Letters-to-the-editor from the Australia Defence Association

ADF capabilities: What our new LHDs are really for

As an island continent permanently situated in a maritime region Australia remains primarily dependent on the sea and our maritime lines of communication and commerce. Our surrounding oceans also comprise a large part of the ten per cent of the Earth's surface that is some form of Australian sovereignty, conservation or international search and rescue responsibility. Prominent critics of the new amphibious ships being procured for the ADF invariably ignore or obfuscate these factors and their implications. Just as they tend to ignore or selectively cite hard-won strategic and operational lessons from recent experiences and longer ago.

Letter to The Canberra Times
Tuesday, 19 February 2013
(published Friday, 22 February 2013 

Renewed “debate” about the ADF’s new amphibious ships reinforces the maxim that one of the quickest ways to spot a strategic policy amateur or ideological zealot is by their continentalist or isolationist mindset.

Particularly when they ignore or deny that Australia is organically a maritime power in near and wider maritime regions.

Similarly fraudulent is using “aircraft carrier sized” or “assault ships” when describing the new LHDs, or peddling the myth that they are somehow intended for supposed use in high-end war in the Taiwan Straits, the South China Sea or off North Korea.

In reality, Australia has long needed a better capability for the emergency evacuation of Australians from regional troublespots — with or without the tacit or even unwilling co-operation of the country concerned — and for manouvre, stability support operations, peacekeeping, disaster relief and general support to our diplomacy.

Each successive class of our amphibious transports has necessarily been bigger because of lessons from a wide range of events in our immediate region.

Such as the Bougainville, East Timor and Solomons interventions, Fiji coups, rioting in Tonga and Vanuatu, and tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions generally. Plus all that could go wrong in PNG.

The LHDs are therefore primarily designed for amphibious manouvre in lower-end crises.

They have some limited capability for tactical assault, but one clearly focused in scale, intent and informed foreign perception only on plausible contingencies in our near region.

Moreover, the wider ADF lacks all the supporting capabilities for large-scale amphibious assaults like Normandy and Iwo Jima — and indeed medium-scale ones such as Lae, Inchon and the Falklands — and no-one credible is arguing for them.

Finally, the LHDs will necessarily further advance true “jointery” in our defence force and referring to them only as naval ships again misses the point.

Defence Investment: Australia has inescapable strategic responsibilities that need to be funded sustainably

Australia's strategic situation and its commensurate responsibilities and implications do not somehow vanish by the exercise of political spin, short-term political expediency or wishful thinking. Our current political leadership has chosen to plunder defence investment, and ignore the long-term damage caused, because there is no electoral backlash to them now from the future Australians (some perhaps not even born yet) seriously affected by this government's neglect of the first responsibility of any government.

Letter to The Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday, 31 January 2013
(published Saturday, 02 February 2013 

Peter Hartcher is correct to note that Australia — as the world’s only island continent and the only continent occupied by only one sovereignty — cannot just wish the world away strategically (“Defence is headed for its own crisis”, January 29).

New Zealand, Ireland and, to an extent, Canada often ignore their defence responsibilities only because a larger neighbour permanently protects them geo-strategically.

We have the opposite situation. Although our nearest neighbours are strategically benign, our wider region is subject to growing, often unpredictable and increasingly unstable great-power tensions.

Australia also has internationally designated sovereignty, conservation and search & rescue responsibilities for some ten per cent of the Earth’s surface that do not somehow go away.

More importantly, we have an economy, political system and whole way-of-life totally dependent on seaborne trade over sea-lanes that always need to be secured by a balance of international law, diplomacy and, in the final analysis, military force applied by us or with maritime-power allies.

Finally, the current crisis is caused only by the current Prime-Minister, Defence Minister and Treasurer plundering the long-term and sustained defence investment needed as a supposed “magic pudding” for short-term factional and careerist purposes.

It is not a Labor problem per se. Labor defence experts, across all party factions, are rightly strongly opposed to the burgeoning under-investment in our defence capabilities and the needless gambling with the security of future Australians involved.

Only minority government in an election year — and simmering leadership tensions — prevent these loyal Labor figures from commenting publicly.

Defence investment: Renewed criticism of further cuts is not party-political

Maximising Australia's strategic security is a primary-level national governance responsibility but is being seriously neglected by the Gillard Government. Criticism of this irresponsible neglect has come from across the range of defence expertise and indeed from across the political spectrum. The criticism cannot be discounted as party-political disagreement, as the current Minister has tried to do, not least because some of the more concerned and informed critics are experienced members of the Labor parliamentary caucus. They are rightly furious that Labor's reputation for national security management is now being trashed for no valid reason.

Letter to The Canberra Times
Monday, 31 December 2012
(published Wednesday, 02 January 2013)

Your perceptive Saturday editorial ("At war with our defence", December 29) on defence still missed two key points.

Severe under-investment in the ADF (and DFAT) is yet another symptom of much deeper problems besetting our short-term-focused, ideology-free, personality-centred political culture.

This is not a party-political issue. Much detailed criticism is coming from within the parliamentary caucus and the wider ALP.

Particularly from those with the most strategic security and defence experience, across all party factions and from both Gillard and Rudd supporters.

After the destructive polarisation of the Vietnam era, two generations of Labor thinkers worked hard to restore community confidence that the ALP could be trusted with national security. And that adequate investment in our common defence was both a core Labor value and a major responsibility of any government.

They are naturally angry that their work is now being trashed for perceived short-term personal advantage – at the cost of serious damage to Labor’s long-term political and national governance credibility.

With grim irony, that the critics include some of the most conscientious parliamentarians and loyal party members is the only thing that has stopped their fury becoming more public in a minority government.

Finally, your judgement that Stephen Smith’s responses to last year’s ADFA incident were “cack-handed” is not just confined to what you term the “military”.

Surely anyone who understands the principles of civil-control-of-the-military, administrative law and natural justice grasps that “cack-handed” is the type of severe understatement that not only continues to prevent resolution of the underlying issues but exacerbates them by confusing the public.

Moreover, even within the ADF the outrage at Smith’s “studied lack of interest” in the defence portfolio, as you describe it, is widespread across all ranks and both genders (not just in wardrooms or messes).

More widely, a continuing online debate among defence experts rating the records of the 19 defence ministers since the mid 1960s has him in the bottom 25 percentile. Well below every Labor defence minister bar one and where three of the rated top five ministers are Labor including the first two.

AWM Roll-of-Honour: Criteria

The criteria supposedly governing inclusion on the Roll-of-Honour at the Australian War Memorial are inconsistent historically, flawed conceptually and indefensible morally.

Letter to The Canberra Times
Tuesday, 18 December 2012
(not published)

Eugene Holzapfel (Letters, December 18) misunderstands Peter Londey’s article (Canberra Times, December 14).

The title of Dr Londey’s comprehensive 2004 history of Australian peacekeeping operations, “Other People’s Wars”, aptly sums up the crux of the issue.

There will also always be cut-off dates for inclusion on the AWM Roll-of-Honour or indeed for campaign medal qualification.

But it is the duty, deployment and dangers involved, not overly bureaucratic definitions of whether it is an “Australian war” or not, that should primarily govern inclusion.

In 1989 I wrote the first complete history of Australian peacekeeping (to that date) and was later the author of the Army’s peacekeeping manual.

I soon received a deputation of very angry young captains.

The commandant of RMC Duntroon had vetoed the inclusion of their classmate, Captain Peter McCarthy, on the college flag station where graduates killed in the line of duty overseas are honoured.

This decision was misinformed rather than ill-intentioned and was subsequently reversed after careful discussions.

It largely stemmed from the historical trend whereby some in each era of war veterans come to believe that only their experience was a “real war” and that succeeding operational experiences are not or are of lesser value.

Just as some World War II veterans were dismissive of Vietnam as a real war, some Vietnam veterans fundamentally misunderstood the peculiar dangers and stresses of the more dangerous forms of peacekeeping.

They wrongly believed, for example, that peacekeeping could never result in PTSD or indeed provide worthwhile operational experiences.

On 12 January 1988 Peter McCarthy was blown up by a landmine in Lebanon doing his duty as an Army officer on an overseas operational deployment at the direction of his government.

The dangers Peter faced and the one that killed him were no less than that faced by thousands listed on the AWM Roll-of-Honour and greater than many.

The AWM Roll properly includes those killed by illness, injuries or in training accidents during both World Wars, including in Australia, not just those killed in action or died of wounds when fighting overseas.

Peter has a widow, children, siblings, parents and he will have generations of descendants.

They too should be able to draw some comfort from his inclusion on the AWM Roll.

Bureaucratic definitions of warlike and non-warlike merely govern compensation and medallic recognition arrangements and try to rigidly classify necessarily fluid concepts anyway.

They can also change over time as with the Namibia, Cambodia and Rwanda  deployments.  

Captain Peter McCarthy’s death, when deployed on dangerous duties overseas in a war, is now honoured on the flag station at RMC. It should also be recorded on the AWM Roll-of-Honour.

ABC coverage: The problem of partisan bias

The Australia Defence Association is widely acknowledged as a genuinely non-partisan public-interest watchdog. As an organisation whose public-interest advocay also necessarily requires extensively interaction with the media, the ADA notes that discussion of partisan bias in ABC programs seems to be missing several of the key points actually involved. This includes the continuing decline of professional standards within journalism overall and the inability of journalism as a purported profession to arrest or reverse the decline by self-regulating such standards.

Letter to The Australian 
Friday, 14 December 2012
(published with significant deletions and misleading editing on Saturday, 15 December 2012)

As a non-partisan national public-interest watchdog, the Australia Defence Association has considerable experience in working objectively with politicians of all parties and with the parliamentary press gallery.

We also strongly support the principle that any taxpayer-funded organisation, be it the ADF or the ABC, must always be absolutely non-partisan.

Therefore the political biases of other media are surely irrelevant to the role of the ABC and a complete red herring morally and intellectually.

But while left-leaning biases clearly pervade parts of the ABC institutionally, three points are worth noting.

• First, journalism is now not a profession because it no longer self-regulates professional standards.
• Second, an entrenched institutional culture means some ABC staff are now simply unable to distinguish or eradicate partisan bias or reason through the professional need to do so.
• Third, the ABC is not an amorphous mass.

Our experience is that partisan bias is least evident in ABC local radio — perhaps due to more direct audience accountability.

It is generally not a serious problem in News-24, TV news, and radio news and current affairs — in that order of increasing vulnerability.

Current affairs television, however, is often the most partisan in both fact and perception.

This could best be eradicated by not using producers and presenters who have worked for, or strongly identify with, either side of politics.

But surely the elephant in the room is the mistaken belief that journalists specialising in politics are, can or should be “insiders”, rather than professional reporters of unbiased fact.

For example, respected party elders from both sides (and the Greens) often scoff privately at much of the discussion on “Insiders”.

Our experience in the ADA’s particular area of responsibility backs up such scepticism.

Discussion of defence issues is more often than not factually incorrect or conceptually flawed, even ignoring the real or apparent political views being espoused.

What The Australian actually edited and published (and by doing so substantially changed the import of the whole letter, reversed the meaning of our fourth-last sentence and omitted our key conclusion in the final four sentences):

As a non-partisan watchdog, the Australia Defence Association has considerable experience in working objectively with politicians of all parties and with the parliamentary press gallery.

We also strongly support the principle that any taxpayer-funded organisation, such as the ABC, must always be non-partisan.

The political positions of other media are irrelevant to the role of the ABC.

But left-leaning biases clearly pervade parts of the ABC.

An entrenched institutional culture means some ABC staff are now simply unable to distinguish or eradicate partisan bias or reason through the professional need to do so.

But the ABC is not an amorphous mass.

My experience is that bias is least evident in local radio.

It is not a serious problem in radio news.

Current affairs television, however, is often the most partisan.

This could best be eradicated by not using producers and presenters who have worked for, or strongly identify with, either side of politics.

But it's a mistake to believe journalists specialising in politics are insiders rather than professional reporters of unbiased facts.

Debating Australia's modern strategic security

Some opinion comment on the Chief of Army's recent academic address at the University of Canberra has completely missed the point, through either outdated thinking or straight out ideological or sectional bias.

Letter to The Australian Financial Review 
Thursday, 22 November 2012
(published Monday, 26 November 2012)

Your retired defence correspondent Geoffrey Barker (“Army Chief’s outcry tests boundaries”, November 22) again regurgitates long-disproven opinions from another era.

General Morrison’s closely argued academic address to the University of Canberra's National Security Institute was an entirely timely and legitimate professional opinion that carefully avoided the potential for misquotation and party-political controversy.

But not, it seems, careful enough to avoid sensationalisation by Geoff.

It was certainly not constitutionally or otherwise improper behaviour – as Geoff’s confusion about civil authority (the actual constitutional principle) and “civilian control” (an invalid notion) in the article clearly shows.

Moreover, such “Mr Blimp” spluttering about propriety meant the real point involved was missed.

Twelve years after the 1999 East Timor crisis proved the complete failure of the old Defence-of-Australia strategic fad, fading public memories have meant some of its ideological proponents are trying to peddle myths and fibs again.

But the Australian strategic security debate has moved on.

Anyone who has kept up with such debate over the last decade would surely agree that the modern basis of Australia’s defence policies and strategies are not dependent on ideology, ill-defined or undefinable “threats” (we now manage general strategic risks instead), or false linear choices between the isolationist (homeland defence or “DOA”) and internationalist (collective defence or “expeditionary”) schools.

Nor indeed on ancient views that ignore geography, technological and economic change, the need for strategic mobility in our region, or that our modern defence force is finally constituted and operates jointly in deterring and fighting Australia’s current and potential wars.

Within the obvious limits of civil-control-of-the-military by ministers on behalf of parliament, it is not intellectually, professionally or constitutionally improper for the Army’s professional head to refute outmoded thinking that risks our future national security and prosperity.

David Hicks: Partisan apologists do not help the truth or indeed Hicks

The complex legal situation applying to David Hicks can cause confusion, but there is no excuse when ideological or emotive apologists for Hicks disregard or twist the facts to obscure objective discussion of the important issues involved.

Letter to The Canberra Times
Monday, 29 October 2012
(published Thursday, 01 November 2012)

John Richardson and Marilyn Shepherd (Letters, October 29) avoid all of my four substantive points about the complex legal situation applying to David Hicks.

John also suggests that Hicks could not be interned as a captured belligerent based on the contradictory notion that the Afghanistan War somehow did not exist but that the US still resorted to a “brutal and illegal act of aggression”.

In international law armed conflict exists as a material fact, not least to prevent partisan claims that it does or does not exist.

And so the responsibilities and protections of international law apply automatically despite denials — or a presumed dependence on “declarations of war” (as John believes) which have been illegal since the UN Charter was promulgated in 1945.

Moreover, the US-led multinational intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, that evolved into the International Security Assistance Force helping Afghanistan, was legally endorsed by UN Security Council Resolutions 1378, 1383 and 1386, with six-monthly extensions of the ISAF mandate ever since.

Both writers again ignore that Hicks has freely admitted to serving under arms with the Taliban during the war.

Both again fail to distinguish between Hicks’ consequent and undoubtedly lawful internment as a captured belligerent and the justifiably contested legality of his later and separate criminal trial, conviction and sentence. 

White Papers: Under-investment

Critcism that the intentions and programs in the new "Australia in the Asian Century" economic white paper are mostly unfunded will surely have considerable resonance for those familiar with the failings of all the Defence White Papers since 1976.

Letter to The Australian Financial Review
Monday, 29 October 2012
(published Thursday, 01 November 2012)

Given the new Australia in the Asian Century White Paper, perhaps all Australians will now understand the recurrent major problems for our long-term national planning caused by all five defence White Papers since 1976 having been largely unfunded too.

White Papers: Non-delivery of promised investment

Critcism that the intentions and programs in the new "Australia in the Asian Century" economic white paper are mostly unfunded will surely have considerable resonance for those familiar with the failings of all the Defence White Papers since 1976.

Letter to The Australian
Monday, 29 October 2012
(published Tuesday, 30 October 2012)

Given the new Australia in the Asian Century White Paper, perhaps Australians will now understand the recurrent major problems for our long-term national planning caused by all five defence White Papers since 1976 having been largely unfunded too.

David Hicks: Continuing confusion about the laws applying

The entirely lawful internment of David Hicks as a captured belligerent under the Laws of Armed Conflict remains a completely separate matter to the legality or not of his later criminal trial and conviction by a US military commission.

Letter to The Canberra Times 
Monday, 22 October 2012
(published Thursday, 25 October 2012)

John Richardson (Letters, October 22) misquotes a recent United States Appeals Court decision on the military commission conviction of Salim Hamdan to claim that David Hicks was somehow “illegally incarcerated”.

But in an earlier and higher judicial ruling concerning the same detainee, the US Supreme Court reaffirmed long-standing international law about interning belligerents captured in a war.

Four facts about David Hicks, then and now, surely cannot be denied.

First, if any Australian did now what Hicks has admitted doing in 2001 they would be liable for criminal prosecution under the Security Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act, 2002.

Second, it was only because the Burchett loophole in our treachery laws was not closed until after Hicks served with the Taliban in Afghanistan that he could not be prosecuted in Australia.

Third, it was this loophole that also ended up prolonging his separate internment as a captured belligerent.

Fourth, at least until his undoubtedly controversial military commission conviction, Hicks had not been “held without trial” or otherwise detained illegally under US, Australian or international law for a single minute.

John also repeats the furphy that al Qa-eda and the Taliban were once US proxies.

Both organisations were not even founded until long after US support for the Afghan mujahidin during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation had ceased.

Defence Department: Problems are mainly structural and financial

Continuing problems in the Department of Defence are mainly due to two reasons. First, insufficient investment by the Government and poor recognition that the capabilities they say they need require additional funding. Second, deep-seated structural inefficiencies in accountabilities, how the department is organised and how operational outputs are met. They are not due to either the civil bureaucracy or the defence force having too much power overall or in supposed competition with each other.

Letter to The Australian Financial Review
Monday, 24 September 2012
(not published)

Geoff Barker’s over-reliance on the reminiscing of old-guard bureaucrats (“Doubts remain as another Secretary bites dust”, September 24) has again led him back to 1980s viewpoints. 

Rather than being entrenched, defence force chiefs serve on 3-year contracts and are retired regularly, whereas senior departmental officials have 5-year ones that are often renewed. 

Senior ADF officers have also been known to resign on points of principle. 

As Air Marshal John Harvey rightly did last year, to protest the improper and bizarre idea to create an unnecessary Associate Secretary to oversee both capability development (primarily a military professional function) and equipment procurement (mainly the opposite). 

Moreover, the military’s statutory and war-tested chain of command is neither “wasteful” or somehow improper as Geoff claims. 

Nearly all major Defence scandals such as Children overboard, Abu Ghraib, ADFA and numerous procurement bungles have been caused instead by commercial management fads being imposed on, or political or bureaucratic interference in, the chain of command. 

As to ADF chiefs being somehow “untouchable”, “unaccountable” or “considering money a free good”, all the major independent reviews over the last decade and a half by parliamentary committees and external experts have instead recommended re-empowering the Service Chiefs. 

Largely because departmental matrix-management structures stripping them of most responsibility for inputs, while still holding them responsible for operational outputs, keep failing. 

Most problems besetting Defence are not attributable to supposed “undisturbed arrogance” among the military, but are instead the legacy of some truly arrogant civilian bureaucratic attitudes and methods across the last quarter of the 20^th Century - until Australia’s near strategic failure in East Timor exposed their dangers. 

Finally, Geoff ignores that civil-control-of-the-military is necessarily a ministerial function constitutionally and legally - never a bureaucratic one - even when Ministers are indecisive, uncaring in their duties or irresponsibly ambitious. 

Many problems in Defence could be readily fixed if ADF commanders are allowed to command where purely military professional functions or responsibilities are involved.

Defence: The real reasons behind the latest ructions

Much public commentary about the sudden departure of the Secretary of the Department of Defence, Duncan Lewis, has unfortunately concentrated on the personalities involved and not the structural causes.

Letter to The Australian 
Wednesday, 19 September 2012
(published Friday, 21 September 2012)

Further ructions in the Department of Defence have little or nothing to do with tired spin about the supposed “Brass” or that Duncan Lewis's former career in the army somehow hampered his effectiveness as Secretary ("Coalition lays blame for Lewis exit on Minister", 18/9). 

Indeed departmental and ADF confidence in the professionalism and dedication of the Lewis-Hurley diarchy has been the main buttress preventing a catastrophic loss of morale across all areas in the department and the defence force. 

And with stemming deep losses of confidence elsewhere among those with a serious understanding of defence issues. 

It is noteworthy that the leak that Lewis was leaving came through a journalist long favoured by old-guard (and largely long-retired) Defence bureaucrats. 

These were the men who, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, provided the strategic policy fig-leaves that supposedly justified prolonged, insufficient investment in our common defence. 

Australia’s consequent near failure in the 1999 East Timor intervention led to necessarily increased investment to rebuild the ADF. 

Far from being generous, this would have occurred no matter who won the 2001, 2004 and 2007 elections because there was no alternative for any government which took its national defence responsibilities seriously. 

Moreover, the budgetary allocations for defence (a wholly federal function) have remained within two per cent of long-term historical norms, while the much larger federal allocations to social security, health and education (shared federal-state responsibilities) have continued to increase by much more.

The bottom line in all regards is that our defence is not a financial magic pudding to be plundered relentlessly and myopically to achieve a surplus federal budget. 

Nor is Dennis Richardson [the new Secretary] a magician who can make bricks without straw.

Nor indeed someone who will somehow also not But he will tell the Minister for Defence and the Prime Minister the truths they are so unwilling to hear and fix. 

Real damage to the ADF is being caused, and merely for short-term factional and personal advantage within of the current government. 

This particularly horrifies the two generations of Labor defence experts who have worked so hard to reassure the public that Labor governments can be trusted with national security responsibilities.

Treachery: Applying objectivity to arguments that assist the enemy

Because of reciprocal citizenship resonsibilities every Australian needs to think first, and deeply, before advancing arguments in public or private that might assist the enemy we send our troops to fight on our behalf. Intentional or reckless disregard for these responsibilities can be treacherous.

Letter to The Canberra Times
Wednesday, 19 September 2012

C.J. Johnston (letters, September 17) poses several commonplace false arguments. 

First, the Australia Defence Association has not accused anyone of treason. 

Blindly repeating this straw-man fib does not make it true. 

Second, he ignores that for over ten years the ADA has cautioned that counter-insurgency wars, such as Afghanistan, have to be won by political reform and national development means as well as military ones - and that periodic negotiations with all or some of the insurgents are often involved. 

Third, we have continually noted that this is Australia’s war, not one just involving our defence force, and that all wars are ultimately contests of will and end when one side (sometimes both) gives up. 

Every Australian therefore has a responsibility to apply objectivity to arguments that we should simply quit our UN-endorsed mission in Afghanistan. 

Particularly regarding factually incorrect, simplistic, emotive or ideological claims that blindly regurgitate enemy propaganda themes. 

Numerous High Court rulings have consistently reinforced the distinctions in wartime between responsible dissent and treacherous, defeatist or otherwise irresponsible behaviour. 

Fourth, “overthrow” necessarily involves forcible (and unconstitutional) change. 

Changing Australia to a republic by constitutional means would not, by definition, be treason.

Treachery: Preserving the distinction from responsible dissent

No Australian has a right to dissent so absolute that it somehow over-rides their reciprocal responsibilities as a citizen not to endanger our troops in Afghanistan or elsewhere.

Letter to The Canberra Times
Sunday, 16 September 2012
(published Wednesday, 19 September 2012)

John Passant, David Stephens and David Roth (Letters, September 15) continually avoid the nub of the issue that no Australian has a right to dissent so absolute that it somehow over-rides their reciprocal responsibilities as a citizen not to endanger our troops in Afghanistan or elsewhere.

This is why intentionally assisting the enemy our defence force is fighting is, quite rightly, already illegal under laws such as the Security Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act, 2002.

The further reform the Australia Defence Association is advocating is only that reckless acts of assistance should also be criminalised — using the standard courtroom tests of recklessness when prosecuting many other offences (driving a car, workplace safety, criminal defamation, incitement to racial hatred, etc).

No censorship or other unreasonable limitation on dissent would be involved because responsible and justified arguments, honestly made, would be an absolute defence in court using the reasonable person test.

David Roth’s misrepresentation that the ADA is instead somehow advocating “speech crime” offences worthy of dictatorships, or John Passant’s wild claim that we seek the destruction of democracy in Australia and his jailing, are simply more straw-man hyperbole and ideological fervour.

Indeed expressions so lacking in intellectual merit, relevance, forethought and community fraternity might well be found unreasonable and reckless by a court in other peacetime and wartime contexts where the lives of fellow citizens were at stake.

Treachery: Subjective reactions to reform proposals

Some critics of the ADA's proposal to criminalise reckless as well as intentional acts that assist the enemy have again resorted to fibs, abuse and straw-man arguments. Rather than explain how, as they claim, such reforms to our treachery laws could limit reasonable and legitimate dissent and objective and informed debate.

Letter to The Canberra Times
Sunday, 09 September 2012
(published Thursday, 13 September 2012)

Several letters in Saturday’s Canberra Times [08 September 2012] helpfully demonstrated the ADA’s point about public debate on Australia’s role in Afghanistan needing to be more informed, sensitive and, above all, responsible, rather than relying just on opinion, abuse and attacking straw-men not actually used by a perceived opponent.

Furthermore, voicing your own opinions is not always an absolute right that over-rides our legal, practical and moral responsibilities as Australian citizens.

Such behaviour is particularly not harmless, justified or indeed morally legitimate when it seriously endangers the very lives in combat of fellow Australians.

Moreover, our proposal that Australia’s reformed treachery laws now criminalise reckless (as well as intentional) acts is entirely consistent with the principles behind many other laws.

As with driving a car recklessly.

Or, as with criminal defamation and vilification inciting or resulting in violence against those vilified, where the right to dissent and its responsible practice would be unaffected.

As long as an act rather than just an opinion is involved, and you are willing and able to prove in court that your actions were reasonable and justified in the circumstances.

Finally, to avoid further confusion for some, treason is attempting to overthrow our governmental system. Treachery involves serious betrayal of your fellow Australians generally.

Treachery: Further reform to our treachery laws is needed

Our treachery laws rightly outlaw assisting the enemy if it is intentional and an act. Given some recent thoughtless, irresponsible and even callous behaviour, reckless acts should also now be outlawed.

Letter to The Canberra Times 
Wednesday, 05 September 2012
(published Friday, 07 September 2012)

John Passant (Letters, September 5) exemplifies the lack of empathy and citizenship irresponsibility that needlessly endangers our troops and undermines informed public debate.

Especially when, as in this case, such factually incorrect, simplistic and perhaps ideological claims about complex and nuanced issues bolster enemy propaganda in both Afghanistan and Australia.

And where this consequence would or should be known by any reasonable and responsible person.

Our reformed treachery laws now rightly criminalise intentional acts, anywhere in the world, that assist an enemy we send our defence force to fight on Australia’s behalf.

Thus closing the 1945-2001 Burchett loophole that allowed its namesake, and later David Hicks, to escape prosecution for acts that if undertaken now are criminal offences.

Australia is at war, not just our defence force.

The recognition, discouragement, prohibition and punishment of irresponsible acts are necessary reciprocal obligations every Australian owes to the fellow citizens our government lawfully commits to war.

As with many other offences, such as dangerous driving and racial vilification, our treachery laws need further reform to also criminalise reckless acts.

As with vilification offences, reasonable, responsible and morally legitimate public dissent would be unaffected.

Treachery: Further law reform needed

Our treachery laws rightly outlaw assisting the enemy if the assistance is both intentional and an act. Given recent subjective, thoughtless and irresponsible claims which mindlessly parrot or spread factually incorrect enemy propaganda, reckless acts of assistance should also now be prohibited.

Letter to The Australian
Wednesday, 05 September 2012
(published Thursday, 06 September 2012)

Australia is at war, not just our defence force.

We all therefore need to debate the Afghanistan War with sensitivity to bereaved families, without endangering our troops and without undermining informed public debate.

Especially where factually incorrect, simplistic or ideological claims about complex and nuanced issues bolster enemy propaganda in both Afghanistan and Australia.

And where this consequence would or should be known by any reasonable and responsible person.

The recognition, discouragement, prohibition and punishment of irresponsible acts are necessary reciprocal obligations every Australian owes to the fellow citizens our government lawfully commits to war.

Our reformed treachery laws now rightly criminalise intentional acts — anywhere in the world — that assist an enemy we send our defence force to fight on Australia’s behalf.

Thus closing the 1945-2001 Burchett loophole that allowed its namesake, and later David Hicks, to escape prosecution for acts that if undertaken now are criminal offences.

As with many other offences, such as dangerous driving and racial vilification, our treachery laws need further reform to also criminalise reckless acts.

As with vilification incitement offences, reasonable, responsible and morally legitimate public dissent would not be affected.

Afghanistan: Please debate the war responsibly and sensitively

Debate the war by all means, but at least have the consideration and sensitivity to wait a week or two while the grief of each digger's family peaks.

Letter to The Australian
Friday, 31 August 2012
(published Saturday, 01 September 2012)

Australia is at war in Afghanistan, not just the defence force that our governments have lawfully deployed to fight this UN-endorsed action.

This means all of us have significant responsibilities to the men and women of our defence force and their families.

Five more of these families and many friends are now grieving the loss of sons, brothers, husbands and mates.

Could those prone to simplistic, opportunistic or subjective theorising about Australia’s commitment not being worth it, as they see it, please show some sensitivity to the grieving families.

Debate the war by all means, but at least wait a week or two while each family’s grief peaks.

And then debate it with facts, understanding and consideration, not simplistic sloganeering about “deaths in vain” or “quitting” as a supposed panacea.

The real practical and moral questions are whether Australia’s strategic security risks would be increased or decreased by either withdrawing (precipitately or not) or persevering.

Asylum Policy: Discussion of Houston panel report ignores pitfalls ahead

Asylum and refugee policy remains primarily a strategic issue with domestic ramifications, not the opposite as many incorrectly assume.

Letter to The Australian Financial Review 
Tuesday, 14 August 2012
(published Wednesday, 15 August 2012)

Asylum and refugee policy remains primarily a strategic issue with domestic ramifications, not the opposite.

Despite the Houston panel clinically removing most party-political controversy out of public debate, much subsequent discussion is still bogged down in false assumptions, single-issue perspectives and mis-aimed (only local) compassion.

The prime strategic and humanitarian purpose of the Refugee Convention is to bolster Chapter VIII of the UN Charter by encouraging neighbouring countries to a conflict to solve it, so refugees are not created in the first place or so they can return home directly, swiftly and safely.

But most countries now refuse to accede to the Convention or otherwise meet their strategic, legal and humanitarian responsibilities.

Especially in our near and wider region where only one out of 35 countries between here and Greece is a genuine Convention signatory.

Little or nothing is done to resolve conflicts, nor the consequent misery and danger suffered by the bulk of the refugees thereby marooned by them.

Globalisation and modern transport further encourages and complicates such strategic and moral bludging.

Neighbouring states to a conflict can simply export the most troublesome or exploitable refugees extra-regionally to countries of mass immigration that are Convention signatories.

Australia’s strategic situation is that virtually all our neighbours regard refugees as Australia’s problem alone, not a shared humanitarian or strategic responsibility, and exploit us accordingly.

Any debate on the issue needs to start from this geo-political reality, not ignore or downplay it, by dwelling on only domestic policy aspects.

Any discussion of neighbouring countries, for example, needs to start with asking how they can refuse to accede to the Convention and how do they supposedly justify their perpetual buck-passing to Australia.

Asylum Policy: Houston panel succeeds in defusing much of the politicisation

Asylum and refugee policy remains primarily a strategic issue with domestic ramifications, not the opposite. Despite the Houston panel clinically removing most of the party-political controversy out of public debate, much subsequent discussion ignores the geo-political realities actually applying and is instead still bogged down in false assumptions, single-issue perspectives and mis-aimed (local only) compassion. Any debate on this issue needs to start from Australia's geo-political situation, not ignore or downplay it by dwelling on only domestic policy aspects.

Letter to The Age (Melbourne)
Tuesday, 14 August 2012
(published Wednesday, 15 August 2012)

Asylum remains a strategic, not domestic, policy issue.

The prime strategic and humanitarian purpose of the Refugee Convention is to encourage neighbouring countries to a conflict to solve it, so refugees are not created in the first place or so they can return home directly, swiftly and safely. 

But most countries now refuse to  meet their strategic, legal and humanitarian responsibilities. Only one out of 35 countries between here and Greece is a genuine Convention signatory.

Little or nothing is done to resolve conflicts, nor the consequent misery and danger suffered by the bulk of the refugees thereby marooned by them.

Globalisation and modern transport further encourages and complicates such strategic and moral bludging.

Neighbouring states to a conflict can simply export the most troublesome or exploitable refugees extra-regionally to countries of mass immigration that are Convention signatories.

Virtually all our neighbours regard refugees as Australia’s problem alone, and exploit us accordingly. 

Any discussion of neighbouring countries needs to start with asking how they justify their perpetual buck-passing to Australia.

.

Procurement: Patrol boat woes

Stress fractures in the hulls of the Navy's hard-worked patrol boat fleet are not the result of the high operational tempo per se. They are really a symptom of not building the right type of boat in the first place despite ADF professional and wider scientific advice to do so. This short-sighted decision was insisted on by the then government to supposedly save money but, like all such politically expedient decisions, it costs the taxpayer much more over the long run as well as resulting in considerable operational costs and risks for our defence force.

Letter to The Australian 
Friday, 10 August 2012
(published with editing that changed some of the meaning substantially (see below), Saturday, 11 August 2012)

Cameron Stewart, “Asylum demands breaking navy fleet”, 10/8, confuses symptoms with causes and misses the wider defence capability lesson involved.

The high operational tempo is only causing the Navy’s patrol boats to break down because, to supposedly save money, they were built down to a price and constructed to commercial not warship standards.

ADF professional and wider scientific advice not to do this was ignored.

Saving money in the short term has again come at the long-term financial and operational costs of sacrificing most of the factors that make warships rugged, dependable and able to remain operable when coping with a combination of high tempos, tough sea-keeping conditions and damage.

People need to stop reflexively blaming the victim, our Navy, for problems with its ships.

If the procurement of the right ships is not authorised and appropriately funded in the first place - and then the Navy’s responsibility and capacity to maintain them is taken away (as the independent Rizzo Report noted) - any blame must be duly sheeted home to the short-sighted and ideological decisions made by governments of all political persuasions.

What The Australian oddly chose to publish instead:
(changes in italics, deletions underlined)

Your story “Asylum demands breaking navy fleet”, 10/8, confuses symptoms with causes and omits the wider defence capability lesson involved.

The high operational tempo is only causing the Navy’s patrol boats to break down because, to supposedly save money, they were built down to a price and constructed to commercial not warship standards.

ADF opinion and wider scientific advice against this course was ignored.

Saving money in the short term has again come at the long-term financial and operational costs of sacrificing most of the factors that make warships rugged, dependable and able to remain operational when coping with a combination of high tempos, tough sea-keeping conditions and damage.

People should stop reflexively blaming the victim, the Navy, for problems with its ships.

If the procurement of the correct type of ships is not authorised and appropriately funded in the first place, then the Navy’s responsibility and capacity to maintain them is taken away.

Any blame must be duly sheeted home to the short-sighted and ideological decisions made by governments of all political persuasions.

Alarmism about Australia-US-China relations

The recent Pentagon-funded think-tank report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) discussing options for future redeployments of US forces across the Asia-Pacific actually says quite different things to what much of the Australian media are reporting it says.

Letter to The Australian
Friday, 03 August 2012
(not published)

Most discussion about options to perhaps redeploy US forces to Australia are way off track.

Those worrying need to study some geography, oceanography and history.

US air and ground combat forces have regularly trained in northern Australia for six decades, often for long periods.

Because this has mainly occurred outside the Sydney-Melbourne-Canberra triangle, the apparent novelty of the recent Pentagon-funded CSIS options paper is exciting the type of feverish speculation down south that had largely stopped in northern Australia by the mid 1980s.

The current flurry of uninformed comment also misses that locating a USN carrier strike force in Perth was discussed in only the most speculative terms.

As an option among many that might (not will) need to be pursued, far off in the future — but only if strategic circumstances changed, the massive funding needed was somehow available (which it isn’t), and Australian approvals were likely.

As the paper discusses, but again only as an option, relocating a US Marine Air-Ground Task Force from Okinawa to Australian bases in northern Australia (outside Chinese missile range and closer to some regional contingencies) is far more likely one day, but again only if numerous conditions could be satisfied.

But no actual use of Australia made it to the conclusions or recommendations of the CSIS paper.

Finally, in grand strategic terms, a mature stance that reconciles China as Australia’s major trading partner with the US alliance as the cornerstone of our security and regional stability is nowhere near as difficult over the long term as various alarmists keep claiming.

For example, in microcosm, we sold mainland China huge quantities of wheat all through the 1960s when Austraia did not diplomatically recognise the mainland regime and while we were actually at war in Vietnam against Chinese-backed forces.

No democracies have gone to war with each other since 1812. Once China eventually democratises the grand strategic challenge for Australia, the whole region and the US will become even easier.

There would be no ideological need for a democratic China to be a military threat to its near or far neighbours, or for peer-strategic military competition with the US.

The wider region’s only problem concerns the period before Chinese governments become truly accountable to the Chinese people in particular, and to an international system based on the rule of law generally

Public Affairs: Addressing all the problems

As he often does with his "reporting" about our defence force, an opinion article by Ian McPhedran tells only half the story about the problematic interfaces between the Minister for Defence, the Department of Defence and our defence force on one hand, and the media and the Australian people on the other.

Letter to The Advertiser (Adelaide)
Friday, 03 August 2012
(not published) 

As the country’s most longstanding and detailed critic of the way Ministers for Defence and the Department of Defence now mishandle defence force public affairs — and of the poor standard of media coverage of defence issues generally — the Australia Defence Association notes the considerable irony of Ian McPhedran’s opinion article (“In my View”, August 3).

The ADA has long advocated a return to the decentralised pre-1995 policy of defence force commanders from unit level upwards being authorised to run their own public affairs and interact with Australians and the media directly.

Especially where no operational security matters, international sensitivities or party-political controversies are involved.

The current over-centralisation in Minister’s offices, the ever-increasing desire of Ministers to micro-manage and spin everything, and the sheer bureaucracy involved departmentally, has long hampered the ability of our defence force to explain what it does to the Australian people swiftly, comprehensively and in easily understood terms.

But, typically, Ian McPhedran tells only half the story at best.

He misses the demographic contribution of growing community ignorance of defence matters through no first-hand, or even extended family, knowledge and how this is now often exploited or exacerbated by ill-informed, sensationalist or careerist media coverage.

Whereas specialist journalists with business, science or health qualifications still cover such issues respectively and well, most defence coverage is now by generalists with no qualifications, relevant experience or long-term knowledge and insight.

The resulting poor coverage contrasts strongly with the days of through-career war/foreign correspondents backed up by knowledgeable defence columnists who had been experienced members of the ADF.

Worse still, virtually all defence coverage is now via political journalists in the parliamentary press gallery in Canberra and often for only very short periods as a box-ticking career exercise.

The irony is that Ian McPhedran's "reporting" typifies the inaccurate, sensationalist, un-insightful and self-centred journalism that so adds to the problem.

ADF Basing: Fleet Base East

The Gillard Government's backtracking on limiting cruise-ship access to the naval base at Garden Island again elevates party-political expediency and local pork-barrelling above the national interest.

Letter to The Daily Telegraph (Sydney)
Monday, 16 July 2012
(published Tuesday, 17 July 2012)

Your understandably Sydney-centric, but deeply flawed, editorial unwisely lauded the PM for “accurately judging there is no practical reason why Garden Island cannot be a dual use facility” ("Gillard cruises in with good news for city's tourism", July 16).

There are, in fact, numerous and compelling strategic, operational, financial, geographic, oceanographic, maritime trade and national equity reasons preventing this already overcrowded base being used as a “cheap fix” to bail out NSW Governments and various industries for not investing in deep-water wharfage for cruise ships.

And they were explained again as recently as March this year, when an independent report on defence force basing was handed to the PM which noted that such dual use was not a viable or long-term solution.  

Fleet Base East - as the name denotes - is long-established and irreplaceable national defence infrastructure built up over a century  to defend all Australians, not just Sydneysiders.

No other location on the Australian east coast can replicate its strategic, operational and industrial facilities and advantages.

Claims that the base could or should be moved elsewhere are particularly farcical. Every vaunted alternative location is strategically, practically and/or financially impossible, not just unsuitable.

Your editorial massaging selfish local views ignores that the national taxpayer should not have to foot the bill, or cop the many other costs, because successive NSW governments have neglected harbour infrastructure.

Nor should the long-term national defence requirements of all Australians ever be sacrificed for short-term and local political expediency.

ADF Basing: Fleet Base East at Garden Island

Decisions about national defence should be long-term national interest matters and well above party politics, political expediency and day-to-day politicking. As with this year's federal budget slashing defence investment (at greater eventual and long-term financial and operational cost), so the decision to allow even more cruise ship access to national defence infrastructure at Fleet Base East in Sydney Harbour demonstrates another classic example of a government that puts the quest for short-term political advantage above any apparent thought for the needs of actual governance in the national interest.

Letter to The Australian
Sunday, 15 July 2012
(not published)

Following on from massive cuts to defence investment in this year’s federal budget, the decision to allow cruise ships even more access to the already over-crowded naval facilities at Garden Island is yet another disgraceful example of sacrificing long-term national interests for short-term party-political advantage.

As with the budget destroying the Government’s own 2009 Defence White Paper, the cruise ship decision contradicts the detailed conclusions of the independent Force Posture Review in only March this year.

It ignores that Fleet Base East is long-established and specialist national infrastructure operated on behalf of all Australians, not just Sydneysiders.

It ignores enduring strategic principles derived from the geographic, oceanographic, economic and maritime trade constraints of the Australian east coast

It ignores Sydney’s central location strategically and that there is no other large deep-water harbour, with immediate deep-water access, for such a base on the entire east coast of the continent.

Even if there was, the base’s huge dry dock and engineering facilities built up over a century, and Sydney’s supporting industrial infrastructure, could not be replicated elsewhere  without the national taxpayer having to fork out tens of billions of dollars.

ADF bases are not somehow a cheap fix for decades of poor planning and insufficient investment by private industry, state governments and the city council.

With some 317km of shoreline there is plenty of space elsewhere in Port Jackson for the state government, the city council and the tourism industry to invest in appropriate cruise ship facilities without trying to steal our biggest naval base from the taxpayer.

Even within Sydney Harbour itself, more investment by the state government on deep-water wharfage for cruise-ships, and less emphasis on reaping stamp duty from harbourside townhouse development and casinos, is what is needed.

[This issue in particular, and the Force Posture Review in general, were analysed at length in Defence Brief, Number 146, February 2012]

ADF Misbehaviour: Why there is no respect

A correction to an opinion article based entirely on the incorrect claim that serious crimes within the ADF were and are not investigated by civil police. The article also misunderstood why the behaviour of the Minister for Defence is not respected across former and serving defence force personnel.

Letter to The West Australian
Monday, 11 July 2012
Published Saturday, 14 July 2012 in the Weekend West Australian
(under the headline "Why there's no respect")

Daniel Flitton (“Outside review the only course”, West Australian, 11/7) is factually incorrect, and as a result conceptually mistaken, throughout his opinion article on the ADF.

Within Australia the responsibility to investigate and prosecute all serious criminal matters involving defence force personnel has been undertaken by State or Federal police since at least the 1970s.

We saw an example of this at ADFA last year when the AFP were immediately called in by the Academy’s commandant to investigate the so-called “Skype” incident.

Military police handle only minor criminal offences. Generally of the type and degree that civil police no longer bother with in the whole community because of resourcing constraints.

MPs also investigate Service offences under the Defence Force Discipline Act — but these are disciplinary matters that are not civil crimes — and they investigate criminal offences committed on overseas deployments.

The Australia Defence Association has long advocated a Royal Commission into allegations of bullying, harassment and abuse in our defence force.

This is the best way to establish the facts, test allegations, provide resolution to victims, restore public confidence in the ADF, restore ADF confidence in the ability of the Australian community and media to cover defence issues accurately and in a balanced fashion, and stop further politicisation of the issue by the Minister for Defence.

Especially him repeating the abuse allegations time and again, without announcing any resolution of the issue,  seemingly as a distraction when the government is being criticised on other grounds.

Finally, Daniel is quite wrong about why Minister Smith is not respected across current and former defence force members. Or indeed, by most Australians who understand defence issues and the Westminster Conventions governing civil-control-of-the-military.

Our Service personnel are happy to cop deserved criticism.

What they object to is the Minister not reciprocating their loyalty by ever defending them — as people not allowed to answer back — against inaccurate, untrue or unfair criticism.

Just as our attorneys-general are expected to defend the judiciary.

Afghanistan: SASR soldier killed in action on his 7th operational tour

Much public discussion about the tragedy of our latest casualty in Afghanistan is missing the real point involved about his large number of operational tours.

Tuesday, 03 July 2012
Letter to The Australian
(published in part, Wednesday, 04 July 2012)

Most Australians seem to be asking the wrong question about our latest casualty being killed in action on his seventh operational tour in 11 years.

Many are also drawing the wrong conclusions from him being a volunteer, a very experienced professional soldier and someone who will have seen over a decade what our military effort in Afghanistan has progressively achieved at a local level.

The Australia Defence Association has long voiced concerns about the risks inherent in sending our diggers to the frontline too often and for too long.

The risk of death, wounds or subsequent and long-term psychological trauma increases with the number of tours (even when they volunteer and are well-trained and motivated professionals).

But the even greater national problem is that countries, not defence forces, need to fight wars.

But most Australians are now so disengaged from our modern wars, and our troops, that they have intellectually and morally sub-contracted their citizenship responsibilities to the ADF.

Many assume it is the ADF’s war not Australia’s war.

Unlike the mass participation in the world wars, or the significant community participation in Vietnam through conscription, Australia now fights its wars with a very small part of the national community.

And, indeed, quite a small part of our small defence force.

Australia now relies on this small force, and their families, shouldering a disproportionate burden of our country’s current wars because there are no alternative defence capability options.

Largely because Australians acquiesce to perennial under-investment in defence capabilities, because it is personally convenient for the funds needed to be diverted to buying their votes elsewhere.

And because governments so fear the perceived political risk of casualties they have fallen for the myth of niche contributions by Special Forces being somehow “safer”.

If Australia is going to fight wars to win we need a larger and better balanced defence force

ADF capabilities: Amphibious manouvre

Critics of the new amphibious ships the ADF is getting either do not understand, or wilfully misrepresent, the amphibious manouvre capabilities Australia needs in our near region.

Sunday, 27 May 2012
Letter to The Canberra Times
(not published)

Nic Stuart (Opinion, May 26) cites the example of the 1987 coup in Fiji to discuss the defence capabilities Australia needs in our near region but then oddly draws the opposite conclusions to what this and other examples have really proved. 

Australia’s big strategic problem in 1987 was not somehow overthrowing the new Fijian military regime or restoring order by force — as some in the Hawke cabinet wanted at first until military professional advice counselled otherwise. 

Our immediate strategic and operational problem was instead evacuating several thousand Australian, New Zealand  and other foreign tourists if the coup led to prolonged instability and violence. 

Especially if civil aircraft could not be used or the use of RAAF aircraft and RAN ships was opposed by factions of the Fijian military or civilian rioters. 

The new amphibious ships (LHDs) that the ADF is finally getting are expressly designed to provide the amphibious manouvre  capability in regional contingencies that Australia so lacked in 1987. And in several other evacuation, stability operation or disaster relief contingencies since then in Fiji (again), Vanuatu, Bougainville, East Timor, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Aceh and Nias. 

Indeed their size and overall capacity — which is often misrepresented or just not understood by certain armchair critics — is driven by, among other relevant things, the tactical need to launch, receive and refuel six helicopters simultaneously and then a second wave of six. 

This is a direct lesson from what we could not do with HMAS Tobruk in 1987, or indeed with Tobruk, Kanimbla and Manoora together subsequently. 

The LHDs are not “assault ships”. Nor intended for war with China as biased criticism dishonestly claims. 

Nor are they for “storming the beaches” as Nic mistakenly suggests, not least because manouvre and support are very different to “assault”.

Defence investment: The siren song to under-invest

Columnist Ben Herscovitch advances some new lyrics but still to the usual tired music of the siren song that defence investment can somehow be safely slashed.

Monday, 21 May 2012
Letter to The Canberra Times
(partly published Thursday, 24 May 2012)

In 1918 our weary soldiers vowed that we should never again send them to fight a war so unprepared.

Most Australians agreed because their families had directly experienced the consequences.

But short-sighted politicians, idealist ideologues and the sectionally selfish soon began singing the complacent siren song that defence capabilities could be savagely run down and the funding diverted elsewhere.

In 1940, and particularly in 1942, and again at war’s end in 1945 our soldiers of the next generation made the same vow – and so did most Australian families for the same reasons.

Similar strategic conclusions were reached in 1950, 1965 and 1972.

But each time fewer and fewer Australians understood. Chiefly because they had no personal or extended family experience that enabled them to see through the siren song and its singers.

Again in 2000 many Australians, and certainly our leaders, re-learnt a serious lesson in strategic shock - after our 1999 humanitarian intervention in East Timor was such a close-run operation and could so easily have resulted in serious military defeat.

The siren song had become the national anthem of many Australians wallowing in their complacency after five decades of relative peace.

It had grown so strong throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s that our hollowed-out, grossly underfunded and ill-equipped defence force struggled to mount and sustain a relatively minor operation only 800 km from Darwin.

From 2000-2008 investment in our defence capabilities was then finally boosted to cancel out the decades of chronic under-investment and resulting block obsolescence and operational risk.

But the siren song is rising again.

Ideologues and plain liars again tell the Australian people that recent defence investment was “generous” or “excessive”. But they always omit its context of reversing decades of severe neglect.

They never admit defence investment has been relatively stable as a percentage of the federal budget.

They rarely contrast it appropriately to national spending on social security, health and education, which is larger by orders of magnitude and ever-growing in both budget percentage and real terms.

Benjamin Herscovitch ("Reduced defence spending may well be sound public policy", Opinion, 21 May) massages the lyrics but still croons the same old siren song luring us towards national disaster.

Hopefully it will be spurned by objective listeners.

Defence investment timescales

AFR columnist Brian Toohey's analysis of defence investment needs is fundamentally flawed due to false assumptions.

Friday, 04 May 2012
Letter to The Australian Financial Review
(published Tuesday, 08 May 2012)

Brian Toohey (“Decisions won’t weaken defences”, May 04) bases his opinions on two false assumptions. 

First by not using an appropriate timescale when discussing Australia’s appalling record of usually under-investing in defence. 

After 2000, the strategic shock of the ADF nearly failing in East Timor, after three decades of often chronic under-investment, brought logical catch-up increases under Howard and Rudd to begin redressing all the capability deficiencies. 

Our defence force cannot miraculously restore and modernise itself. It is also not a political magic pudding that enables funding to be diverted elsewhere harmlessly. 

The latest cyclic plundering for short-term electoral advantage simply means future governments eventually have to reinvest larger sums to fix the ensuing problems. 

The taxpayer loses over the long run. Coherent and long-term planning suffers from a lack of sustained investment. 

Equipment has to be retained long after it reaches obsolescence. Strategic, operational and OH&S risks increase unjustifiably.

The victim – the ADF – is wrongly blamed when ships, etc, well past their use-by dates break down all the time. 

Moreover, Defence (solely a Commonwealth responsibility) remains around eight per cent of the federal budget. Unlike federal and state spending on social security, health and education, defence investment is not increasing proportionally as a national economic outlay. 

Brian’s Toohey's second false assumption is that our defence capabilities should be only those needed to deter or repel military attack on Australia itself. 

Defending Australia has instead always meant protecting our territory and our national interests. 

It is a particularly absurd notion to believe otherwise for a country so dependent on international trade in a world, and especially a region, not naturally stable and peaceful.  

The  strategically secure sea-lanes that over 99 per cent of our trade by volume (and over 75 per cent by value) uses are not a free gift. We need to help secure them. 

We need to help secure our sea lanes. 

And we will always need sufficient military capabilities to have at least some strategic freedom of action and real national sovereignty more broadly.

ADF Basing: Cruise ship access in Sydney Harbour

Major defence force facilities are essential national infrastructure. State and local governments have no right to try and steal them from taxpayers nationally to cover shortfalls or worse in their own planning and investment.

Friday, 04 May 2012
Letter to The Daily Telegraph (Sydney)
(not published)

Bleating by Lord Mayor Clover Moore, the tourist lobby and others about access to Garden Island by visiting cruise ships ignores the geographic, oceanographic, economic, strategic and maritime trade constraints of the Australian east coast.

Naval facilities at Garden Island are long-established and specialist national infrastructure operated on behalf of all Australians, not just Sydneysiders.

They are not somehow a cheap fix for decades of poor planning and insufficient investment by private industry, state governments and the city council.

With some 317km of shoreline there is plenty of space elsewhere in Port Jackson for the state government, the city council and the tourism industry to invest in appropriate facilities

Even within Sydney Harbour itself, more investment by the state government on deep-water wharfage for cruise-ships, and less emphasis on reaping stamp duty from harbourside townhouse development and casinos, is what is needed.

Strategic security: Isolationist fallacies

The Age's political editor oddly dredges up several long-disproven isolationist strategic fallacies

Friday, 04 May 2012
Letter to The Age (Melbourne)
(not published) 

Daniel Flitton (“Smith ready to do battle”, May 04) succumbs to even more insidious Anzac mythology than the alleged one he rails against.

He pushes the ahistoric and long-disproven fallacy that we never need to invest much in our defence because invasion is the only thing we need to worry about, its not imminent and we would somehow always be able to predict it early enough and in enough detail to forestall or defeat such a crisis successfully anyway.

Daniel also propagates the isolationist myth that defending Australia only means protecting our territory and not our national interests as well.

 An absurd notion for a country so dependent on international trade in a world, and especially a region, not naturally stable and peaceful.

The  strategically secure sea-lanes our trade uses are not a free gift. We need to help secure them.

And we need sufficient military capabilities to have at least some strategic freedom of action and real national sovereignty more broadly.

Cyclic plundering of defence as a political “magic pudding” for short-term electoral advantage simply means future governments eventually have to reinvest larger sums to restore or modernise our defence force (and the taxpayer loses over the long run)

Just as recent increases in defence investment under Howard and Rudd – convinced by the strategic shock of the ADF nearly failing in East Timor – have been needed to begin redressing chronic underinvestment in the ADF over the 1972-1999 period.

Moreover, Defence (solely a Commonwealth responsibility) remains around eight per cent of the federal budget.

Federal and state spending on social security, health and education exceeds that on defence by several orders of magnitude and continues to grow inexorably.

ADF Capabilities: Army size

Pointing out the facts in answer to yet another polemic from Hugh White.

Tuesday, 01 May 2012
Letter to The Age (Melbourne)
(not published)

Hugh White (“Army should be careful with its aim”, May 01) gets even his history wrong.

After Vietnam the army’s nine, not 12, battalions were cut to six, then five, then hollowed out to just over three effectively.

As Australia re-learned the hard way, by risking a major strategic shock in East Timor, during 1972-1999 the whole ADF became quite unbalanced and largely unusable even in our near region.

Chiefly due to flawed strategic theorising in the Defence bureaucracy, insufficient national investment and political neglect.

Hugh forgets his own admission, at the 2001 ANZUS Seminar, that the biggest single lesson of the East Timor intervention is that we ran out of infantry with no time to develop more.

He also omits that by 2005 over half our infantry were, unsustainably, deployed overseas and mainly in our near region.

The 2006 Enhanced Land Force initiative was therefore implemented to rebuild the Army’s manouvre force around seven infantry battalions (plus a regular commando one).

Most importantly, Hugh ignores all the strategic, scientific and academic studies since 1999 explaining why any viable concept of maritime manouvre in Australia’s near region cannot rely on ships and aircraft alone.

Not least because our region is full of islands, people and complexity.

Perhaps this is because he still thinks of military capabilities only in old-fashioned, single-Service stovepipes.

Instead, as part of a modern, integrated, balanced, joint force, the new amphibious ships and supporting capabilities are primarily for strategic and operational manouvre, in our near region, in circumstances well short of war between major powers.

They are not “assault ships”, not intended for a potential war with China and therefore not anywhere near as vulnerable as Hugh claims — even though these mistakes have been pointed out to him many times.

Procurement: Institutionalised difficulties

An answer to a recent letter that exemplifies much of the public confusion on key defence planning issues.

Friday, 27 April 2012
Letter to The Australian
(not published)

John Evans (Letters, 27/4) exemplifies many of the misconceptions bedevilling effective debate on defence issues. 

Civil-control-of- the-military (by ministers on behalf of parliament) is a necessary constitutional function disputed by no-one. 

Indeed controversy over the last year is chiefly because our defence force have unusually had to insist it be exercised properly by their Minister as per the Defence Act. 

Cries of “civilian control”, on the other hand, are invariably false-flag and usually partisan excuses for incompetent political or bureaucratic governance contrary to the national interest. 

Under governments of both political persuasions defence budgetary woes are institutionalised by four inter-related phenomena. 

First, few Australians now know much about defence planning or war, especially through personal or even extended-family experience. 

Hence the popular fallacy of assuming investment should be linked rigidly now to perceived threats that are rarely agreed, or agreed  in time, or are different to what happens in the future anyway. 

Rather than invest to sustain effective base capabilities, and foster adaptability, to cope with a largely unpredictable future. 

Second, few or even no Australians change their vote on a defence issue alone. 

Third, there are perennially clashing perspectives between politicians driven by three-year electoral cycles and the 10-15 year cycle needed to develop and field defence capabilities and the further 20-25 year cycle to sustain and eventually replace them. 

No politician invests more now to save money, and increase ADF operational efficiency, over the long run. Especially when it might cost votes now. 

Finally, as a steadily worsening problem over the last four decades, all this results in wildly fluctuating levels of defence investment and higher costs over the long term. 

What does increase is largely irrelevant blame-storming between the political parties, accountability confusion and specious ministerial excuses no matter who is Minister for Defence.

ADF Capabilities: Amphibious manouvre

Critics of the poor state of our amphibious fleet need to stop blaming the victim - our Navy.

Thursday, 05 April 2012
Letter to The Canberra Times
(not published)

Your Defence Correspondent, David Ellery, and the Chief of Navy (letters, April 5) appear to be talking at cross purposes.

As Admiral Griggs notes, the purchase of the commercial offshore support ship Skandi Bergen is logical from a whole-of-government perspective.

Built in 2007 it has a 140-tonne crane, an easily accessible 1100 square-metre loading deck, a seven square-metre internal moon pool (for access by divers, etc) and a small helipad (but no hangar).

This provides some additional interim Navy capability for humanitarian operations in the short term. More importantly, as a Customs vessel, over the long run the ship will also fill the significant gap in national patrol capability for the oceans south of Australia.

But why the Navy’s amphibious fleet is so worn out is a classic example of poor decisions by governments long gone creating significant long-term problems. And indeed of short-term corporate memory in political, departmental and community circles causing incorrect conclusions to be drawn and aspersions tossed about carelessly.

If the Keating Government had bought new (and bigger) ships in the first place rather than old American ones built in 1970, and the Howard Government had also replaced HMAS Tobruk (built in 1979-80) after 25 or so years with a bigger vessel as scheduled, our Navy would not be being wrongly blamed for the state of such ships.

Amphibious ships tend to wear out faster than other vessels, not least because they are deployed extensively, rust on both sides of the hull and Ro-Ro versions are constantly grounded deliberately.

Buying new amphibious ships and replacing them around the 25-year mark is what comparable countries do because it is more efficient operationally and much cheaper over the long run.

Having to keep operating amphibs for 32 and 42 years instead is not the Navy’s fault, especially when the responsibility for maintaining them was foolishly taken off the Navy in 2005 supposedly to save money.

Critics of our Navy need to stop blaming the victim.

ADFA: Looking after both victims

Yet more uninformed criticism of the ADA when the truth could easily be learned by a modicum of research and objectivity.

Tuesday, 20 March 2012
Letter to The Canberra Times
(published Monday, 02 April 2012)

Howard Carew (Letters, March 19) again claims to have missed all the Australia Defence Association material sticking up for the female victim of the ADFA incident last year.

Assuming Mr Carew's professed lack of knowledge remains accidentally mistaken, he can easily update himself from the ADA website.

This includes numerous letters defending her rights oddly not published by The Canberra Times before and after Mr Carew's previous mistaken letters on this subject.

Mr Carew also confuses public clamour with informed, careful and necessarily discreet support for her return to the Academy and potential for an ADF career.

Group dynamics remain important here.

Unfairly or not, some of her fellow cadets blame her alone for the subsequent avalanche of inaccurate and sensationalist media coverage and misinformed (at best) public hysteria that has wrongly continued to slander them all.

Even more importantly, to protect her privacy, health and rights at the forthcoming civil trial of the alleged perpetrators, much of the defence force, ADA and other community effort on her behalf cannot be public.

Finally, Mr Carew would perhaps be much better informed if he read, listened or conversed more widely than the necessarily limited pages of The Canberra Times.

Civil-control-of-the-military

Ministerial control of our defence force is not somehow absolute. As in any Westmister-system democracy it must still comply with the Constitution and the law.

Monday, 09 March 2012
Letter to The Canberra Times
(published Saturday, 14 March 2012)

Mike Reddy (Letters, March 09) mistakenly believes that the Australian [sic] Defence Association somehow represents members of the defence force professionally.

As the relevant, independent, national public-interest watchdog for Defence defence issues we only stick up for anyone when they are slandered or mistreated.

We also criticise anyone concerned when they are wrong and act contrary to the public interest.

The essential constitutional principle of civil-control-of-the-military does not allow a Minister untrammelled power.

Defence ministers are still bound by the Defence Act and by the principles of natural justice, administrative law and the separation of powers generally.

And surely by community standards of fair play and common decency.

Just as the ADA strongly criticised Peter Reith over the children overboard affair, and the whole Howard Government over the AWB-Iraq wheat scandal, we will continue to stick to the facts and independently criticise Stephen Smith’s mishandling of the ADFA skype incident and its aftermath.

And we will continue to confront claims and prejudices about this and other matters that are contrary to the public interest.

ADF Misbehaviour: Inappropriate use of social media

Racist, sexist or otherwise stupid comments by some soldiers on social media are unacceptable morally and professionally counter-productive.

Friday, 02 March 2012
Letter to The Canberra Times
(not published)

Michael McCarthy (Letters, March 2) misrepresents the Australia Defence Association position.

As for the handful of Youtube videos last March, the ADA again notes that such racist and sexist comments are not only wrong in themselves but also counter-productive.

In a conflict Australia is fighting against Islamist extremism, both domestically and overseas, only an unprofessional idiot provides our enemies with propaganda. If they are in the ADF those responsible should be punished — as occurred in the past.

However, based on the reports of numerous independent inquiries, the ADA remains confident that only a tiny minority of defence force personnel are involved, and that such misbehaviour is not widespread, systemic or a result of a supposedly perverted institutional culture.

Moreover, the media and indeed the general public need to accept some responsibility too. First, for continually rushing to judgement about the ADF despite all the independent evidence.

Second, the frequent sensationalist and inaccurate media coverage about, and low levels of public awareness of, defence issues contribute by provoking a reaction and often an over-reaction.

The vast majority of detailed comments by soldiers on social media, including this latest site, are not sexist or racist.*

They are instead expressions, however inchoate at times, of growing outrage.

They reflect considerable professional frustration about unrealistic ideas and outright myths commonly held by the public about defence matters, and the repeated failure of the mainstream media and some public commentators to cover such issues comprehensively, accurately or fairly.

[*Note: Subsequent investigations by the Department of Defence by mid March 2012 found that on the social media discussion site concerned, which claimed membership by 1300 former and serving members of the Royal Australian Regiment, and among thousands of comments, only 30 were inappropriate (even less were offensive) and only one of these inappropriate comments was by a serving ADF member. He is now subject to disciplinary action.]

ADF Basing: Gold Coast naval base not possible

The suggestion that a naval base should be established on the Gold Coast omits the obvious constraint that there is no suitable harbour.

Monday, 06 February 2012
Letter to The Gold Coast Bulletin
(not published)

Monday’s editorial advocating a naval base on the Gold Coast was ridiculous. 

First the primary role of the Department of Defence is defence, not national development (or pork-barrelling). ADF bases must be located where they are most useful strategically, operationally and sustainably. 

Second, rather than “available options in terms of a location for a base are perfect”, a moment’s study of nautical charts clearly indicates the Gold Coast’s marked unsuitability.

Not least the total lack of a large, deep-water harbour, with preferably two deep-water entrances, and unimpeded access to oceanic deep water and offshore exercise areas away from civil shipping and boating. 

Third, the cost of housing on the Coast would mean the sailors and their families having to live unreasonably long commuting distances from such a base. 

Fourth, encroaching “lifestyle farmlets” mean the operational utility of the existing defence force base at Canungra in the Gold Coast hinterland is already subject to unreasonable complaints. 

Some selfish NIMBYs even want to close it, although its establishment in 1942 long predated them and the cost of duplicating it elsewhere is prohibitive.

ADFA: Continued public confusion

Uninformed critics of the ADA surely could at least try to learn what our stance on an issue actually is.

Monday, 06 February 2012
Letter to The Canberra Times
(not published)

Howard Carew (letters, January 31) accused the ADA of “humbug”, lack of sympathy and being an “apologist” for our defence force merely because an ADA letter in the Canberra Times on January 27 did not mention the female victim of the filming incident at ADFA last year.

It is odd that Mr Carew misses the ADA’s championing of her predicament in many forums (as numerous material on our website readily proves).

Including, of course, in letters on 03 and 10 January that The Canberra Times chose not to publish, perhaps to keep readers like Mr Carew content in their prejudices.

Finally, Mr Carew’s opinion that the male cadets concerned should have been “immediately turfed out” of the Academy exemplifies the misconceptions and misinformation underlying past public hysteria and continuing community confusion about this incident.

In particular, he ignores that criminal and disciplinary investigations have to be completed first in order to establish the facts, satisfy the principles of natural justice and the presumption of innocence, and avoid prejudicing ongoing or future judicial, disciplinary and administrative proceedings.

It is Mr Carew’s mindset that is unacceptable, not the supposed mindset of the ADFA authorities he so wrongly and recklessly accuses.

When the Minister for Defence eventually gets around to releasing the Kirkham Inquiry report into the ADFA incident, perhaps Mr Carew can join him in apologising to all those defence force personnel so carelessly slandered and scapegoated.

ADFA: Hot-issue-brief proves allegations are incorrect

The release of the relevant "hot issue brief" completely disproves the wild allegations made at the time that the Commandant and staff at ADFA had somehow acted inappropriately on learning of the non-consensual filming incident among two first-year cadets in their first ten weeks at the Academy.

Sunday, 22 January 2012,
Letter to The Canberra Times
(published, with significant ommissions, Friday, 27 January 2012)

The first Defence “hot issue brief” on the 2011 sex act filming incident at ADFA unequivocally refutes claims several particularly vile slanders that caused misinformed public outrage and worse at the time.

The brief proves that the ADFA commandant and his staff treated the matter very seriously from first learning of it late on 31 March.

Contrary to the highly damaging but false allegation that it supposedly took subsequent media publicity before they acted.

The brief also proves that the completely separate, and very minor, disciplinary proceedings already applying to the female victim of the filming incident were not somehow a subsequent attempt to intimidate her into silence about it.

Dated 7:06PM on 01 April (and apparently read by the Minister by 10:00PM), the first brief confirms that the commandant immediately called in the civil and military police — well before Channel 10 broadcast an interview with the female victim on 05 April.*

Minister of Defence, Stephen Smith, must surely now do four things if his ostensible quest for greater transparency and accountability in the ADF is dinkum.

First, instead of further inexplicable delay (having received it in mid December), the Minister must immediately release the independent report by Andrew Kirkham, QC, into the incident.

Second, he must immediately allow the reinstatement of Commodore Bruce Kafer as ADFA commandant and apologise to him publicly for the unfair and dishonourable way he has been treated;

Third, he must finally stop unfairly gagging Commodore Kafer from defending himself in public.

Finally, Minister Smith must explain why it took him nearly two weeks to publicly refute, and finally help allay, the vicious slurs and other damaging public confusion about the incident  that he knew to be untrue, and which so undermined public confidence in our defence force.

Unless there is some unknown and peculiar explanation, the obvious one is Stephen Smith deliberately chose to inflame and exploit public hysteria for his own personal political leadership ambitions.

Public and defence force confidence must be restored that future ministerial control of the ADFA ADF will instead be exercised properly according to the Defence Act; the principles of natural justice, administrative law and civil control of the military; and normal community standards of fair play, honour and public office integrity.

[*Note: As the ADA noted at the time and on several occasions subsequently, the handling of this matter by Channel 10, following the approach from the victim, was undertaken professionally and with sensitivity and some perspective by the two experienced journalists concerned (Hugh Riminton and Matt Moran). The ADA continues to believe that the subsequent situation would have been much worse for both victims of the incident had many other journalists been involved. It is noteworthy that both journalists have considerable experience in covering defence issues, with one having served in the defence force. Their accurate and balanced reporting of the initial circumstances, as they were then known, is acknowledged. It was not their fault that the subsequent general media frenzy so ignored the facts of the matter and continually reported the most untruthful, ridiculous and maliciously dishonest allegations about the ADF and its handling of the matter. Nor was it their fault that subsequent public hysteria whipped up by the disgraceful media coverage, and ministerial inaction, was so ill-informed, unjust and unjustified.]

Asylum policy: Inability to deport failed asylum seekers

The growing inability to deport both failed and assessed asylum seekers who pose a security risk if granted Australian residency requires resolution.

Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Letter to The Australian
(not published) 

The growing inability to deport both failed and assessed asylum seekers who pose a security risk if granted Australian residency requires resolution. 

Detaining them all indefinitely is not an option on humanitarian grounds.

But neither is blanket release or dilution of the necessary security checks. 

Resolute action is now necessary to bolster public confidence in both the fairness and overall integrity of immigration law. 

Former LTTE belligerents (who cannot qualify for refugee status anyway under the Refugee Convention), and proven supporters, now detained should be deported back to Sri Lanka without further ado once appropriate guarantees are obtained from that government so the non-refoulement provisions of the Convention do not apply.

Propaganda from the Tamil community in Australia and other LTTE apologists should rightly be ignored. 

The valid principles underlying ASIO security checks of asylum seekers should be strengthened by the institution of a non-public but still accountable appeals process using similar operational security safeguards to those applying to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Intelligence Services. 

After all, the former Security Appeals Tribunal set up to allow appeals of ASIO assessments generally was soon merged with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal because of pronounced lack of work and the lack of merit in most appeals. 

ADF capabilities: Gender equality

The many women in our defence force currently serving in frontline positions cannot understand the mindset that so readily and continually ignores that they exist, perform superbly, and are best equipped to offer expert and professional opinions on female employment in combat roles and gender-relations in the defence force generally.

Monday, 16 January 2012
Letter to The Age (Melbourne)
(not published) 

Saturday’s editorial (“Long way to a level battlefield”) was riddled with inaccuracies, misconceptions, poor research, selective quotation and seemingly outright prejudice. 

The ADF’s many women currently serving in frontline positions cannot understand the mindset that so readily and continually ignores that they exist, perform superbly, and are best equipped to offer expert and professional opinions on female employment in combat roles and gender-relations in the defence force generally. 

Nor that enquiries and applications by females for entry into ADFA, for example, have risen since the April 2011 scandal.

Chiefly because applicants and their parents have been impressed by what they have found out on enquiry, contrary to what media groupthink has so often reported sensationally, selectively and inaccurately. 

Moreover, while the federal sex discrimination commissioner’s report into ADFA did note that sexual harassment had been “widespread” she qualified this by emphasising it was low-level and involved no actual crimes.

The media, including your editorial, omit to mention such specificity. 

Ms Broderick has also noted that ADFA is a well-run institution, it’s record in gender and sexual misconduct is much better than any other tertiary institution in the country, and the only reason she cannot quantify the extent in more detail is because of poor record-keeping in the universities and TAFEs. 

Finally, there is the editorial’s misguided thrust that our defence force is somehow out-of-step with the society it comes from. 

It is, but only to the extent that rates of sexual misconduct (along with drug abuse and youth suicide) are markedly lower in the ADF than society at large, even allowing for 50 per cent of the force being under 25 years of age, and ADF personnel being as Australian as anyone else - not some moral praetorian guard. 

In fact the main reason why the media is able to dwell on the ADF so much is only because it has better record-keeping and a better and more open record of dealing with such matters than most other organisations in our society. 

Our defence force’s “sensitivity to adverse publicity” is perfectly explicable, and justified, when you consider how often such publicity is incorrect, unfair and just plain wrong in both senses. 

PS. The documents obtained by Channel 7 under FOI recently are not “new”, not “allegations”, not “classified”, mostly relate to incidents that are already public knowledge (including well-publicised court cases), and the 19 briefs concerning gender or sexual matters (even by the widest definition) constitute a miniscule number in a workforce of over 100,000 over a two-year period. Perhaps even the Age’s rate is worse than this one in 10,000 comparison? 

ADFA: Justice needed for both victims

There continue to be two victims of last year's scandal at ADFA. Both also continue to deserve justice.

Tuesday, 10 January 2012
Letter to The Canberra Times
(not published)

Gary Wilson (letters, January 10) rightly worries about equal justice for both victims of last April’s incident at the Australian Defence Force Academy. 

The female cadet wrongly and dishonourably filmed, without her apparent consent, by fellow cadets she should have been able to trust. 

And the commandant wrongly stood aside, traduced and then denied natural justice by ministerial intervention that was unfair at least — and deeply improper according to most experts on administrative law and the principles of civil-control-of-the-military. 

Continuing civil court proceedings are providing the cadet with the normal opportunity for justice. Dependent on the outcome, administrative action by the defence force concerning those who allegedly filmed her is also likely. 

Her right to a potential ADF career also needs protection but reintegrating her into ADFA, at this stage, poses serious group dynamics difficulties.

Not least because many cadets naturally resent, and (however unfairly or not) blame her in part for, all the media sensationalism and untruths, the public hysteria and continuing confusion it spawned, and the trashing of all their reputations. 

Finally, the sooner the Minister apologises to the commandant and allows the CDF to reinstate him the better for all concerned.

ADFA: Kirkham Report now well overdue

The attitude and consequent behaviour of the Minister for Defence unfortunately remains the biggest obstacle in achieving justice for both victims of last year's scandal at ADFA. He can, however, easily fix this.

Tuesday, 03 January 2012
Letter to The Canberra Times
(not published)

Releasing the report into the offensive sexual incident at the Australian Defence Force Academy last April needs to be put in context. 

A general “warts and all report” by the federal sex discrimination commissioner (a statutory officeholder independent of ministerial influence) has already concluded that ADFA is, overall, an impressive and well-run institution. 

If, as reported in the media, the inquiry by Andrew Kirkham QC has effectively exonerated the specific actions of the commandant and his staff, then duly reinstating Commodore Bruce Kafer should be done before the new ADFA training year starts later this month. 

But this is only part of the solution. 

The ADF also needs to continue protecting the stalled potential career of the other victim of the incident, the young cadet filmed without her consent.

And where the group dynamics of the cadet body have led many to blame her, however unfairly, for the subsequent public hysteria fed by the extensive and mostly inaccurate media coverage that so unfairly traduced all their reputations. 

Then there are the likely consequences of an objective report reflecting poorly on the judgement and actions of the Minister for Defence (even though Kirkham’s terms of reference prevented him examining such actions). 

It is not in the national interest for there to be further tension between this Minister and the defence force.

Alleviating this is no doubt concentrating the minds of the ADF and departmental hierarchy, especially if the report is likely to embarrass him politically and personally. 

A personal and public apology to Commodore Kafer from the Minister would undoubtedly help. 

As would his admission that, as widely acknowledged among administrative law experts, the Minister’s attempted interference in an unrelated defence force disciplinary proceeding concerning the female cadet should not have occurred.

Being contrary to the principles of administrative law in particular and the separation of powers between executive and judicial (and quasi-judicial) functions generally. 

Civil-control-of-the-military by Ministers (on behalf of Parliament) is engrained in the institutional and professional cultures of our defence force, the Constitution, and the necessary separation of civil political control from military command in the Defence Act.

But such civil control must be exercised properly, lawfully and carefully.  

Now, the Minister’s spokesman claims that the Kirkham Inquiry “was formally requested by the Chief of the RAAF [sic]… and is not for the Minister to release”.

But the Minister directed the Service Chiefs to hold the inquiry (as is his right) and would have approved the terms of reference. 

Its formal institution by the Chief of Air Force only reflected the longstanding constitutional and statutory separation of military command from ministerial control. 

Whoever is responsible for the report’s release this should occur now.

ADF capabilities: Future submarines

Much public argument on replacing our Collins-class submarines is confused and nugatory through not using a common basis of facts and assumptions.

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. 

Letters: 2011

This archive contains letters-to-the-editor submitted by the Australia Defence Association between 01 January and 31 December 2011.

Letters: 2010

This archive contains letters-to-the-editor submitted by the Australia Defence Association between 01 January and 31 December 2010.

Letters: 2009

This archive contains letters-to-the-editor submitted by the Australia Defence Association between 01 January and 31 December 2009.

Letters: 2008

This archive contains letters-to-the-editor submitted by the Australia Defence Association between 01 January and 31 December 2008.

Letters: 2007

This archive contains letters-to-the-editor submitted by the Australia Defence Association between 01 January and 31 December 2007.