Tag Archive for: Defence Secretary

Defence and the diarchy

The diarchy: butting heads on occasion

If the First Principles Review of Defence goes back to first principles, it’ll have to examine the diarchy wherein Defence is jointly headed by the Secretary and CDF. That’s likely to occur given that one Review panel member—retired Army chief Peter Leahy—is on the record arguing that the Minister should ‘ask himself why Defence is the only department or agency in the country run by a diarchy’.

In a speech in 2000, then departmental secretary Allan Hawke said that the diarchy was ‘about bringing together the responsibilities and complementary abilities of public servants and military officials’. In terms of responsibilities this is undoubtedly true, but only in a circular sense because legislation has been drafted consistent with a diarchy. The fact that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) is headed by a uniformed commissioner shows that there’s no underlying legal impediment to putting the CDF in sole charge. Read more

Dennis Richardson and Arthur Tange: part II

My previous column compared the only Australian mandarins who have headed both Foreign Affairs and Defence, Dennis Richardson and Arthur Tange. To further pursue that comparison, step forward two other mandarins: Philip Flood, former Secretary of DFAT, and Max Moore-Wilton, former Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Department.

In in his memoir, Flood describes Tange as ‘one of the truly great mandarins’ who held the rank of departmental Secretary for 25 years. Flood writes that Tange was driven by his ‘passion for Australia, his powerful work ethic and his strong belief in a distinctive, forceful and uniquely Australian foreign policy. Tange was a serious man with no time for fripperies’.

Flood told me recently that he would nominate Tange as one of Australia’s three greatest public servants of the 20th century, along with Robert Garrran and Roland Wilson. In the contemporary section of Flood’s Public Service Parthenon, Dennis Richardson is rated as one of the three top public servants of recent decades, alongside Max Moore-Wilton and Ken Henry. Read more

Dennis Richardson and Arthur Tange: part I

With his appointment as the Secretary of the Defence Department last year, Dennis Richardson has joined Arthur Tange as the only public servant to have headed both the departments of Foreign Affairs and Defence. Given that Tange remade the Defence Department and had a major impact on the structure and style of Australian diplomacy, this puts Richardson in elite company.

Another former head of Foreign Affairs, Philip Flood, judges Tange as one of the three greatest Australian public servants of the 20th century, while he rates Richardson as one of the three top public servants of recent decades. (More on the rankings for history by Philip Flood and Max Moore-Wilton in the next column.) What’s of direct interest for those in the bureaucratic trenches today are the parallels to be drawn between the Tange experience of Defence and what Dennis Richardson faces. Read more