Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to address, in this matter of public interest debate, the Defence Management Review released early in April. This so-called review has been a remarkably cynical exercise. It is straight out of the process textbook of Sir Humphrey Appleby. Tip No. 1 for ministers: what to do when there are endless bungles within your administration. Answer: commission a review so you can blame someone else and, of course, you can blame the system. It does not matter that it is your system, nor does it matter that the embarrassment is of your own making. A review, by definition, is a great circuit-breaker. Its very existence shows you are decisive and will tolerate no more. There is fault elsewhere and you, the minister, are determined to fix it. Real ministerial mettle! The minister is on top of his department, demanding answers and showing who is boss. It is an instant explanation for the gullible. By the time it is finished everyone has forgotten why it started in the first place. It is such a pity that most do not read the terms of reference, let alone the report that is the outcome. So with due respect to the reviewers, including Ms Proust, this defence review is a clayton’s review. It is a review you have when you are not going to have a review.

Let us recall why this review started and why Sir Humphrey’s textbook was referred to again and again. Dr Nelson has been the most accident-prone Minister for Defence there has ever been in the history of this nation. The litany of failure is virtually endless. The worst, of course, was the bungling of the investigation into the death of Private Kovco just one year ago. The minister bungled the investigation and the repatriation of the body. Those bungles were followed by a bungled inquiry into the bungled loss of the body. Getting it back by Anzac Day was the minister’s top priority for Defence—it had all been personally scripted. That was followed by the bungled board of inquiry, which failed because of the poverty of evidence from the bungled investigation. Even the Chief of the Defence Force conceded that its findings were unjustified.

There was no real need for the inquiry anyway, because the minister knew the cause of death immediately. In fact, in the days following, he had a couple of guesses. But no matter, our fearless minister battled on to right his own wrongs. At the end of the day he was able to appear on national television appropriately sombre at a state funeral with all the gravitas the Defence PR machine could muster. Is it any wonder the family was both disgusted and angry?

We have seen him since, unperturbed before the cameras, in the cockpit of his new fighter. Perhaps one day we will see the minister on one of the refitted guided missile destroyers—now, I mention in passing, three years overdue. Or we might see him in an AEWAC aircraft—likely to be two years late. Wouldn’t it be great to see the minister announce he had found all the stolen rocket launchers or all the other military weaponry that has gone missing in the past decade? That would be a public relations coup. Wouldn’t it be nice to hear the minister saying that the military justice system had been fixed once and for all? Perhaps he might also admit in passing that our engagement in Iraq continues to be a disaster. In fact, the real PR opportunities for this minister are endless.

We have seen many reviews into Defence in recent times. Each one has tried to turn tragedy into triumph. Each one has responded to a disaster of some kind. For example, there was the review of training establishments. That was a response to a Senate committee’s damning report on military justice—again, with limited terms of reference. It was a volume of paper and process and an academic response to human tragedy—and of course no fault was found, as usual. Everything was tickety-boo.

These reports are carefully written from vague terms of reference. They are massaged with bland recommendations, all quite acceptable. They are released as a package and then consigned to a pigeonhole. Business goes on as usual. That is this government’s modus operandi in this area. All attention is drawn to the government’s acceptance of all but a few sacrificial recommendations. Perhaps one day we may have a fair dinkum review of defence matters by independent people with real power to penetrate the fog.

We can see the pattern. Every problem needs a review. Terms of reference must be circumscribed to avoid the real issues. Those carrying out the review must be eminently respectable, with judgement beyond question. Time should be limited—the matter is of greatest urgency—so investigation and necessary fact-finding are limited. Recommendations should exceed 50 and be written so that no-one could disagree. Making sure that any contradictable recommendation is smashed out of court is in the interests of confected concern. And all this should come after advice from Defence PR as to the most timely release. The standard here is the eve of Good Friday—as in this case. Christmas Eve is another good day, or during the running of the Melbourne Cup.

This Defence Management Review is incomplete. It is a smokescreen that would make the Navy proud. Looking at the subject matter, it is obvious that little of Defence’s organisation and operations is covered. Defence’s difficulty in acquitting its accounts is a major subject but with no addition, to our knowledge and understanding, of what is now an improving issue reaching the stage where it is almost complete. Also, there are difficulties faced with IT infrastructure and operations, and I am sure Defence learned little from the review’s observations in that area. There were more generalities flowing from limited terms of reference and restricted time, with general recommendations easily accepted.

However, the primary focus of the review is the relationship between the department and the minister’s office, a strange matter to concentrate on, given that it is not in the terms of reference at all. What terrible things must have been said by witnesses and those who submitted material to the inquiry. Is the relationship so poisonous, so bad as to warrant such an assessment? Obviously someone thinks so. But, never fear, we can all say that it is the department’s fault. Narrowly trained and operationally focused military personnel must be reskilled. Training in the minister’s office operations should be mandatory. It is all about No. 1, particularly the current No. 1. This focus gives the lie to the review’s motivation.

The minister is clearly unhappy with the departmental advice coming into his office. He obviously does not like his question time brief and is unhappy with response times. Departments should really wise up to what Minister Nelson really wants—that is, the PR unit, billions of dollars of new toys for photo ops and lots of ceremonies, flags and fly-bys. That is the gist of chapter 4. It deals with accountability and service delivery. It is the essence of best practice in governance. Clearly Defence, according to chapter 4, has a long way to go.

The old excuse is that Defence is too busy—that is, involved in operations—to bother. But operations are, of course, bread and butter for Defence. To have no operations and to have no involvement would make the department like a hospital too busy to treat patients. I have no doubt that senior officers are distracted, but accountability is not about senior officers; it is about the management culture. It is about a system that avoids ownership, lacks continuity in staffing and is constipated with committees. How often have we heard this chestnut?

Putting aside the ministerial circus, here are the review’s main criticisms: the department has confused its accountabilities; there is a gap between responsibility and accountability; there is less concern about efficiency than in the past—caused by comparative wealth due to the generosity of this government; management information is inadequate; many necessary processes are deficient and they are not aligned with the future direction; and the culture of Defence can be and is risk averse, insensitive to cost, rules bound and—get this—tribalistic. Further criticisms include: management is remote from those in the field, there is overcentralisation, Defence is too sensitive to media issues, Defence has a secretive approach to public in matters, there is inadequate planning for the future, there is a misguided belief that performance is adequately measured by operational outcomes and there is less focus on those parts not directly impacting on or involved with operations.

Why has it taken so long for the bleeding obvious to be spelled out? Report after report by the ANAO contains much the same sort of diagnosis, but nothing seems to happen; nothing seems to change. So implementing the Proust review’s recommendation is essential. There is no reason for it not being done, even if it means upheaval. It was done within the DMO, and that is now a much improved organisation. I believe this problem warrants the same dramatic surgery. To tinker with the senior structure, as the Proust review has attempted, is futile without looking at the entirety of the organisation. But this government has rejected that most fundamental and salient reform, so it is hard to believe this government will get serious about the Defence organisation. That was never intended anyway, as we know, and that is why the review is a clayton’s cocktail.