{"id":80854,"date":"2023-06-30T15:30:09","date_gmt":"2023-06-30T05:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=80854"},"modified":"2023-06-30T16:07:14","modified_gmt":"2023-06-30T06:07:14","slug":"former-defence-minister-david-johnston-weigh-carefully-the-use-of-lethal-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/former-defence-minister-david-johnston-weigh-carefully-the-use-of-lethal-force\/","title":{"rendered":"Former defence minister David Johnston: weigh carefully the use of lethal force"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Former defence minister David Johnston attended the funerals of 26 of the 41 Australians killed on operations in Afghanistan, and he saw at close hand their families\u2019 grief.<\/p>\n

\u2018Then you understand that the application of lethal force and the exposure of men and women to risk has a price,\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n

In a video interview as part of ASPI\u2019s \u2018Lessons in leadership\u2019<\/em> series, he tells former ASPI executive director Peter Jennings that those experiences brought home to him the care governments must take in placing men and women in danger\u2014and the responsibility they bear when delivering lethal force in combat to strictly comply with legal rules of engagement.<\/p>\n

That targeting process was overseen by highly professional officers, in the Australian Defence Force\u2019s joint HQ in Bungendore and in the Middle East, who would ensure that if an airstrike was to be launched, it would be aborted if a civilian was found to be in the blast radius.<\/p>\n

\u2018As a lawyer, I was very keen that we would apply lethal force lawfully,\u2019 Johnston says.<\/p>\n

Johnston was defence minister from September 2013 to December 2014, and Jennings asks him what being a West Australian brings to the role.<\/p>\n

\u2018Well, we\u2019ve got about 2.8 million square kilometres in the west,\u2019 says Johnston. \u2018We\u2019ve got a trillion dollars\u2019 worth of investment in oil and gas and minerals off the North West Shelf, and we think that\u2019s well worth defending.\u2019<\/p>\n

Also good value, he says, is the investment of the eastern states in a defence force with very effective intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance\u00a0capabilities to see what\u2019s happening on Australia\u2019s frontier, particularly the maritime frontier.<\/p>\n

While he\u2019d had a long interest in defence matters as opposition spokesman, Johnston was only the minister for a year. \u2018I\u2019m a reformer and I acknowledge that ministers, particularly in this portfolio, are ships in the night, and that you need to get things done really fast,\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n

He regarded the 2014 first principles review<\/a> as important to improve the acquisitions side of Defence. \u2018Not so much in the uniforms\u2019 command-and-control side; that\u2019s their business and they\u2019re very good at it.\u2019<\/p>\n

The need to manage major projects was well understood in WA, he says. \u2018We build big\u2014$50\u2013$60 billion\u2014projects all the time, with some hiccups, but usually they roll out reasonably well.\u2019<\/p>\n

But when he became minister, many defence projects were causing problems. \u2018I was very keen that we would reform the commercial side of the department.\u2019<\/p>\n

Years in opposition gave him a good grounding in the issues surrounding defence projects. He found that many reliable people came out of the woodwork to give their views.<\/p>\n

\u2018That\u2019s one of the points of massive difference. When you\u2019re a minister, you don\u2019t see anybody, because, \u201cMinister, this is about probity, and you\u2019re not allowed to see any of these people.\u201d So the minister is actually, to some extent, flying blind. Whereas in opposition, everybody tells you what\u2019s happening.\u2019<\/p>\n

Johnston says he found that aspect of being a minister very isolating and extremely frustrating. \u2018Your one conduit of information, which is heavily controlled, is the department. Now, rightly or wrongly, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s necessarily a good thing. So, I was a bit of a renegade out there, talking to people privately when I\u2019d go to a function and I know that they were watching me talking to senior contractors and even senior officers who would very quietly say to me, we need to do this with Plan Beersheba and I\u2019d go, \u201cWell, thank you for that.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n

Johnston favoured a leaner civilian side of Defence. \u2018I looked at countries like South Korea and Japan and others. The public service is in the ones, twos, threes of thousands. We had 23,000 public servants running about 55,000 uniforms when I came in and I thought that was a bit too much.\u2019<\/p>\n

That was contrary to his view of where Australia should be in the world\u2014\u2018small, lean, mean\u2019\u2014and over roughly the year he was minister, he saw the number of Defence civilians drop to 17,000 or 18,000.<\/p>\n

Johnston says he was a lone voice in the government of prime minister Tony Abbott calling for the privatisation of Australia\u2019s government-owned submarine building company, ASC, which built the navy\u2019s six Collins-class boats. Many large, reliable, trustworthy corporations were keen to buy the company, he says.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Abbott had asked Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe if his country could provide Soryu submarines, but that caused a strong reaction from the submarine-building state of South Australia.<\/p>\n

\u2018The prime minister was upset that his numbers weren\u2019t as good as they could be. He needed the South Australians. He promised them a competition and it was a competition that the Japanese were never going to win. There was a lot of resistance from inside Japan, may I say.\u2019<\/p>\n

Johnston says the Soryu was an excellent submarine, but Australia needed boats that could traverse enormous distances.<\/p>\n

The French won the resultant competition to provide Australia\u2019s submarines.<\/p>\n

Johnston says Japan remains a very good friend of Australia and that relationship is very strong in WA.<\/p>\n

He spends much of his time now telling the Japanese that in terms of military equipment Australia is interoperable and interchangeable with the US, but without the complexities of the US processes over foreign military sales. And that makes Australia a good place for them to buy.<\/p>\n

Johnston says that once problems keeping the Collins submarines at sea were overcome, they were very impressive. The US Navy was particularly impressed with how quiet they and other Swedish-designed diesel-electric powered submarines they worked with were compared to their bigger nuclear-powered boats.<\/p>\n

Johnston says he understands the deterrent value of submarines. \u2018I\u2019ve seen it on frigates. Everyone goes, \u201cThere\u2019s a submarine here somewhere\u201d\u2014it\u2019s panic stations. The problem we have is that submariners love to hear bad things about their platform,\u2019 he says. \u2018They want potential adversaries to think it\u2019s a lemon. It [the Collins] is very capable and if you lift the lid on what it\u2019s done, it\u2019s a very good submarine. I don\u2019t want to say any more than that.\u2019<\/p>\n

Eventually Johnston caused outrage, including in his own party, by telling parliament of ASC: \u2018You wonder why I wouldn\u2019t trust them to build a canoe?\u2019 Soon after that comment, which he described as a \u2018rhetorical flourish\u2019, Johnston was replaced.<\/p>\n

Asked by Jennings what advice he\u2019d give a new defence minister,\u00a0Johnston responds: \u2018Well, be a reformist but never be bigger than the game itself. Take advice, digest that advice, and be prepared to cop it sweet when your time is up.\u2019<\/p>\n

ASPI\u2019s \u2018Lessons in leadership\u2019 series is produced with the support of Lockheed Martin Australia.<\/em><\/p>\n