letter to The West Australian
(not published)
Your article “Bitter rift over new defence chief” (May 19, p.11) incorrectly described the corporate succession plan for the ADF leadership as a purely military intention.
As in any large organisation, it has instead necessarily been developed and broadly endorsed over the last half-decade by the last three (Labor) Ministers for Defence, the last three Secretaries of the Department of Defence, the current CDF and indeed all recent (Coalition) shadow ministers and ministers.
The article also nonsensically claimed that the ADF somehow “resents interference from its civilian masters”.
As a necessarily apolitical institution our defence force has never resisted the essential constitutional principle of “civil control of the military” by Ministers on behalf of parliament.
But civil control is rightly different in law, history and practice to a notion of “civilian mastership”.
Such a notion does not justify, for example, amateurish interference in military professional matters by public servants, armchair strategists in academia or would-be war correspondents in the media - or automatically validate criticism by them - just because they are civilians and the ADF therefore just slaves to their will or always in the wrong because of the uniforms worn.
Moreover, the ADF is now largely prevented by ministerial direction and bureaucracy from answering back when publicly criticised. This emphasises the need for the longstanding and undoubted loyalty to civil control by our defence force to be reciprocated by ministers defending the ADF from inaccurate, biased or unfair public attacks.
Monday, 02 May 2011
Letter to The Canberra Times
(published Wednesday, 04 May 2011)
It is Howard Carew (letters, May 01) who has missed the point, not professors Greg Jackson and Jeffrey Grey, but tragically he is not alone.
The commandant of ADFA did not treat the filming incident as a “misdemeanour” as Mr Carew mistakenly claims. He called in the military and civilian police straight away – and well before the incident became public. The independent Kirkham Inquiry will no doubt vindicate this and other of his actions.
Both Jackson and Grey were or are longstanding senior (civilian) academics at ADFA and have a deep knowledge of the academy, its student body and its institutional culture. If their judgement is that the recent incident is neither typical, nor indicative of a systemic problem, then surely the community should trust their first-hand views.
There should be no more public hysteria fuelled by inaccurate, sensationalist and often biased media coverage ? and by ministerial panic.
Thursday, 21 April 2011
Letter to The Canberra Times
(not published)
Your April 19 editorial and letters from John Simmons and Patrick Ryan (April 18) ignore that the constitutional principle of civil control of the military can only be exercised properly when in accordance with the Constitution, the Defence Act and the principles of natural justice and administrative law.
Whatever his motivation concerning the recent incident at ADFA, the current Minister for Defence has clearly not done so. Instead of pointing out that the incident was being properly investigated (as he now admits) he poured verbal petrol on the fire of uninformed public hysteria.
Section 2 of the Defence Act deliberately separates civil control (by the Minister) from command (by the Chief of the Defence Force), yet this Minister improperly intervened in the chain of command to publicly traduce and scapegoat the commandant of ADFA. This Minister then sought, improperly and perhaps unlawfully, to quash a disciplinary penalty.
Mr Simmons is incorrect, This latter action did contravene the separation of powers between executive and judicial or quasi-judicial functions.
Even if the ADF’s statutory disciplinary code is not based in Chapter III of the Constitution it is still immune from executive fiat. Moreover, under the principles of administrative law, any Minister should avoid trespassing, or being seen to trespass, on the exercise of statutory quasi-judicial functions whether they be an ADF disciplinary tribunal or, say, the Social Security Appeals Tribunal.
There are also general limits as to what a Minister can direct a statutory officeholder (CDF, Service Chief) to do where Parliament has conferred some authority to exercise power independently of the Minister for good reason – such as to command the defence force.
In legal terms, the stream (Minister) cannot rise above the source (statute/Parliament).
Finally, no-one in the ADF, as Mr Ryan oddly believes, thinks the defence force somehow works for the Governor-General and not the elected government.
The GG’s designation as Commander-in-Chief of the ADF under the Constitution (Section 68) is titular and exercised only on the advice of the Executive Council (ie. the PM and Cabinet).
For example, when later asked what would have happened if Sir John Kerr had tried to use the ADF to dismiss the Whitlam government, the then ADF Chief (General Sir Frank Hassett) noted that the military would necessarily have followed the directions of that government’s Minister for Defence.
Thursday, 14 April 2011
Letter to The Australian
(not published)
Last Monday’s editorial and many recent letters about our defence force are quite chilling in their shameful, Dreyfus-like, rush to judgement irrespective of the facts, the law and the principles of natural justice.
Even more importantly, what really went wrong over the last week or so was not that the ADF’s chiefs somehow resisted civil control of the military but that they had to insist on the Minister exercising it properly.
The clash is definitely not anything to do with the ADF somehow improperly resisting ministerial authority, fighting reform of the Department of Defence or condoning sexist behaviour.
As per the Constitution and the Defence Act, civil control of the military is rightly exercised by the Minister for Defence on behalf of parliament and the executive. However, our tried and tested Westminster constitutional model deliberately separates control and command to remove the gun from our politics ? and the party politics from the institutional culture and operations of our military.
Command is vested in the Chief of Defence Force and Service Chiefs as statutory officeholders. By law the only ADF member the Minister for Defence can direct is the CDF, who then converts the Minister’s directions to orders and passes them down the military chain of command.
If the Minister has concerns about any individual he needs to take them up with the CDF, by convention in private.
He should never, as occurred last week, worsen public hysteria by reaching down into the chain of command to scapegoat the commandant of ADFA publicly. Nor should he unfairly gag those falsely accused or create a second victim of the ADFA sexual assault incident.
The Minister further abused his lawful authority by interfering improperly in an on-going defence force disciplinary proceeding ? contrary to longstanding conventions and, at the very least, the spirit of both the law and the principle of the separation of powers between executive and even quasi-judicial functions or statutory disciplinary codes.
Finally, the Minister is also neglecting his responsibility to defend the ADF collectively, and its personnel individually, from unfair and misinformed criticism. Just as the Attorney-General has to defend a judiciary who also cannot answer back.
Wednesday, 13 April 2011
Letter to The Canberra Times
(not published)
Bruce Haigh (“Looking at Australian Defence Force through a glass darkly”, April 13, p.19), unwittingly encompasses nearly every aspect of the current hysterical stampede following an undoubted and reprehensible sexual assault at ADFA.
Offering not a shred of fact or responsible argument, Haigh defames the Commandant of ADFA, Bruce Kafer, by claiming that he somehow “failed to perform his duty” and “failed to show the requisite leadership”. There is absolutely no evidence of this, and much against the accusation, as refutations of the many baseless allegations against Kafer and his staff are now finally drip fed out by the Minister for Defence.
I hope Kayfer sues Haigh for the cowardly calumny, even before the Kirkham Inquiry spreads egg all over the face of Haigh and all the others who have rushed to judgement through ignorance, bias or hypocrisy.
How Haigh can so brazenly deny that Kafer is the second victim of this incident is also surely beyond the understanding of anyone who respects the principles of natural justice. Haigh is also clearly oblivious to the irony that it is such unfounded and malicious criticism of Kafer that has caused such considerable injustice to a decent man who did his duty – as the Kirkham Inquiry will no doubt find.
Finally, Haigh fundamentally misunderstands, or more likely misrepresents deliberately, the principle of civil control of the military (by the Minister) and how command of the ADF is properly exercised (by the CDF) under that control.
What went wrong over the last week was not that the military’s chiefs somehow resisted proper civil control but that they had to insist on it.
Wednesday, 13 April 2011
Letter to The Australian Financial Review
published Thursday, 14 April 2011)
“The military versus its masters”, Opinion, April 13, p.55 was entirely wrong about every aspect of the current clash between the defence force and Defence Minister Stephen Smith its Minister.
Constitutionally, and in the Defence Act, civil control of the military can only be properly exercised by the Minister for Defence - on behalf of parliament and the executive – not by Public Service bureaucrats as Geoffrey Barker Paul Dibb improperly implied.
The tried and tested Westminster constitutional model deliberately separates control and command. This has long removed the gun from our politics and the party politics from the institutional culture and operations of our military.
Command of the defence force is therefore vested by law in the Chief of Defence Force (CDF) and Service Chiefs as statutory officeholders. The only Australian Defence Force member the Minister can legally direct is the CDF, who then converts the Minister’s directions to orders and passes them down the military chain of command.
What went wrong over the last week was not that the military’s chiefs somehow resisted proper civil control but that they had to insist on it.
The Minister has a responsibility to defend the ADF collectively, and its personnel individually, from unfair and inaccurate criticism (in this case media and public hysteria about the Commandant of ADFA). Just as the Attorney-General has to similarly defend the judiciary.
If the Minister has concerns about any individual he should take them up privately with the CDF, not worsen the hysteria by reaching down into the chain of command to humiliate an ADF member publicly. Especially when this officer was being defamed, was not allowed to explain what had really occurred and was effectively denied natural justice. And where this Minister has recent form for scapegoating the Chief of Navy over the amphibious fleet.
Finally, the Minister compounded all this by interfering improperly in an on-going defence force disciplinary proceeding - contrary to longstanding conventions, and at the very least the spirit of both the law and the principle of the separation of powers between executive and judicial/disciplinary functions.
The clash is definitely not anything to do with the ADF somehow resisting ministerial authority or reform of the Department of Defence.
Friday, 08 April 2011
Letter to The Canberra Times
(not published until 14 April 2011 during which time the public hysteria had become much worse)
The nub of the constitutional, legal and professionalism issues that have now emerged from a disgraceful sexual assault at ADFA is simple.
Under the constitution and the Defence Act, the Minister rightly exercises civil control of the military on behalf of parliament and the executive (although some APS bureaucrats improperly think they should too). But command of the defence force is rightly vested by law separately in the CDF and Service Chiefs as the governor-general’s appointment as commander-in-chief is purely titular.
This tried and tested constitutional model has long removed the gun from Westminster-system politics and the party politics from the institutional culture and operations of the military in those democracies. An apolitical defence force that defends all Australians equally is essential to our parliamentary democratic system and indeed to the professionalism of our defence force.
If the Minister for Defence thinks he has a problem with anyone in the defence force, both legally, morally and by longstanding convention he should advise the CDF of this, preferably in private, so the CDF can properly address the matter through the chain of command.
Instead, in answer to an ignorant and provocative question by a journalist, Stephen Smith unwisely humiliated a dedicated senior ADF officer in public, and tried to scapegoat him for doing what that officer considered to be his professional duty where the Minister did not know, nor could be expected to know, all the complex circumstance involved.
He then publicly interfered in on-going defence force disciplinary proceedings - again contrary to longstanding conventions, probably the law (in spirit at least) and the principle of the separation of powers (between executive and judicial or disciplinary functions).
This is not a minor matter, nor one of the ADF somehow resisting reform or Minister Smith’s grip on his department and the ADF.
The Minister has dug himself into this hole and he should stop digging. Including his staff briefing pet journalists to traduce the Australia Defence Association for doing its job as the independent, non-partisan, national public-interest watchdog for defence issues.
Monday, 04 April 2011
Letter to The Australian
(not published)
Your article “Spy chief told UK to boycott Evatt as PM” (April 4, p.1) only confirmed what most students of the period already realised anyway – Spry’s professional concerns about Evatt’s mental stability and consequent reliability if he became PM.
The article ignored this occurred at a high point in the Cold War, Australia’s strategic relationship with the US had only just been rebuilt, we then had much closer alliance with the UK, and the Petrov affair occurred just after the armistice (not peace) in the Korean War - when the strategic threat from Soviet-led communism was overt and growing - and our diggers still occupied front-line defensive positions there.
Only cursory mention was made of the major problems caused by the previous Labor government’s initial unwillingness to accept that Soviet espionage had thoroughly penetrated the Australian government throughout the 1940s. A threat which led Chifley to create ASIO to fix the problem and reassure our allies that Australia could be trusted to respect confidences.
But the biggest omission from the article was commonplace acceptance of Evatt’s burgeoning mental instability even then. Instability confirmed in detail by his bizarre behaviour at and after the subsequent Royal Commission into Soviet espionage, his sudden and disastrous splitting of the ALP in even more bizarre circumstances, and as recorded in most memoirs of the period by Labor politicians.
There was also no discussion that no modern, mainstream, Australian political party would elect or retain a leader as mentally ill as Evatt. Nor that his leadership when so sick was an undoubted tragedy for Labor and Australia.
But the key point is that if Evatt could not be trusted to respect the security of intelligence provided by allies (for reasons of illness, ideology or both), then those allies were entitled not to provide it to him.
In such an unprecedented and extremely difficult situation where the ALP would or could not remove their ill leader, the head of ASIO was surely duty-bound to advise such key allies of his professional opinion. No disloyalty to Australia was involved. Spry did not suggest that such material should not continue to be shared with relevant Australian Cabinet ministers and officials, only that Evatt was a serious problem and why.
Finally, Spry was Director-General of ASIO, our national security intelligence agency. He was not a “spy chief” as one of ASIO’s roles is to deter and prevent spying, not undertake it.
Such limited analysis, amateur terminology and shallow conclusions are to be expected when only the subjective views of two left-wing academics are quoted.
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Letter to Crikey.com
(published Wednesday, 16 March 2011)
Margaret Simons’ analysis of the first week of “7:30” (Crikey, yesterday, Item 15) claimed that all the stories broken “deserved their place in the program”. But surely the highly inaccurate and sensationalist first-night story about the poor state of the Navy’s amphibious fleet was a particularly disappointing launch for a revamped approach to serious current affairs television by the national broadcaster?
While wrongly castigating the Navy for the disastrous state of its amphibious ships, the program did not once point out that responsibility for their maintenance was largely removed from the Navy in 2003 by the Department of Defence, supposedly to save money and with little care for the strategic consequences and operational considerations.
Nor that the root cause of the problem was the particularly short-sighted decision by the Keating Government in 1993-94 to over-rule professional advice from the defence force and buy second-hand American, rather than new, ships in the first place. Again to supposedly save money without due care for the strategic and operational problems caused.
A disastrous decision that has instead cost the taxpayer more over the long run and saddled the Navy with 40-year old adapted ships, rather than purpose-designed ones that would now be under half-way through their operating lives.
Given the several decades-long life-cycle of many defence weapons platforms (ships, vehicles, aircraft, etc), short-sighted and incorrect decisions in defence procurement have a very long life. They can reach out to touch politicians and governments well into the future. The current Minister for Defence and Treasurer, for example, were advisers to PM Keating when the wrong decision was taken and must now cope with the consequences nearly 20 years later. This irony is not lost on anyone in our defence force or indeed anyone with a long memory of defence issues.
The “7:30” program was aware of all this background (because the ADA had advised them) but oddly chose not to tackle the situation from a long-term perspective. It seems the quest for a first-night splash, and perhaps the scalp of the Chief of Navy, won out over the facts and balanced analysis of the causes.
Again ironically, the current Chief of Navy has done more to fix such problems than anyone else in the Department of Defence.
Indeed a good question for “7:30” to have asked instead for their splash is why Stephen Smith has not been defending Vice-Admiral Crane from all the incorrect media and political scape-goating?
Wednesday, 09 March 2011
Letter to The Geelong Advertiser
(published Tuesday, 10 March 2011)
Your article Recent coverage on on the future of Fort Queenscliff failed to explain the problem or sheet home responsibility.
As with many historic defence sites around Australia the base problem is that the fort no longer has any military utility but high heritage maintenance costs. The defence force (and the Commonwealth government) no longer needs it but the state government does not want to take it over (as has occurred with all the old forts in other harbours around the country) and pay the upkeep costs.
It could, however, have been very different.
In the early 2000s the Army sought to move the Land Warfare Development Centre (LWDC) from Puckapunyal to Queenscliff to replace Command and Staff College. The centre was well-suited to Queenscliff, the layout of the fort and the amenities of the area. It could have stayed there for decades.
Its location in Puckapunyal has long created major staffing problems because that area does not suit the family structure of the older, more senior-ranking personnel needed to staff the centre, especially in terms of career continuity for older spouses and the range and quality of secondary schools and tertiary institutions needed for older children.
Unfortunately Puckapunyal sits in the highly marginal seat of McEwen and the then federal MP, Fran Bailey, was also the Parliamentary Secretary for Defence. She refused abused her position by refusing to let any unit be moved from Puckapunyal, thereby incurring permanent massive costs for the taxpayer and perpetual staffing difficulties for the LWDC.
Few ministerial decisions have been so short-sighted and destructive ? for the LWDC, the Army, the taxpayer and now the Borough of Queenscliff and the greater Geelong area.
Tuesday, 08 March 2011
Letter to The Australian
(not published)
Calls by the Opposition Spokesman for Defence, Senator David Johnston, for the Chief of Navy to be held accountable for the worn-out state of the Navy’s amphibious fleet are misplaced at best (and will do nothing for confidence that he is properly across defence issues).
The Chief of Navy largely lost the responsibility for warship maintenance in 2003 when this was transferred to the Defence Materiel Organisation and Navy Support Command was disbanded.
Yet again, a departmental reorganisation aimed at supposedly saving money has instead resulted in significant operational costs to the defence force and risks to Australians generally, as well as greater financial costs over the long term to the taxpayer.
All the virulent public scape-goating of Vice Admiral Crane would not be happening, of course, if the Minister for Defence was properly defending the Chief of Navy from uninformed, and often ignorant, criticism in the media.
Those with long memories of defence planning know that the main reason why HMA Ships Kanimbla and Manoora are now worn out is because the government in 1993 chose to save money in the short term, against professional advice from the defence force, by forcing the Navy take second-hand American ships rather than get new ones that would now only be halfway through their operational lives.
A short-sighted decision, incidentally, taken by a government in which Stephen Smith and Wayne Swan were advisers to the prime minister. The irony of this is not lost on members of the defence force and indeed anyone who is informed on defence issues.
Friday, 04 March 2011
Letter to The Canberra Times
(not published)
Friday’s editorial on departmental budgeting unfortunately cited Defence’s purchase of an additional C-17 strategic transport aircraft as an example of wasteful spending, just to expend allocations by June 30.
It is really an excellent example of the opposite.
First, capital investment programming to rebuild our defence force after the prolonged neglect of the 1980s and 1990s necessarily means a multi-year, not single-year, approach.
Second, as Dr Mark Thomson from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has noted in this and previous years, it makes sense to bring other programming decisions forward if a supplier is behind schedule on a current-year program.
Third, the extra C-17 is not additional investment overall anyway as it is almost entirely offset by cancelling later-year aircraft in the C-130J program.
Finally, as with the UK and Canada, the decision to obtain more C-17s is based on practical experience of the aircraft’s utility.
As with most other aspects of the flawed 1980s defence-of-Australia dogma, events and consequent ADF operations in East Timor, Aceh, Nias, PNG, Solomon Islands, Iraq and Afghanistan have continued to disprove the idiocy of largely denuding our defence force of the air and maritime strategic mobility capabilities it needs to execute government policy.
Tuesday, 22 February 2011
Letter to The Canberra Times
(not published)
Parts of today’s editorial on ASIO were undergraduate-style polemics from a bygone era, not the considered comment and adherence to facts expected of a major newspaper.
Perhaps the editorialist’s confusion, or nostalgic rush to the head from their student days, stemmed from misunderstanding that ASIO is a security intelligence agency not an “intelligence service”. And from not appreciating that ASIO, far from being “essentially secretive and undemocratic in nature”, is a well-regulated agency operating under numerous ministerial, parliamentary and other safeguards.
It has no power of arrest, just like its counterparts in other Westminster-system democracies, and poses no threat to democratic discourse that is undertaken peacefully, publicly, lawfully and with respect to the democracy that ASIO helps protect. ASIO operations are for all practical purposes really no more intrusive than most other departments, especially those who often interact with citizens such as Centrelink or Medicare.
It is also no more secretive than other departments with an obvious national security or police role such as Defence and the AFP. ASIO is naturally more conscious than most departments of a citizen’s right to privacy and the need for a strict apolitical approach organisationally. Certainly much more so than the ABC and the Department of Immigration.
Accusing the new ASIO building of being an “intrusive secret police headquarters” is simply emotive, incorrect and irrelevant. The headquarters of all our six intelligence and security agencies are in the parliamentary triangle – as are all other important Commonwealth departments and agencies.
Friday, 18 February 2011
Letter to The West Australian
(not published)
Andrew Probyn (“Minister faces defence battle”, February 18, p.21), no doubt unconsciously, produced several remarkable ironies when discussing the current poor state of the Navy’s amphibious fleet.
He misses that most of the responsibility for ship maintenance was long ago removed from the Navy (to the Defence Materiel Organisation), but then suggests “navy chiefs [get] the bollocking they deserve”.
Andrew then quotes camp oven-to-kettle criticism from former Defence official Hugh White, a leading exponent of the strategic school long strongly opposed to the ADF being strategically deployable at all. A school, in fact, whose trenchant opposition to amphibiosity almost caused us major strategic humiliation in East Timor, if not for the ADF’s “can do” attitude and Dili being relatively close.
Then we come to the root-cause irony that the now well-recognised incorrect decision to go for old, second-hand and barely suitable amphibious ships in 1993-94, rather than get new ones suited to Australia’s requirements and save money over the long-run, was taken deliberately by the government in which Stephen Smith was an adviser to Paul Keating.
The final irony is that the current Chief of Navy has probably done more to fix operational, materiel and personnel problems across the whole fleet than anyone else in Defence.
After Vice-Admiral Crane has been so wrongly blamed and “bollocked” in so much uninformed media and popular comment, it is surely now time for Minister Smith to emphasise this truth in public.
Friday, 18 February 2011
Letter to The Australian
(not published)
Henry Ergas (“Captain Kafka running Defence, February 18, p.12) shows no understanding of how to measure and test defence capability development.
Nor of the relationship between studying a largely unknowable future, that must be met by effective strategic planning, and then executed by focused, flexible and adaptable force structuring. Hence his 1950s-era claim that “defence acquisition decisions reflect compromises between the Services’ wish lists”.
Then he oddly describes Sir Arthur Tange as somehow being “the greatest reformer in the department’s history” when Tange was the one most responsible for creating the mess in Defence in the first place. Not least by delaying an effective strategic-level, joint-Service command structure for two generations after they were implemented in comparable countries to, among other things, eradicate harmful inter-Service rivalry.
Finally, Henry misses that it is primarily not the Navy’s fault that its 40-year old ships are finally worn out (as is much else in the ADF).
Australia serially under-invested in our defence force for the three decades before 2000, hence the catch-up increases needed since then; another key point Henry ignores. Indeed it is financial theorists, and other closet Napoleons, that have too often produced the glib excuses enabling governments to disguise their prolonged neglect of the ADF from the Australian people.
Sunday, 13 February 2011
Letter to The Canberra Times
(not published)
Peter Marshall (Letters, February 12) and Bernard Davis (Letters, February 8) seem to have been confused by editing of the ADA letter (February 4) about observing the differences between commemoration and (militarist) celebration of our war dead. The words “had to defend” and “have to” (fight) were unfortunately omitted from our discussion of the defence of liberties in war (in general), both past and probable future ones respectively.
But Peter and Bernard also ignore an important principle. Current arguments about the causes, justifications and results of the more controversial wars, even those long past, should surely be entirely separate from our honouring of those lost in war because of what they believed at the time were their responsibilities as Australian citizens.
Moreover, we need to avoid the distortions of hindsight, folk memory and what historians refer to as “presentism” or the "condescension of posterity" ? applying contemporary perspectives to explaining past events rather than placing these events in their historical context (especially where this involves the projection into past strategic debates of current political opinions).
In 1914, for example, most Australians were just as intellectually and strategically aware as we are now. They considered that Australia would suffer greatly in economic, strategic and liberty terms if Germany won the war.
Whether they were correct or not, and no matter what some might think now of their decisions then, such heavy sacrifices should continue to be honoured in a non-partisan manner by all Australians.
Monday, 07 February 2011
Letter to The Australian
(published Tuesday, 08 February 2011)
(similar letter published in full by The Canberra Times on Monday, 14 February 2011)
Whatever the merits of its arguments either way, the real issue is that the Kokoda Foundation study, “Australia’s Strategic Edge in 2030”, again highlights the flawed Defence White Paper process used since the mid 1970s to plan Australia’s future security ("Boost military to take on China", The Australian, February 7, p.5-6).
The 2009 White Paper process was better than its predecessors, but neither the way they are prepared or the resulting papers have been intellectually or institutionally robust enough for such an important task. And the defence investment promises made in White Papers have never been kept by governments anyway.
Finally, such White Papers are limited in how they can justify defence strategies and capabilities because, by definition, they are declaratory policy not what Australia can and does really think.
Instead of such flawed bureaucratic processes, and the partisan or academic squabbling which invariably follows, we need to use a formal strategic intelligence estimate of the various possibilities and their likelihoods followed by a formal strategic appreciation to derive the best responses.
Every country needs to work to stop another Cold War. China and the US also need to be discouraged from becoming peer strategic competitors in another Cold War.
A formal strategic appreciation of the challenges, opportunities and threats caused by the rise of China would be a much better means for Australia to encourage the former and discourage the latter.
Wednesday, 02 February 2011
Letter to The Australian Financial Review
(published Monday, 07 February 2011)
Both sides of politics are being less than correct historically when attributing blame for sudden and burgeoning deficiencies in defence force amphibious vessel capabilities.
There are four root causes to the problem, all of them ignored by the politicians and indeed missed by most media reporting.
First, largely inadequate investment in defence capabilities by governments of both political persuasions since World War II has meant precious lessons from the Pacific campaign about Australia needing extensive amphibious capabilities were mostly lost for over four decades. Australia remains a heavily seaborne-trade dependent, island continent, surrounded on two sides by archipelagoes and with vast oceans in every direction. We are a country also responsible strategically and/or legally for ten per cent of the Earth’s surface (most of it ocean).
Second, amphibiosity became a cultural and organisational orphan in our defence force because political horizons, and departmental bureaucratic and funding arrangements, from the 1940s to the 1990s savagely discriminated against joint (tri-Service) capabilities in favour of exclusively single-Service ones.
Third is a cultural problem in the Navy (and to some extent the other two Services), which for too long regarded amphibiosity as a third-level, or even irrelevant, professional qualification and operational skill. Even now the Navy’s elite Principal Warfare Officers (PWOs) cannot specialise in amphibious warfare as a core skill and be badged accordingly until 2013.
Finally, once again, governments are at fault for short-term thinking driven by diverting defence investment to vote-buying elsewhere.
As with many naval vessels, it has cost more over the life-cycle of our amphibious ships to buy, maintain and upgrade second-hand, old or inadequate vessels than it would have cost to procure and maintain adequate new ships and regularly replace them in the first place. Moreover, if the Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke, Keating and early Howard governments had invested in sufficient, bigger, and new ships matched to regional maritime conditions, strategic requirements and operational needs, since 1987 we would have much more easily handled regional contingencies in Fiji, Vanuatu, Bougainville, PNG, Solomon Islands and East Timor.
In hull terms, steel is cheap and air is free. Modern ships of size can now be run by much smaller crews than in the past. This is why the modern Canberra class amphibious ships coming into service in the next decade mid 20-teens will revolutionise how the ADF can work and should think in deterrence, stability, peacekeeping, disaster relief, warfighting, and diplomatic and sovereignty support operations generally.
Wednesday, 02 February 2011
Letter to The Canberra Times
(published Friday, 04 February 2011)
Much correspondence on the proposed memorials for the world wars, both for and against, has missed some of the historical and enduring perspectives involved.
First, the continuing importance of the vista from the new and old parliament houses down Federation Mall across the lake up Anzac Parade to the Australian War Memorial is not just scenic. It is an important symbolic, moral, historical and indeed practical reminder to all at Parliament House, and all who visit it, that generations of Australianshave defended had to defend these liberties in war. Most of them ordinary Australians serving in our defence force temporarily.
Second, objections to the new memorials on the grounds they somehow encourage militarism are, at best, ahistorical and show considerable confusion about the differences between commemoration and celebration.
Third, my observation is that the commemorative focus of the current generation of war veterans and their families, both symbolically and personally, is on the names of their mates, comrades and loved ones properly recorded perpetually in bronze in the roll-of-honour above the Australian War Memorial’s pool of memory.
Finally, Australia has fought 12 wars and mounted some 45 peacekeeping and related operations since federation. We will undoubtedly have to fight and mount many more in future. Only three of the twelve memorial sites along Anzac Parade are spare (with one more reserved for the peacekeepers). Only the Korean and Vietnam Wars have been commemorated individually (for reasons peculiar to their era and community treatment of their veterans since).
On practical, symbolic and aesthetic grounds these, and the lakeshore parts of the very meaningful Parliament House – War Memorial vista, should surely now be reserved to commemorate worthwhile generic sacrifices (nurses, navy, army, air force, merchant marine, peacekeepers, etc) and not every war, other operation or campaign, current political fashion or ethnic group individually.