Department of Defence Archives - Page 10 of 10

Defence: the view from outside government

12 October 2012/in Strategist Article

Senator David Johnston, the Shadow Minister for Defence, spoke at an ASPI lunch yesterday. His speech was titled ‘The politics of defence’, but its main theme was why defence shouldn’t be political. Along the way, he made some telling observations about the difficulty of trying to formulate sensible defence policy in opposition, with the twin handicaps of many fewer people and limited access to departmental advice.

That’s true for every portfolio of course. But he argued that Defence has some singular characteristics that make it even more difficult. First among them was the sheer impenetrability of the language that surrounds defence issues, making for a very steep learning curve for newcomers. There are some mitigating strategies that help, such as the parliamentary engagement program that allows MPs to spend time with uniformed personnel to gain a firsthand understanding of their motivations and their work. Another resource Senator Johnston identified is the work of think tanks and the media in trying to make sense of the inner workings of Defence and its advice to government and in providing valuable facts, figures and analysis. Especially for those in Opposition, without the kind of information accessible to Government, independent analysis is a ‘must-have’.

In one way that was a ‘warm and fuzzy’ moment for ASPI, and the Senator was kind enough to direct some gratitude our way. But it’s also an uncomfortable moment, reminding us that we face many of the same challenges as the opposition, in that our access to ‘inside information’ is extremely limited (often nil), leaving us to work with the usually incomplete public information and whatever we can deduce from experience or the odd snippet that comes our way. We’re glad we can sometimes help to inform the public discussion (and we’d put the chairs on the table and turn the lights out if we couldn’t) but, like the opposition, we’d benefit greatly in our work from greater transparency in the system and more information in the public domain. Read more

ASPI answers a letter from a reader

25 September 2012/in Strategist Article

Dear ASPI,

I have a ‘friend’ who has an embarrassing problem with defence planning. It seems no matter what he tries, it ends up expensive and unsatisfactory. What can he do?

Worried of Parliament Hill

Dear Worried,

You should console your friend that he is not the only one having these sorts of difficulties—in fact, it’s almost de rigueur in defence (PDF) (or defense) circles. But I know how uncomfortable this can be when a big event like forming government after an election is looming.

Alas, there’s no magic formula for fixing it. But there are some things that might help. Here’s a dos and don’ts list for approaching defence acquisition (with some suggested ASPI reading).

Do

have a close look at ‘80-20 solutions’—those applications of (relatively) simple and (relatively) cheap technologies that give a fair proportion of the capability of more expensive systems at a fraction of the price. For example, surveillance is an area where a mix of long-range, very capable platforms could be supplemented by cheaper shorter-range ones.
take a whole of nation view of capability where appropriate. Defence isn’t the only stakeholder in aspects of national security such as border protection and in cyberspace.
be transparent in your defence policies and acquisitions. There will be times when you don’t like this—and the Defence Department certainly won’t—but it will be better for us all in the long run. Mark Thomson and Leigh Purnell’s 2010 report has some good pointers.
understand the nature of fixed and marginal costs in defence procurement—having a large number of small fleets means a lot of overheads and runs the risk of insufficient capacity in any given area.
wherever possible, stick with the now tried and true avenue of procurement of proven systems from a close ally under the American Foreign Military Sales process.

Don’t

be seduced by the lure of high-end technology for its own sake; keep the focus on what you want the forces to be able to achieve and remember that it isn’t done in a vacuum; the capability of credible adversaries is a consideration, as is the location of operations. Projecting power against Australia is a formidable task.
rush white papers—they have a tendency to come back and bite a few years down the track. In particular, take the time to get the funding as right as possible, because Mark Thomson will soon find out if you don’t.
conflate defence policy and industry policy. Whether we like it or not, the worldwide defence industry landscape is increasingly dominated by a handful of multi-nationals. Swimming against the tide will only run down our resources faster and is at odds with our national strategy over the past half century.
defer to advice from the Department when your instincts say differently. We’ve seen what happens when it’s left to its own devices.
attempt to hide a back step in defence planning/policy by pretending that it was all part of the grand plan—admit the change up front (as the press and others will identify it for you anyway) and explain the reason for it.

Andrew Davies is senior analyst for defence capability at ASPI and executive editor of The Strategist.

Oceans and ‘Official Development Assistance’

19 September 2012/in Strategist Article

Oceans are crucial to the future of developing countries. No one in the development sector would disagree. AusAID recently commemorated World Ocean Day and explained its current activities in this area. No doubt there is more Australia could do, especially in light of the recent debates at Rio+20 about the ‘blue economy’. Climate finance is coming down the pipeline and debates continue about how it should be spent.

But I’m not sure that Sam Bateman and Anthony Bergin are right with their suggestions this week that Australian aid should be spent on ocean security management. I think there are two major problems. Read more

Reader response: Defence is different

11 September 2012/in Strategist Article

I think that Alex Tewes has created a ‘straw man’ version of my argument in his rejoinder rather than dealing with my serious suggestions. My proposal to make Defence leadership’s views public, as well as Government’s final decisions, was intended to give the people a chance to hold the government to account.

I offered a solution which allows voters to assess the risk that the government is taking on their behalf. I also suggested that you would need to concentrate on operational outcomes rather than materiel inputs. So it would be fair to take issue on a few points; whether I identified the problem correctly, whether Defence is exactly the same as every other department, how practical or politically likely such a change might be and what other steps might be required to make this work, or whether it is possible to state a defence outcome rather than just count the inputs. Alex only picked one of these.

For the record, but also to fight against the comfortable stereotype of a retired General going into bat for the troops, I don’t see my solution necessarily resulting in increased defence expenditure as Alex claims, and I clearly stated that in my post. Read more

Neither democracy nor defence planning

6 September 2012/in Strategist Article

One of the things I like about Jim Molan is the relish and obvious enthusiasm with which he brandishes his lance at the many windmills that rise out of Russell Hill. However, I was dismayed by his latest contribution to The Strategist in which he proposed a way forward to address what he perceives as the inappropriate levels of defence spending by the current government. Particularly so at a time when he believes that the perceived strategic uncertainty merits a much greater contribution from the public purse.

In his words, what should determine how much Australia spends on defence should be the strategic environment. When this should be spent is the relationship between warning time and the time it takes to build defence capability. From the tenor of his contribution, the correct answer should be ‘lots’ and ‘right now’. However, I am left uneasy by two factors. First, his apparent view that the only thing to do at a time of strategic uncertainty is spend more money on defence. That to me sounds like a curative approach rather than a preventative one. One could equally argue that greater expenditure in improving our diplomatic capabilities to address the claimed uncertainties. Second, that ‘more’ equals ‘better’ or ‘more effective’. Indeed Major General Molan makes this very point when he notes that the ADF has an almost total lack of real capability, despite having lots of ‘things’. Read more

On democracy and defence planning

5 September 2012/in Strategist Article

If I go to a public hospital and it is inadequate to my needs, I have immediate feedback that there’s a policy failure. I express my dissatisfaction immediately and if there is no improvement I hold government to account politically at the next election. I’m able to fully understand the risk that the government has decided to take in relation my health if it underfunds hospitals. In the meantime, I may use my own money and buy hospital services from the private sector. The result of this is that governments have an incentive to act as the people want, and even if the government decides to underfund, the total impact on the service is always less than the total amount of funding loss because we use our own money. Health is a ‘private good’ in this sense. In this situation, the democratic system works relatively well, and we can rely on the impact of the peoples’ will on governments to influence policy. It applies to almost all other areas of government policy such as education and welfare.

Andrew Carr hopes that the Australian people will lead the government to spend an appropriate amount on defence. But whether we like it or not, as the above comparison with other government policy areas illustrates, defence in Australia at present is different. As Mark Thomson pointed out recently, it’s a ‘public good’—we can’t buy extra defence for ourselves if the government doesn’t provide what we want. This creates special government responsibility. Read more

Reader response: what the Secretary is really saying

30 August 2012/in Strategist Article

In his post on Duncan Lewis’ speech to ASPI, Peter Jennings gave us a good round up of the Secretary’s intent. Peter outlines three messages: match aspirations to the government-allocated funds; save and be efficient; and the inadequacy of our current structure and posture given future strategic circumstances. The first two are daily fare for Defence secretaries, and are what you would expect. The third might be the soldier-bureaucrat talking and I would like to offer my own interpretation to balance Peter’s.

Perhaps the Secretary is saying, of course the Department will get on with fitting the ADF and other defence programs into the funding provided, and all the while achieving savings and efficiencies. That is a given, and no one denies any government the right to set defence’s expenditure levels.

The Secretary’s third message, ‘As things stand I don’t think that we are structured or postured appropriately to meet our likely strategic circumstances in the future’ was picked by Peter as very important, and I can only agree. But having stated how important it is for the Secretary to give a not so subtle message against ‘a more worrying set of strategic trends’, Peter then stresses the Secretary’s comments on the Defence Cooperation Program and on some vague statement about reducing ‘… risk by doing business differently’. Read more

Lewis lullaby is tough love for Defence

28 August 2012/in Strategist Article

Defence Secretary Duncan Lewis’ speech to ASPI last week was a message (put nicely) to his own organisation to toughen up: stop squealing about spending cuts and start rebuilding the organisation to handle a harder strategic environment. According to Lewis, his speech was a homage to Sir Arthur Tange’s infamous ‘Tange harangue’, a speech delivered in August 1973 which tore strips off the three Services for their ‘triplicated’ ways of doing business. And although the Secretary assured the audience he wouldn’t repeat Tange’s words that is exactly what he did, but in a subtler way.

The Secretary’s speech deserves careful reading for the messages it contains both to Government and to Defence. The first was about money: ‘If you haven’t talked dollars you haven’t talked strategy’ Lewis said, quoting Tange. The speech repeatedly emphasised the need to match strategic aspirations to the available dollars. Australia’s strategy, Lewis said ‘needs to be tempered by reality, affordability, and informed by the thinking and tasking of other Government agencies.’ Frankly, this is a more realistic appreciation of Defence’s position than in Defence Minister Stephen Smith’s recent speeches to ASPI and the Lowy Institute. Lewis knows that it is impossible to keep cutting spending and expect that there will be no loss of capability. His message is that we need a strategy that fits what Government is prepared to spend. Read more

Defence and expectation management

27 July 2012/in Strategist Article

There has already been some debate about the insurance analogy on this blog. I personally like the theme as it makes it easy to explain Defence funding to those not familiar with what our defence forces actually do.

There was a time when almost every family in the land knew someone who was in the Defence forces, either past or present. Anecdotally, that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. All they see are mainstream media headlines that Defence costs a bucketload, can’t handle money very well and stuff keeps breaking/is delivered late/doesn’t work properly. And oh, look—another review.

There is no rational, informed public debate outside the community that has an interest in the field. This can be the same for many fields though. Do you know the difference between AMA and Medicare scheduled fees for services? Why have many Masters programs at universities dropped from 12 unit points to 10? If you’re in the field that cares, you know. If it doesn’t directly affect your life, you don’t tend to know.

How defence is funded matters insomuch to the average person as it relates to opportunity cost in their lives; how many university places/hospital beds/roads built could that money have been used for. This is not to say that the average voter doesn’t care about defence but there is a lack of understanding about the political and economic nature of white papers in the wider community. Read more

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