Tag Archive for: defence minister

Looking back to look forward, 10 years after the First Principles Review

Exactly 10 years ago, the then minister for defence, Kevin Andrews, released the First Principles Review: Creating One Defence (FPR). With increasing talk about the rising possibility of major power-conflict, calls for Defence funding to increase to at least 3 percent of GDP, and questions raised about Defence’s ability to spend the money appropriated to it, it is the perfect time to assess whether Defence created the sustainable and enduring business model that the Review championed.

The FPR was commissioned in August 2014 by the predecessor of Andrews, David Johnston, as both an election commitment and a response to the 2014 National Commission of Audit’s recommendation for an efficiency review ‘as a pre-condition for setting any new funding profile for Defence under the White Paper’.

Conducted over eight months and chaired by David Peever, the FPR was an end-to-end review of Defence’s business processes, structure and organisation. It was designed to look forward to the challenges Defence would face in the 21st century and structured around the need for a sustainable and enduring business model. The combined effect of the review was supposed to be a more unified and integrated organisation, more consistently linked to strategy and led by its centre.

Key among the FPR’s recommendations were:

—Establishment of a strong, strategic centre to strengthen accountability and top-level decision-making. This would involve a new ‘One Defence’ business model, a streamlined top level management structure, establishment of a strong and credible internal contestability function, and a reduced number of committees;

—The establishment of a single end-to-end capability development function to maximise the efficient, effective and professional delivery of military capability. This included establishing the new Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG) with reduced management layers, and transferring accountability for requirements setting and management to the vice chief and the service chiefs;

—The implementation of an enterprise approach to the delivery of services enabling corporate and military operations to maximise their effectiveness and efficiency. This would involve consolidation and standardisation in estate, information management, geospatial intelligence and customer-centric service delivery;

—The creation of a ‘One Defence’ workforce to ensure committed people with the right skills are in appropriate jobs, through the development of a strategic workforce plan for building a highly professional workforce across the Department and the Australian Defence Force; and

—The management of staff resources to deliver optimal use of funds and maximise efficiencies, through stripping back and simplification of overly complicated processes and structures, as well as the introduction of greater transparency, contestability and professionalism.

The review set out an ambitious agenda to ensure that Defence was fit for purpose and able to deliver with the minimum resources necessary. Most of the recommendations were implemented over two years.

At its simplest, the FPR sought to ensure that respective ministers, secretaries and chiefs of defence force would ask themselves every working day: Does this decision (or these options to government) strip back and simplify complicated processes and structures? Do they introduce greater transparency, contestability and professionalism? Do they enforce accountability and leadership?

Against these three questions, sadly, Defence’s implementation did not climb to the ambitions demanded by the review team. Despite the FPR’s intent to dethatch Defence’s hierarchy, devolve accountabilities to the lowest level possible and de-layer the organisation, Defence now has more senior executive service and star-ranked officers and organisational units than it did in 2015.

Committee structures have similarly reverted, though it should be acknowledged that the Investment Committee has been a positive advance for the organisation, though the burden on its members continues to be back-breakingly cumbersome. The behavioural change that is necessary to transform Defence seems to have broken on the rocks of institutional resistance.

The review highlighted ‘an organisational culture within Defence that is risk-averse and resistant to change’. The FPR authors were deeply focused on the risk culture of the organisation and many of their recommendations centred on practical ways to overcome this risk aversion. The simplicity and elegance of their recommendations were certainly lost on the upper floors of the Russell offices during the implementation process.

Defence’s failure to change—with concomitant failure to deliver—represents the organisation’s unwillingness to explore a different concept of risk management. This was also the case with Peever’s subsequent review of Defence innovation in 2021, which called for Defence to embrace a desire to improve (we think—the review was heavily redacted, including all of its recommendations).

Similarly, the concept of a single end-to-end capability development function has not taken root, with the contestability function failing to meet the aim of a ‘robust and disciplined contestability function to provide arm’s-length assurance to the secretary that the capability needs and requirements are aligned with strategy and resources and can be delivered’. Correspondingly, the transfer of accountability to the service chiefs appears to have frustrated the FPR’s aims for an integrated capability management process, in which all the fundamental inputs to capability (including industry support, facilities, ICT and workforce) are managed as a whole.

This has been particularly challenging for the capability managers within CASG, who no longer have all the levers necessary to effectively and efficiently manage the ‘smart buyer’ function. It appears that the common-sense approach to acquiring and sustaining capability—where the full process does not need to be followed when common sense says that the judicious use of a fast-track path is appropriate and risks are acceptable—has struggled. Few are the examples of innovative use of procurement practices, development of fast-track projects, or the creation of novel contractual relationships.

Skill development in CASG, and in Defence more broadly, continues to be a fundamental challenge. The Defence Workforce Plan didn’t emerge until 2024, and we are yet to see whether this plan will effectively deliver the required workforce, identify the critical skills gaps or build those skills and workforce strategies that place ‘the right people with the right skills in the right roles at the right time to deliver Defence’s mission’.

Defence is pursuing yet another strategic reform agenda, set out in Chapter 11 of the National Defence Strategy. It aims to deliver both strategic reform—the transformation of the core elements of Defence that deliver effects to achieve the strategy of denial—and enterprise reform—the transformation of Defence’s enabling elements that drive performance. In doing so, it could do worse than returning to the fundamental first principles that drove the FPR:

—Clear authorities and accountabilities that align with resources (empowering decision-makers to deliver on strategies and plans within agreed resourcing, while also holding them responsible);

—Outcome orientation (delivering what is required with processes, systems and tools being the means, not the end);

—Simplicity (eliminating complicated and unnecessary structures, processes, systems and tools);

—Focus on core business (Defence doing only for itself what no one else can do more effectively and efficiently);

—Professionalism (encouraging committed people with the right skills in appropriate jobs);

—Timely, contestable advice (using internal and external expertise to provide the best advice so that the outcome is delivered in the most cost-effective and efficient manner); and

—Transparency (behaving in a way that enables others to know exactly what Defence is doing and why).

If Australia is to effectively meet the challenges it faces, the government and the public need to have confidence in the combat capabilities of its armed forces, the effectiveness and timeliness of Defence’s decision making and the efficient use of the nation’s treasure.

Peever and his team set up a strong and sensible plan to ensure Defence was able to meet these three demands. Sadly, because of culture, behaviour and bureaucratic malaise, the FPR proved less enduring than the review team—and the Australian public—needed it to be.

Editors’ picks for 2024: ‘The long arc of Australian defence strategy’

Originally published on 11 May 2024.

Kim Beazley was appointed as Minister for Defence on 13 December 1984. He oversaw a revolution in Australian defence, as profoundly important in shaping the nation as were the economic reforms of the time. His enduring legacy is the idea of self-reliance in the defence of Australia. The 1987 Defence White Paper that Beazley delivered, taken together with the 1986 Review that he commissioned (prepared by Paul Dibb), stand—like Newton’s Principia—as the foundational model for defending Australia.

Beazley acknowledges humbly that he benefited from the work of others, including Dibb, and academics such as Tom Millar, Hedley Bull, Bob O’Neill, Coral Bell, Des Ball, and Ross Babbage. This credit is well due. However, only an actively engaged minister, intellectually as well as politically committed to the task, could have brought forth such a revolution at the time in thought and practice.

Australian defence strategy during the 1950s and 1960s had been framed around forward defence. At the time, Australia was a strategic backwater, where no questions of geopolitical significance were going to be settled militarily, or otherwise. The establishment of the joint facilities at North West Cape, Nurrungar, and Pine Gap, over the period 1963-69, did nothing to change this. Their profound implications for Australia’s defence, and its alliance with the United States, were not crystallised until the 1980s. Again, Beazley played the pivotal role, something to be examined at another time.

Australia received a number of strategic shocks in the late 1960s. First, the United Kingdom announced in July 1967 that it was withdrawing from ‘East of Suez’. Then, more significantly, Richard Nixon announced in July 1969 what became known as the ‘Guam Doctrine’. In Asia, allies of the United States would be expected to take up the principal burden of defending themselves, with minimal US support, unless they were threatened by nuclear-armed adversaries, and where the United States had applicable alliance commitments or interests which would warrant direct combat involvement.

Policy thinking within the Department of Defence had already started to shift in the direction of self-reliant defence. (Stephan Fruehling’s research on this quiet shift is the benchmark.) However, it was the Guam Doctrine and the commencement under Nixon of the long US withdrawal from Vietnam that tolled the bell for forward defence. The Fraser Government announced self-reliant defence as policy in the 1976 Defence White Paper, without however changing military strategy, or force structure priorities.

This is the situation that Beazley inherited in 1984. In the face of the Department of Defence and the three services—the army, navy and air force—not being able to agree on what the ‘defence of Australia’ actually meant in terms of military strategy, force structure, and funding, Beazley commissioned Dibb in February 1985 to examine Australia’s defence capabilities. Dibb was able to draw upon the groundbreaking work of the Strategic Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University—one of the most consequential contributions to policy by the Australian academy.

Based on Dibb’s 1986 Review, the 1987 White Paper established the self-reliant defence of Australia as the organising principle of our defence strategy. Given the prevailing strategic environment, it concluded that the ability to deal with ‘low level’ and ‘escalated low level’ threats, which could be mounted with little warning, would drive decisions on force structure.

The 1987 White Paper did not exclude the possibility of Australia’s having in future to contend with the possibility of more substantial conflict. Australia could prepare for such a contingency by means of ‘strategic warning time’. It could use time effectively to expand the force to meet a growing threat. It was judged that the Soviet Union would not likely mount a conventional attack on Australia (but would target Australia during a strategic nuclear exchange), and that regional powers would require at least a decade to develop the capabilities which would be needed to mount a substantial attack. During that time, Australia would be able to expand its force in anticipation.

Self-reliant defence did not mean armed neutrality or isolationism. The alliance with the United States retained its salience in Australian grand strategy, but the 1987 White Paper declared that Australia would not seek, or expect, unrealistic—and therefore non-credible—levels of commitment to the defence of Australia by US combat forces, save for the protection afforded by US nuclear weapons through extended deterrence. Further, Australia would contribute to US security, and global stability, by way of hosting the joint facilities. Self-reliant defence and the Australia-US alliance cohered in this model.

The 1987 White Paper expounded the ‘law’ of defence in depth, which meant, crucially, denial of access by an adversary through the sea-air approaches to Australia. This ‘law’ functioned as the overriding discipline on the development of the force. This approach turned into a strength the vast expanse of northern Australia, the extensive sea-air surrounds of the continent, and the archipelagic arc that extends from Sumatra to Fiji, a strategic barrier through which any adversary would have to project force against Australia, creating defensively advantageous choke points and operating areas.

Two decades later, the 2009 Defence White Paper sought to apply and update this model in light of China’s strategic and military rise. From around 2006, worrying disturbances had begun to be discerned in Australia’s strategic environment, of the kind that would warrant consideration of force expansion. At the same time, the United States, concerned about China’s growing military heft, was formulating military strategies in response, such as Air Sea Battle.

The 2009 White Paper was a systematic attempt by the Rudd Government to tackle the following strategic problem: the warning clock had started to tick; Australia might in future face the prospect of being in armed conflict with a major power; consequentially, a larger force would need to be built over time as a hedge. The maritime-focused ‘Force 2030’ was the result (note the choice of year). Force 2030 was to be the initial base upon which force expansion could further occur, as judged necessary over the 2010s and beyond.

Careful and deliberate consideration was given to the military strategic implications of ‘more substantial conflict’, to use the 1987 formula. The 2009 White Paper directed that an enlarged ‘primary operating environment’ for the ADF be adopted, expanded further north and west, in order to more effectively seek to deny access through the sea-air approaches against a major power adversary. Force projection as far forward as maritime Southeast Asia was contemplated, an evolution of the 1987 model—not its repudiation.

The 2009 White Paper stands in the arc of Australian defence strategy as the road not taken, when we still had time. A further 15 years on, Australia today has to contend with the very prospect of ‘more substantial conflict’ that was contemplated theoretically in the 1987 White Paper, and considered specifically in the 2009 White Paper.

Over this time, the Indo-Pacific strategic order has been transformed. US primacy is being challenged. China has accelerated its military expansion (including of its strategic nuclear forces). It has become more assertive and coercive in its behaviour, while still calibrating its actions so as to avoid, for the foreseeable future, direct military confrontation. Its partnership with Russia is becoming effectively a military alliance, creating the possibility, should it come to a clash, of a two-front war. China appears to have decided to be ready to use force to achieve its strategic aims, perhaps from 2027.

An examination is required of the strength of China’s resolve to go to war, as well as the respective perceptions of China and the United States of each other’s resolve to wage war against the other. There is no more strategic question. For strategic planning purposes, we should assign a 10 percent probability to the likelihood of major war in our region in the 2020s. This could arise from coercion and assertiveness on China’s part, which could raise the risk of misadventure, and which could in turn lead to conflict. Or war might come more deliberately, a function of Beijing’s calculus of victory.

While Australia would retain always a sovereign right to determine its interests in the light of prevailing circumstances, it is likely that we would be a combatant in any such war. China would not be in doubt as to our geostrategic utility to the United States. Of course, there would be the issue of ANZUS treaty obligations, and the reality of the deep strategic integration that now exists between Australia and the United States, formed through the joint facilities, and more recent Australia-US ‘force posture’ initiatives.

Australia’s security dilemma is now acute. Force expansion should have occurred over the past 15 years, as warning time counted down. Instead, the force remains configured for what was termed 40 years ago ‘escalated low level conflict’—when defence spending as a fraction of GDP was 2.5 percent, as compared with 2 percent, a difference of around $13 billion, in 2024-25. While the defence-GDP ratio is not in itself a planning tool, it is a valuable aid for analysis—a shorthand for the structural funding of defence, which can be tracked across time. In order to have built the force that we would now need for ‘more substantial conflict’, defence spending over the past 15 years should have been lifted steadily to at least 3% of GDP. We spent more at times during the Cold War, without being seriously threatened by major conventional attack.

There are, of course, competing demands on the budget which have to be balanced responsibly. The difference with other areas of spending is that structural underfunding in defence could one day lead to military defeat, and national peril as a result. Defence spending as a proportion of GDP should be increased quickly to at least 3%. This is a broad estimate of what it would take to address capability deficiencies that would be exposed in high-end combat with a major adversary. This increase in funding would be fiscally daunting, and would challenge Defence and industry, both of whose capacity to deliver would have to be dramatically enhanced in very short order.

Faced with the credible prospect of the jaws of war leaping violently at us during this decade, we are going to need a bigger force. Without this, Australia would be hard pressed to defend itself in a major war without a substantial degree of force augmentation from the United States in a number of areas of capability deficiency. So much for defence self-reliance. Recent policy directions, in the form of the 2020 Defence Strategic Update, and the 2024 National Defence Strategy, the latter being informed by the 2023 Defence Strategic Review (the most comprehensive examination of defence since the 1986 Review), have recognised this. Remediation is underway. How quickly or effectively is something for another day. Nations go to war with the force that they have, rather than the one that they need. We now have to make do with what we have, and what we can quickly build. How we got to this position of looming peril is not a useful question, for now. History will render that judgement.

Defending against a major power adversary would still require a strategy of defence in depth, and the denial of access in the sea-air approaches. Being prepared to operate forward of the archipelagic shield, along a north-south axis in maritime Southeast Asia, and in the Central Pacific (for instance, in the Guam-Bismarck Sea corridor), would represent a further evolution of the 1987 model, not a repudiation. Similarly, being prepared to operate along an extended east-west axis in the Pacific and Indian Oceans as part of a coordinated sea lane protection effort would be in keeping with the 1987 model, which indeed anticipated such operations.

New technologies and methods are of course today evident, not least in relation to cyber- attacks, technology-enabled cognitive warfare, space warfare, and advanced forms of strike weapons such as long-range hypersonic missiles. While complexity has increased and, in some cases, proximity is not always as critical, the geography of warfare has not been fundamentally altered. While the evolving interplay of technology, the character and logic of war, and the saliency of geography is a larger issue, and would require a more detailed exposition, the 1987 model still applies, even though engagement distances have increased, ‘kill chains’ have become more complicated, and the cyber and space domains have overcome some geographical constraints.

In the absence of being able to conjure instantly into being an expanded force, there are measures that we could take immediately which would allow us to make best use of operational warning time (such warning time is measured not in years, but in months). Here is an initial outline, not listed exhaustively nor in any detail:

  • The National Security Committee (NSC) should commission from the Secretaries Committee on National Security a periodic strategical appreciation of the prospect of major power conflict in the Indo-Pacific, to be prepared by a dedicated national security planning staff, which would cover indicators and warning signs; possible conflict triggers and pathways to war; the likely shape of such a war, by phases (conflict initiation, duration, and termination); and possible courses of hostile action against Australia (in the cyber, cognitive and kinetic domains).
  • Operational plans should be reviewed by the NSC, with the minister for defence leading on military defence, and the minister for home affairs on civil preparedness and national mobilisation. A new War Book should be prepared on the latter, covering, for instance, disruption of critical infrastructure and essential services, and cognitive warfare on national will and morale.
  • Australian-US operational planning should be overseen by the minister for defence and the US secretary of defense, under the auspices of AUSMIN, as political authority for such planning matters, with a view to ensuring that plans for the defence of Australia cohere with broader US operational planning. Consideration should be given to expanding such planning in due course, in the first instance through staff-level discussions with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Canada, New Zealand and possibly others.
  • The Australian Military Theatre should be formally established, led by an Australian allied force commander and based on clear boundaries, with flexible provision being made at the edges for selective forward force projection by the ADF in maritime Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific. A sea lane protection strategy should be developed, in accordance with the principles set out in the Radford/Collins agreement of 1951 (which should be urgently reviewed and updated).
  • The government should assure itself that the ADF could rapidly mount sustained around-the-clock operations in relation to the following key tasks in the Australian Military Theatre, and beyond as required:
    • situational awareness covering the sea-air approaches, the eastern Indian Ocean, maritime Southeast Asia, the Central Pacific, and the South Pacific, as well as relevant sea lanes, and offshore and undersea infrastructure;
    • sea denial (especially anti-submarine warfare) and sea lane protection;
    • air superiority and air defence, especially against long-range air threats;
    • strategic strike, especially for the purpose of denying sea-air access;
    • land operations, especially in remote northern Australia, with a view to defeating raiding forces, and in the littoral environment; and
    • key installation protection, including ports, airfields, and offshore and undersea.
  • Capability areas that would require urgent remedial effort, such as missile defence and possibly naval mine warfare, should be addressed, with a view to accepting force augmentation from the United States (as might be available), until such time as self-reliant solutions could be implemented.
  • Plans to rapidly activate ADF bases should be reviewed, especially in relation to the line of airbases that runs through Cocos (Keeling), Curtin, Tindal, Scherger and Townsville. Plans for base hardening and dispersal of the entire ADF should be similarly reviewed.
  • Mobilisation plans should be reviewed, covering logistics, war stocks, maintenance and sustainment (fuel supplies require particularly close attention). Rapid production and restocking agreements should be put in place, either with Australian firms, or as required within the context of allied supply chain and defence production arrangements.
  • A national cyber defence shield to protect critical infrastructure and essential services should be activated, based on real-time threat sharing, public-private cyber defence arrangements, and pre-agreed plans for the Australian Signals Directorate to lawfully act as required to defend the most crucial systems.

These and other efforts could be undertaken soberly and responsibly, without undue alarm being caused. Given the state of the world, a well-informed public would understand their necessity. These measures would be precautionary and defensive. At the same time, statecraft that is designed to reduce tensions and secure peace should, of course, continue to be pursued.

As Beazley would appreciate, there are many ironies to be found in this 40-year arc of policy. The United States avoided deep engagement in Australia’s defence in the 1950s and 1960s, when we sought its protection. Today, the strategic backwater of Australia has become a bastion for a US military strategy of denial. In the event that Australia and the United States were to decide to act together to meet the common danger of armed attack in the Pacific area, our forces would effectively constitute an integrated order-of- battle. The successful defence of Australia would for us be an existential act in our national interest. It would at the same time be a vital strategic objective for the United States, as a matter of its own hard interests.

Despite having opted for self-reliant defence in the 1980s, in a major war Australia would find itself having to rely to an uncomfortably significant degree on US force augmentation. This is the price of not building the force that we needed as the warning signs flashed, when we still had time to do so. Today’s force could well handle low level conflict. To that extent, the logic of the 1987 model holds true. A cold comfort, as no such conflict is in prospect.

Ironies aside, Beazley also has a keen sense of the tragic in world history. He is a strategic pessimist, seeing the world as it is. This includes an appreciation that there is an even darker possibility. If a well-armed major power, unchecked by the United States, were to decide that access to our resources or land, or both, would be in its interests, and that Australia would be useful to it in other ways, we would not necessarily have the strategic, economic, demographic and military means to preserve our sovereignty or stave off national subjugation. How we would defend ourselves were US primacy to fade gradually, or shatter suddenly, and how much military heft would Australia require in such a world? Beazley’s Principia would be the starting point for arriving at an answer, but perhaps we would need an Einstein to build on the Newtonian model, as Australia grappled with a completely different, and more hostile, power relativity.

No amount of astute diplomacy, skilful statecraft, or the building of regional architectures would offset the strategic shock and adverse ramifications of a world where US primacy was a memory, like that of British naval mastery and strategic preponderance in the nineteenth-century.

Beazley gave us the conceptual tools with which to formulate, and reformulate, Australian defence strategy. As in physics, so it is in defence—concepts have a long arc, and models are bequeathed for future use, and refinement. Beazley is modest, and so he will probably be embarrassed by this praise, but to adapt Alexander Pope on Newton:

The laws of defending Australia lay hid in night; God said, ‘let Beazley be’, and all was light.

In these darkening days, thankfully we have that light.

Hastie: what would I do as the next minister for defence

 

[A speech delivered to the Meet the Chiefs industry briefing, Canberra, 13 August 2024.]

 

I’m glad to have another frank discussion with you about securing Australia’s future. Tonight, I propose to do something different. I’d like to take a different angle on Defence, and put the pressure on me: what would I do as the next minister for defence?

So rather than describing the strategic challenges that we face, which are many and have been well articulated already, I’m going to describe how I will approach the task of governing as minister for defence if we are successful in winning the next election.

First, though, let’s limber up with a Kim Beazley insight on Defence, who once said this:

… the complex structure of decision-making in defence, producing as it does a clash of views among extraordinarily well-versed partisans of particular service and institutional interests, patriotic philosophers, optimists and pessimists, scientists and technological fixers, nationalists and internationalists, is more akin to ancient church councils in its product than to the town meeting approach democracy contemplates.

It’s vintage Beazley in the way he paints a colourful, human panorama for us. You can feel the sense of mystery that shrouds the defence diarchy that is charged with defending the nation.

I should add that the quote is more than 25 years old, and times have changed. But being a student of history, we need to understand the past if we are to navigate the future with a high probability of success.

In any case, we can assume that Defence—as an organisation—is a complex living institution, and so I assume a posture of humility in approaching the challenge.

Minister for defence is one the toughest jobs in the Cabinet, and the most unforgiving in the event of failure.

What is failure? Well, let’s first define success. In my view, there are two criteria for success: one, preventing war; two, if it comes, winning at war.

Both preventing and winning wars requires one thing: strength—the strength to deter and defeat your adversaries. And you’re only strong if you have combat power, industrial capacity and allies.

Now, we have a lot of work to do on our combat power and industrial capacity in Australia.

We are doing well with our allies—AUKUS is proof of that—but relationships need constant work, and we cannot for a moment neglect them.

I’ve defined success. So, back to failure.

Failure would be leaving Australia’s defences so weak that we provoke aggression. And in the face of aggression, failure is losing at war.

A minister for defence is charged with making sure that doesn’t happen. That is the job. It is a no-fail mission. There are no other areas of public policy where the consequences for failure are so grave.

Sir Arthur Tange, perhaps the greatest defence secretary of the last century, understood this challenge well. A whip smart, charming, prickly, driven and relentless reformer, he dragged Defence into the modern era, and a few star ranks with him. He understood Defence as fundamentally an intellectual exercise requiring leadership, analytical power and drive.

It’s an intellectual exercise because it requires a strategic imagination to anticipate threats and taking the preparatory actions to defeat them. It’s also an intellectual exercise in convincing your adversaries to take you seriously.

Deterrence, in the end, is deeply psychological. You want to haunt the mind of your opponent. To instil fear and anxiety in them. You are sending a price signal, that war will be costly—a price signal that saps their will to fight. Defence starts in the mind, and that’s why Tange culled safe thinkers from the civilian hierarchy.

He cut loose those he considered too conservative, or process orientated. He was also happy to have the top brass bent out of shape, if that’s what it took. He wanted Defence to be an intellectual powerhouse.

That’s also why Tange drove the reforms that led to the modern Defence organisation that we know today. I won’t go through them in detail but for the purposes of this speech, the reforms made clear in the Defence Act that the minister for defence presides over the general control and administration of the defence force.

This brings us to the point of my remarks tonight.

How do I see an effective minister exercising these powers?

I think we must first recognise the natural constraints that bind a minister for defence. There are geopolitical constraints. There are domestic constraints—electoral, parliamentary and party political. There are constraints within cabinet. There are budgetary constraints.

There are the normal constraints of elected office in the Westminster system—local politics, media and campaigns.

Geography is a factor, too. This I know well travelling from Western Australia. Then there are family considerations, and personal constraints like intellect, character and experience. Very quickly, we can see that defence ministerial leadership has a unique set of constraints. And those constraints narrow the ministerial influence upon defence policy and decision-making. You can’t be everywhere, and across every brief. You need a team around you. I think this is a feature of our democratic tradition, not necessarily a bug as some might think. (Although it’s provided plenty of material for Yes, Minister and the other documentary, Utopia.)

Second, given these constraints, ministerial leadership is distinctly different to all other types of leadership.

If Kim Beazley likened Defence decision-making to ancient church councils, I’m going to take the liberty of borrowing some Dutch Protestant theology. More than 120 years ago, the prime minister of the Netherlands, Abraham Kuyper, formulated the concept of ‘sphere sovereignty’. In short, it teaches that every sphere of life—family, business, education and government, to name a few spheres—has its own internal order, responsibilities and competence.

To adapt it to the secular topic at hand, that of defence, it means that every sphere of capability within and adjacent to Defence is sovereign in its responsibility and competence. The infantry platoon at close combat. The warship at protecting our seas. The squadron of fighter aircraft in patrolling the skies. The missile battery in air defence. The logisticians who resupply our war fighters. The public servants who do policy and administration. The manufacturer at producing cutting edge defence technology.

Each sphere of capability is sovereign. And it is also accountable to the whole—in this case, to the Parliament through the minister for defence.

One thing I do want to make clear: it is not the role of the minister to impose themselves directly upon the many spheres of capability and competence within Defence.

It’s not their job to out-general the generals.

It’s not their job to out-secretary the secretary.

It’s not their job to out-soldier the soldiers.

It’s not their job to out-administer the administrators.

It’s not their job to out-think the think-tankers.

It’s not their job to out-manufacture the manufacturers.

The minister’s job is to bring all these spheres—which sit in creative tension with one another—into an organisation that coheres around the Defence mission.

And the primary way that we draw things together in my vocation is through our words, through our tough questions and through our coordinating networks.

That’s the minister’s sphere—in the public square—making the decisions: making the arguments, building public support, explaining decisions, being accountable to the Parliament.

A defence minister does this directly, and through their personal staff—who matter a great deal in the way they connect the minister to Defence, and therefore must be of the highest calibre.

Malcom Fraser and Arthur Tange had many personal battles, perhaps in part because Fraser—as minister for defence—liked to canyon deep into the defence establishment. Fraser made a habit of working inside defence and calling up lower officials in the organisation. Tange didn’t like interference in his sphere. He was sovereign as secretary. Things between them, at one point, got so bad that they went without speaking for two weeks, until Fraser offered to settle it over a drink with the secretary.

Now, some of my critics might suggest that my time in the Australian Defence Force will be a problem if we form government—that I just won’t be able to help myself, that I will revert to Captain Hastie.

To that critique, I would say, I know what it is to soldier in tough conditions, to feel fear and anxiety, to make mistakes, to experience friction at the pointy end of operations.

I understand the customs and traditions of the ADF—as well as the quirks and some of the lexicon. That’s all very important as a potential minister for defence.

But I haven’t been to command and staff college, nor undertaken other higher defence courses or training. And perhaps that will be to the advantage of our national defence.

I don’t consider myself a master of operational art or compelled to interfere directly with operations; others have those skills.

Sure, it’s the minister’s prerogative to ask tough questions, to demand options, to make decisions, but we have ADF experts in their spheres of sovereignty, and they must be respected.

Instead, I’ve had a strategic education of my own, through the Parliament over the last nine years—longer than I was ever a commissioned officer. I’ve chaired the Intelligence and Security Committee. I was understudy to Peter Dutton as his assistant minister in the last government.

I built relationships across the national security community and industry and worked hard to understand parliamentary and government processes.

In short, I’ve chosen to master my vocation of politics—to help shape the polis itself, the way we organise our national life.

I’ve not forgotten what the late Rear Admiral James Goldrick said to me: you must keep reading and writing. You must build an interior life. I have pursued that interior life since I heard those words.

Which is why I would say back to my critics: I’ll respect your sphere of competence; I trust that you’ll respect mine.

So, in closing, it is my view that a competent minister for defence will have a mastery of their parliamentary vocation; they’ll be excellent communicators; they’ll be focused on the no-fail mission of Defence; they’ll respect the many spheres of competence in the organisation; they’ll ask the tough questions; and they’ll make the tough calls.

We began with churches, but let me end with ramparts.

For the Defence establishment looks like one of the imposing castles that I visited in Jordan during my final deployment 10 years ago: Kerak Castle, built in 1142 AD, and Ajloun Castle, built in 1184 AD. Both are steeped in military and political history. Both are imposing and full of mystery.

You can only fully understand the castle once you are inside. The corridors. The secret passages. The many chambers. The booby traps.

So, too, with Defence. You’ve got to be inside the fortress, as there is no substitute for experience, and so the task now is to win this election and form government.

Defence needs more ministerial focus

Against a gloomy strategic backdrop and painfully slow growth in Australian military capability, the government’s critics are urging it to commit more money on a tighter timescale to the nation’s defence.

Money certainly matters, but ministerial bandwidth should be considered as a critical policy resource in its own right. Australia needs a fully dedicated and rationalised defence ministerial line-up to cater to both near-term and longer-term priorities. This should include a new assistant minister for the armed forces.

The political opposition has labelled Richard Marles a ‘part-time’ defence minister, because he splits his portfolio between defence and his senior role as deputy prime minister. Such jibes belong in the political arena, but it is worth objectively considering the defence and security implications of incumbent ministers juggling their defence responsibilities with other policy commitments.

Pat Conroy also divides his ministerial responsibilities—between defence industry and international development and the Pacific. The latter is essentially a foreign affairs brief. Two other ministers have responsibilities within the defence portfolio. Matt Keogh is minister for veterans’ affairs and defence personnel, while Clare O’Neil, the minister for home affairs and cyber security, is cross-sworn to the Defence portfolio to provide oversight of the Australian Cyber Security Centre. Oversight of defence is thus distributed diffusely, with both senior and junior ministers shouldering significant responsibilities beyond their defence duties while also balancing constituency matters and party business in the House of Representatives.

This contrasts with a more concentrated ministerial line-up in foreign affairs. Penny Wong is concurrently leader of the government in the Senate, but her policy brief is exclusively as minister for foreign affairs. Tim Watts’s role is likewise undiluted as the assistant minister for foreign affairs.

How does this situation compare with, say, Australia’s Five Eyes partners? New Zealand Defence Minister Judith Collins may set an international record for multiple portfolios, as:

Attorney-General, Minister of Defence, Minister for Digitising Government, Minister Responsible for the Government Communications Security Bureau, Minister Responsible for the New Zealand Secret Intelligence Service, Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology, Minister for Space, and Lead Coordination Minister for the Government’s Response to the Royal Commission’s Report into the Terrorist Attack on the Christchurch Mosques.

But New Zealand is small and commits only a fraction of the resources that Australia devotes to defence. The other Five Eyes partners field full-time dedicated defence ministers, as do regional partners such as Japan, Singapore and South Korea.

Does it matter that Australia’s politicians in charge of defence have competing demands on their ministerial time? The answer is surely ‘yes’. Even in calm seas, the defence establishment would resemble an under-captained vessel, given the sums of public money directed at it and the importance of ministerial direction and accountability to the policy process within liberal democracies.

Yet we are in turbulent times, and Australia’s departmental defence machinery has been straining to formulate and implement a plethora of high-level policy initiatives—in the past five years a strategic update, a strategic review, AUKUS, a national defence strategy and an integrated investment program—all while tackling more frequent crises and unforeseen operational demands on the Australian Defence Force.

The bureaucracy can do some things on autopilot, but important decisions require hands-on ministerial oversight. A deficit in ministerial attention means that consequential but non-urgent decisions get parked. And policy delays in defence don’t only result in financial loss. Because defence problems are often long in gestation, ultimately they can translate into battlefield casualties and defeats.

This is no slight against Marles, Conroy and Keogh or their professional and personal commitment to the defence brief. The allotment of ministerial portfolios is subject to internal party factors, not just policy considerations.

Australia would benefit not just from a full-time ministerial line-up, but the creation of a new position loosely analogous to the minister for armed forces in Britain.

This new assistant minister would be mainly responsible for day-to-day matters and operational priorities such as recruitment; retention and the welfare of defence personnel; force generation; readiness; official inquiries; and ceremonial duties. The incumbent could assume some of the senior minister’s onerous schedule of international engagement, allowing him or her to shed time-consuming duties away from Canberra and focus on higher strategy and building the future integrated force at speed. The new minister would still rely on the minister for defence to take weighty issues to cabinet but could help to clear the decision-making log jam at an operational level and spread the representational burdens more evenly.

The government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese would thereby bolster its commitment to defence as an urgent national priority, not only fiscally but by providing more concentrated and rationalised ministerial oversight and leadership.

The chasm between what the ADF is capable of now and its ambitions for the medium to long term has never been so wide. With the end of strategic warning time, there is a growing prospect that today’s force will be called upon to fight with little or no notice. The structure of ministerial oversight should be better postured to respond to this tension, with a bipartisan commitment by the government and opposition parties to appoint dedicated defence ministers and to establish a minister for the armed forces alongside the minister for defence industry, both serving under the minister for defence. The current arrangements for cyber could remain in place.

However, such changes to the structure of ministerial oversight will only have meaningful effect if the government of the day fundamentally treats defence as an urgent priority.

Time to take the politics out of strategic planning

Former Australian defence minister Ian McLachlan has made a timely plea for genuine bipartisanship in defence planning to provide advice based on experience and to ensure continuity across successive governments.

McLachlan, who was defence minister in the Howard government from 1996 to 1998, is asked in a video interview as part of ASPI’s ‘Lessons in leadership’ series what advice he’d have for a counterpart now. He tells former ASPI executive director Peter Jennings that he would urge his counterpart to persuade the prime minister to allow the defence minister to assemble a decision-making group of representatives from across the political divide to provide what he calls ‘a continuum of thought processes’ that would survive changes of government.

Having crucial decisions made jointly would increase the chances of strategies, policies and projects being brought to fruition and lessen the likelihood of wasted effort and delays.

‘I’d get the prime minister to go and talk to the leader of the opposition and say, “Look, this is too important.”’

McLachlan describes as ‘madness’ the failures in decision-making that have surrounded Australia’s submarine programs in recent decades marked by long delays, false starts and warnings of looming capability gaps. ‘I mean, one government says this, and that doesn’t happen. Another government does something else. Madness, it’s madness,’ he says.

‘These are such long-term processes that you need a long-term view in the decision-making. And then Defence will have its view, but it can’t be the only view because in the end the politicians exercise those decisions.’

Such a process is needed now more than ever, McLachlan says. ‘Everybody does it in wartime. The Brits did it in the Second World War, First World War, so did Australia. Whatever you call it, there was a group who were in the know about everything, and I think that’s what you need.’

McLachlan talks of the complexity of projects such as the development from scratch of the Collins-class submarine. When the Howard government was elected in 1996, the first boat, HMAS Collins, was close to being commissioned and problems soon emerged with its propellor, combat system, diesel motor and sound-deadening acoustic tiles.

While the Collins submarines were widely seen as ‘dud subs’ and ‘a disaster’, McLachlan took a more realistic view. ‘If you’re trying to build something at leading edge, by definition you’re going to have these problems, and you have to solve them bit by bit. We had to go outside to our friends, in many cases, to solve them.’

Recalling public criticism of the submarine project, McLachlan quoted Shakespeare—’The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones’—to explain how the problems outweighed the positives in the public eye.

‘You know all about the things that go wrong with submarines and you’re not allowed to tell anybody about the good things in submarines, and that’s a perennial submarine issue. If the submarines aren’t appearing in the press, they’re going okay. But if you’re trying to build something at the front edge of technology, and I mean, give Kim Beazley credit for trying to do this, I have no criticism of that at all. Those subsequent Liberal coalition ministers did criticise him, but I didn’t. I thought that was puerile myself.’

His job was to get the submarines ‘on the water, under the water and respected’. McLachlan says he’s since thought he should have been more forceful in saying that it must be understood that such problems emerged with every front-end new invention, including the F-111 long range bombers and the F-35 joint strike fighters. ‘It’s a long, drawn-out process and even more so now because the technology is changing minute by minute.’

In the interview, McLachlan talks about his recollections of the 1996 Black Hawk helicopter crash that killed 15 special forces soldiers and three army aviators, the thwarting of the 1997 attempted Sandline mercenary intervention in Bougainville and the decision to deploy Australian forces to Kuwait.

And he talks of the need for those in government to build close personal relationships with key people in the region. ‘Personal relationships at the top, they are extremely important.’

There will always be problems in international dealings, he says, but the ability to make a personal phone call may bring a way around a roadblock when there does not seem to be a solution and when it seems that no one will otherwise change their minds.

ASPI’s ‘Lessons in Leadership’ series is produced with the support of Lockheed Martin Australia.

The incoming Minister—a brief brief

revolving doorIt has been less than two years since The Strategist provided a new Defence Minister with an incoming brief, but it’s already time to update that for the new incumbent.

And that reflects an unhealthy degree of churn in the portfolio, as observed by the First Principles Review. The incoming Defence Minister is the 11th in the time since I started in Defence just a little over two decades ago. And the trend isn’t good. For the five Ministers starting from Robert Ray the average tenure was 1153 days, but the last six have averaged just 571—and if we take out the over achieving Stephen Smith (1100 days), it’s less than a year and a half for the rest (466 days). In a specialised portfolio that has deployments and multi-billion dollar projects that last years or decades, having a ‘bungee boss’ can’t be good. Let’s hope we’re now about to see greater stability.

Defence is a big portfolio, with an annual budget of over $30 billion and a complex workforce of over 70,000. There will be challenges everywhere the Minister looks, but here are some of the most immediate ones.

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Minister,

By far the most important thing—which you don’t need me to tell you—is that we’re at war at the moment, and Australians are going into harm’s way. The good news is that the ADF is a professional outfit that manages operations very well. Make sure to commit a goodly chunk of time to go down to the Joint HQ at Bungendore. See how it all works and get their read of in-theatre progress and problems.

There’s a draft Defence White Paper in your in tray. The bad news is that every such paper is a political document that reflects the thinking of the incumbent government. The good news is that the strategic externalities that have driven the drafting haven’t changed. But the change of leadership that put you in the role might mean rethinking the messaging in the paper and you’ll need to check that the force structure suggested by Defence matches the new government’s read of the strategic picture and spending priorities. (See the next point.)

The Defence budget will require attention. The extant policy has it growing to 2% of GDP by FY 2023-24. If that’s still the case it’ll mean a lot of money for Defence. So much so that even spending it will be a challenge unless there’s a steady ramp up over the next few years. If 2% isn’t the priority any longer you’ll need to check that the white paper hardware aspirations are still in line with projected funding.

Submarines and ships are going to consume a lot of the money that’s available. And there’s work to be done on both fronts. The submarine project is already at a point where work to extend the life of at least some of the Collins fleet is needed. From public documents it’s not clear if that’s happening—you should check, and don’t take ‘it’ll be alright’ as an answer, because it might not be and you don’t want to bequeath a capability gap (even though it won’t come home to roost until about six Ministers from now on recent average lifetimes). And we’re all waiting for the detail on the shipbuilding plan announced in general terms in August. Beware: there are many traps for young players in that one, not least of which ensuring that there’s a detailed enough design of the ship to be built in order to avoid costly errors later. Read the Audit Office report about the Air Warfare Destroyer project. Yes, what they describe really happened—and (hopefully you’re sitting down) it could even get worse before it gets better.

You need to understand that every defence project has four dimensions: cost, schedule, capability and politics. None of those things are reliably manageable, and you sometimes can’t optimise any of them. For example, buying equipment off the shelf from established production lines helps with the first three (ask about C-17s, Romeos and Super Hornets) but plays havoc with the last. If things get desperate enough, you might consider calling the first sub HMAS Xenophon.

As far as the Department goes, you’re inheriting it at a time of substantial internal turmoil as it tries to implement the First Principles Review commissioned by the Abbott Government. To be honest, it’s not going all that brilliantly—as evidenced by the substantial schedule slippage for full implementation—and there are some elements that really require some serious planning effort (or revision). The ASPI guide to the Review might help.

Finally, when Cameron Stewart or Ian McPhedran give you a hard time (and they will) about defence projects that have gone awry (and they will) take heart that you’re not the first. This earlier advice to someone whose problems might resonate with you has some useful dos and don’ts.