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COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA Official Committee Hansard JOINT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, DEFENCE AND TRADE (DEFENCE SUBCOMMITTEE) Reference: Review of Defence report 2000-01 WEDNESDAY, 8 MAY 2002 CANBERRA BY AUTHORITY OF THE PARLIAMENT INTERNET The Proof and Official Hansard transcripts of Senate committee hearings, some House of Representatives committee hearings and some joint com- mittee hearings are available on the Internet. Some House of Representa- tives committees and some joint committees make available only Official Hansard transcripts. The Internet address is: http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard To search the parliamentary database, go to: http://search.aph.gov.au JOINT COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, DEFENCE AND TRADE Defence Subcommittee Wednesday, 8 May 2002 Members: Senator Ferguson (Chair), Mr Brereton (Deputy Chair), Senators Bourne, Calvert, Chapman, Cook, Evans, Gibbs, Harradine, Hutchins, Sandy Macdonald, Payne and Schacht and Mr Baird, Baldwin, Mr Beazley, Mr Bevis, Mr Edwards, Mr Ferguson, Mrs Gash, Mr Hawker, Mr Jull, Mr Lindsay, Dr Martin, Mrs Moylan, Mr Nairn, Mr Price, Mr Prosser, Mr Scott, Mr Snowdon, Mr Somlyay and Mr Cameron Thompson Subcommittee members: Mr Scott (Chair), Mr Price (Deputy Chair) Senators Calvert, Evans, Ferguson (ex officio), Gibbs, Sandy Macdonald, Payne and Schacht and Mr Baldwin, Mr Beazley, Mr Bevis, Mr Brereton, Mr Edwards, Mrs Gash, Mr Hawker, Mr Lindsay, Mr Nairn, Mr Snowdon, Mr Somlyay and Mr Cameron Thompson Senators and members in attendance: Senators Calvert, Ferguson, Gibbs, Sandy Macdonald and Schacht and Mr Baldwin, Mr Bevis, Mr Edwards, Mr Price, Mr Scott, Mr Snowdon, Mr Somlyay and Mr Cameron Thompson Terms of reference for the inquiry: Review of Defence report 2000-01 WITNESSES ANDERSON, Mr David Charles, Acting Director General, Resources Management, Defence Personnel Executive, Department of Defence .............................................................................................. 56 BENNETT, Mr Lloyd Peter, Acting Chief Finance Officer, Department of Defence ................................ 1 BORNHOLT, Colonel Mark, Director, Defence Force Recruiting, Department of Defence .................. 56 CARMODY, Mr Shane Patrick, Deputy Secretary, Corporate Services, Department of Defence......... 38 HAWKE, Dr Allan Douglas, Secretary, Department of Defence ................................................................. 1 McLENNAN, Air Commodore Roxley Kenneth, Director General, Career Management Policy, Department of Defence .................................................................................................................................... 1 .......................................................................................................................................................................... 56 MUELLER, Lieutenant General Desmond Maurice, Vice Chief of the Defence Force, Department of Defence..................................................................................................................................... 1 PEARCE, Mr Mal, Director General, Australian Defence Force Remuneration Reform Team, Defence Personnel Executive, Department of Defence................................................................................ 56 RAGO, Commodore Louis, Director General, Personnel Plans, Department of Defence....................... 56 ROCHE, Mr Michael John, Under Secretary, Defence Materiel Organisation.......................................... 1 .......................................................................................................................................................................... 38 SHARP, Mr Peter Kenneth, Head, Strategic Workforce Planning Review, Department of Defence............................................................................................................................................................. 56 Wednesday, 8 May 2002 JOINT FADT 1 Subcommittee met at 10.15 a.m. BENNETT, Mr Lloyd Peter, Acting Chief Finance Officer, Department of Defence HAWKE, Dr Allan Douglas, Secretary, Department of Defence MUELLER, Lieutenant General Desmond Maurice, Vice Chief of the Defence Force, Department of Defence McLENNAN, Air Commodore Roxley Kenneth, Director General, Career Management Policy, Department of Defence ROCHE, Mr Michael John, Under Secretary, Defence Materiel Organisation CHAIR—I declare open this first public meeting of the Defence Subcommittee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade for the 40th Parliament. The purpose of today’s hearing is to review the Defence annual report 2000-01. Under the provisions of the resolution of appointment of the committee, annual reports of relevant government departments and authorities tabled in the House stand referred to the committee for any inquiry the committee may wish to make. As the Defence report rightly points out, the annual report, together with the portfolio budget statement, is the principal formal accountability mechanism between government, the department and the parliament. It is fitting, therefore, that the committee examine the report in its entirety at this public forum. The committee is pleased to welcome the Secretary of the Department of Defence, the Acting Chief of the Defence Force and other representatives of Defence who will appear here today to assist the committee in this review. I advise you that the proceedings here today are legal proceedings of the parliament and warrant the same respect which proceedings in the respective houses of parliament demand. Although the subcommittee does not require you to give evidence on oath, you should be aware that this does not alter the importance of the occasion. The deliberate misleading of the subcommittee may be regarded as a contempt of parliament. The subcommittee prefers that all evidence is given in public, but should you at any stage wish to give any evidence in private, you may ask to do so and the subcommittee will give consideration to your request. I now invite Dr Hawke to make some opening remarks before we proceed to questions. Dr Hawke—Mr Chairman, I have not prepared a formal presentation, but if it is the wish of the committee, I could give you about eight to 10 minutes on the conceptual underpinning of what we are trying to do in the organisation—if that would help. CHAIR—Yes, it would. Slides were then shown— Dr Hawke—I have brought along three slides to demonstrate this. These are the same three slides that I presented to the senior leadership of Defence in February 2000 about what we will do. I spoke about what was called the big ‘S’ strategy and the little ‘s’ strategy. The big ‘S’ strategy was essentially about delivering by the end of the year 2000 the Defence white paper. That was important for us because it would give us our riding instructions in terms of the strategic circumstances we would face in the region, the sorts of capabilities that the FOREIGN AFFAIRS, DEFENCE AND TRADE FADT 2 JOINT Wednesday, 8 May 2002 government might wish to have in the Defence Force and the sorts of military response options it might call upon the ADF to exercise. Associated with that, of course, was the issue of the funding for the forward years. Ironically, that big ‘S’ strategy—delivering the white paper—I thought would prove easier than delivering the little ‘s’, which was all about organisational renewal or transformation. I said at that time that this would be a harder thing to do, that we would make some mistakes along the way, but that really this was a three- to five-year time frame we were looking at to get our house in order. What we did then was fundamentally readdress our purpose—some people call this ‘mission’. The reason for that is that during the 20th century the mission that had served Defence well was to prevent or defend Australia against armed attack. But as we moved into the 21st century it was highly likely that the ADF would be called upon to do other sorts of activi- ties. These activities were outlined in the white paper at the end of 2000 and included issues like terrorism, cyberattack, illegal fishing and people-smuggling as well as our normal work in terms of humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping, peacemaking and the like. Contained in the overview of the annual report was the change to Defence’s mission which was simply to defend Australia and its national interests. We spoke about a future or a vision for the organisation—and again that is dealt with in the annual report—and we have delivered that. We also had some discussion about values. The reason for this is that people do not actually join the Australian Defence Organisation; they probably do not even join the Australian Defence Force. They either join the Navy, the Army, the Air Force or what we call the fourth service: the Australian Public Service. Each of those has its own traditions, mores, esprit de corps and way of doing business. At the senior leadership level—the top 250 people who are one-star military officers, Senior Executive Service Band 1 equivalents and above—you have a responsibility to work across the Defence organisation as well as within each of those four arms of the organisation. So the senior leadership group then proceeded in June 2000 to develop a set of values and unbreakable rules and they are articulated in the overview in front of you. We—and I use the word ‘we’ because Admiral Chris Barrie and I, the co-leaders of the Defence Organisation, ran all of this jointly—said that we wanted to