[A speech delivered to the Meet the Chiefs industry briefing, Canberra, 13 August 2024.]
I’m glad to have another frank discussion with you about securing Australia’s future. Tonight, I propose to do something different. I’d like to take a different angle on Defence, and put the pressure on me: what would I do as the next minister for defence?
So rather than describing the strategic challenges that we face, which are many and have been well articulated already, I’m going to describe how I will approach the task of governing as minister for defence if we are successful in winning the next election.
First, though, let’s limber up with a Kim Beazley insight on Defence, who once said this:
… the complex structure of decision-making in defence, producing as it does a clash of views among extraordinarily well-versed partisans of particular service and institutional interests, patriotic philosophers, optimists and pessimists, scientists and technological fixers, nationalists and internationalists, is more akin to ancient church councils in its product than to the town meeting approach democracy contemplates.
It’s vintage Beazley in the way he paints a colourful, human panorama for us. You can feel the sense of mystery that shrouds the defence diarchy that is charged with defending the nation.
I should add that the quote is more than 25 years old, and times have changed. But being a student of history, we need to understand the past if we are to navigate the future with a high probability of success.
In any case, we can assume that Defence—as an organisation—is a complex living institution, and so I assume a posture of humility in approaching the challenge.
Minister for defence is one the toughest jobs in the Cabinet, and the most unforgiving in the event of failure.
What is failure? Well, let’s first define success. In my view, there are two criteria for success: one, preventing war; two, if it comes, winning at war.
Both preventing and winning wars requires one thing: strength—the strength to deter and defeat your adversaries. And you’re only strong if you have combat power, industrial capacity and allies.
Now, we have a lot of work to do on our combat power and industrial capacity in Australia.
We are doing well with our allies—AUKUS is proof of that—but relationships need constant work, and we cannot for a moment neglect them.
I’ve defined success. So, back to failure.
Failure would be leaving Australia’s defences so weak that we provoke aggression. And in the face of aggression, failure is losing at war.
A minister for defence is charged with making sure that doesn’t happen. That is the job. It is a no-fail mission. There are no other areas of public policy where the consequences for failure are so grave.
Sir Arthur Tange, perhaps the greatest defence secretary of the last century, understood this challenge well. A whip smart, charming, prickly, driven and relentless reformer, he dragged Defence into the modern era, and a few star ranks with him. He understood Defence as fundamentally an intellectual exercise requiring leadership, analytical power and drive.
It’s an intellectual exercise because it requires a strategic imagination to anticipate threats and taking the preparatory actions to defeat them. It’s also an intellectual exercise in convincing your adversaries to take you seriously.
Deterrence, in the end, is deeply psychological. You want to haunt the mind of your opponent. To instil fear and anxiety in them. You are sending a price signal, that war will be costly—a price signal that saps their will to fight. Defence starts in the mind, and that’s why Tange culled safe thinkers from the civilian hierarchy.
He cut loose those he considered too conservative, or process orientated. He was also happy to have the top brass bent out of shape, if that’s what it took. He wanted Defence to be an intellectual powerhouse.
That’s also why Tange drove the reforms that led to the modern Defence organisation that we know today. I won’t go through them in detail but for the purposes of this speech, the reforms made clear in the Defence Act that the minister for defence presides over the general control and administration of the defence force.
This brings us to the point of my remarks tonight.
How do I see an effective minister exercising these powers?
I think we must first recognise the natural constraints that bind a minister for defence. There are geopolitical constraints. There are domestic constraints—electoral, parliamentary and party political. There are constraints within cabinet. There are budgetary constraints.
There are the normal constraints of elected office in the Westminster system—local politics, media and campaigns.
Geography is a factor, too. This I know well travelling from Western Australia. Then there are family considerations, and personal constraints like intellect, character and experience. Very quickly, we can see that defence ministerial leadership has a unique set of constraints. And those constraints narrow the ministerial influence upon defence policy and decision-making. You can’t be everywhere, and across every brief. You need a team around you. I think this is a feature of our democratic tradition, not necessarily a bug as some might think. (Although it’s provided plenty of material for Yes, Minister and the other documentary, Utopia.)
Second, given these constraints, ministerial leadership is distinctly different to all other types of leadership.
If Kim Beazley likened Defence decision-making to ancient church councils, I’m going to take the liberty of borrowing some Dutch Protestant theology. More than 120 years ago, the prime minister of the Netherlands, Abraham Kuyper, formulated the concept of ‘sphere sovereignty’. In short, it teaches that every sphere of life—family, business, education and government, to name a few spheres—has its own internal order, responsibilities and competence.
To adapt it to the secular topic at hand, that of defence, it means that every sphere of capability within and adjacent to Defence is sovereign in its responsibility and competence. The infantry platoon at close combat. The warship at protecting our seas. The squadron of fighter aircraft in patrolling the skies. The missile battery in air defence. The logisticians who resupply our war fighters. The public servants who do policy and administration. The manufacturer at producing cutting edge defence technology.
Each sphere of capability is sovereign. And it is also accountable to the whole—in this case, to the Parliament through the minister for defence.
One thing I do want to make clear: it is not the role of the minister to impose themselves directly upon the many spheres of capability and competence within Defence.
It’s not their job to out-general the generals.
It’s not their job to out-secretary the secretary.
It’s not their job to out-soldier the soldiers.
It’s not their job to out-administer the administrators.
It’s not their job to out-think the think-tankers.
It’s not their job to out-manufacture the manufacturers.
The minister’s job is to bring all these spheres—which sit in creative tension with one another—into an organisation that coheres around the Defence mission.
And the primary way that we draw things together in my vocation is through our words, through our tough questions and through our coordinating networks.
That’s the minister’s sphere—in the public square—making the decisions: making the arguments, building public support, explaining decisions, being accountable to the Parliament.
A defence minister does this directly, and through their personal staff—who matter a great deal in the way they connect the minister to Defence, and therefore must be of the highest calibre.
Malcom Fraser and Arthur Tange had many personal battles, perhaps in part because Fraser—as minister for defence—liked to canyon deep into the defence establishment. Fraser made a habit of working inside defence and calling up lower officials in the organisation. Tange didn’t like interference in his sphere. He was sovereign as secretary. Things between them, at one point, got so bad that they went without speaking for two weeks, until Fraser offered to settle it over a drink with the secretary.
Now, some of my critics might suggest that my time in the Australian Defence Force will be a problem if we form government—that I just won’t be able to help myself, that I will revert to Captain Hastie.
To that critique, I would say, I know what it is to soldier in tough conditions, to feel fear and anxiety, to make mistakes, to experience friction at the pointy end of operations.
I understand the customs and traditions of the ADF—as well as the quirks and some of the lexicon. That’s all very important as a potential minister for defence.
But I haven’t been to command and staff college, nor undertaken other higher defence courses or training. And perhaps that will be to the advantage of our national defence.
I don’t consider myself a master of operational art or compelled to interfere directly with operations; others have those skills.
Sure, it’s the minister’s prerogative to ask tough questions, to demand options, to make decisions, but we have ADF experts in their spheres of sovereignty, and they must be respected.
Instead, I’ve had a strategic education of my own, through the Parliament over the last nine years—longer than I was ever a commissioned officer. I’ve chaired the Intelligence and Security Committee. I was understudy to Peter Dutton as his assistant minister in the last government.
I built relationships across the national security community and industry and worked hard to understand parliamentary and government processes.
In short, I’ve chosen to master my vocation of politics—to help shape the polis itself, the way we organise our national life.
I’ve not forgotten what the late Rear Admiral James Goldrick said to me: you must keep reading and writing. You must build an interior life. I have pursued that interior life since I heard those words.
Which is why I would say back to my critics: I’ll respect your sphere of competence; I trust that you’ll respect mine.
So, in closing, it is my view that a competent minister for defence will have a mastery of their parliamentary vocation; they’ll be excellent communicators; they’ll be focused on the no-fail mission of Defence; they’ll respect the many spheres of competence in the organisation; they’ll ask the tough questions; and they’ll make the tough calls.
We began with churches, but let me end with ramparts.
For the Defence establishment looks like one of the imposing castles that I visited in Jordan during my final deployment 10 years ago: Kerak Castle, built in 1142 AD, and Ajloun Castle, built in 1184 AD. Both are steeped in military and political history. Both are imposing and full of mystery.
You can only fully understand the castle once you are inside. The corridors. The secret passages. The many chambers. The booby traps.
So, too, with Defence. You’ve got to be inside the fortress, as there is no substitute for experience, and so the task now is to win this election and form government.