In January 1973 I began preparing material for the announcement to be made by the Government as soon as Parliament met in late February. In addition, I needed riding instructions, in the form of terms of reference for the inquiry into the desired integration.
To gain support for Labor’s intention Whitlam wished to publish the 1958 report of the Morshead Committee to the Menzies Government, which Labor believed had much the same objective as theirs in 1973. This led to a somewhat arcane discussion with the Cabinet Secretary, John Bunting, who explained the convention against Ministers being given access to the Cabinet records of its predecessor. Was the report a Cabinet document or not? Whatever the answer, Whitlam, with his sense of propriety, decided to obtain the approval of the Leader of the Opposition once he had been chosen.
The Government announced its defence reorganisation intentions in a statement made by Barnard (conjointly with the Prime Minister) on 19 December, only days after taking office. The statement of some 2000 words, which I had drafted, incorporated the Government’s intention to spread the workload by appointing a person having Ministerial status in another portfolio as Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence (a course that I recommended). This clumsy and not wholly effective device to bring the load on a Minister to manageable proportions had been used by the Menzies Government in 1960 (on my advice on that occasion as well). Legal opinion had warned that the appointment within a portfolio of a second Minister enjoying emoluments might be found to be unconstitutional, in breach of Section 64 of the Constitution, with severe penalties under Section 44 (iv) for the Member of Parliament so appointed.
Barnard’s press statement contained, in effect, the terms of reference that I wanted. It is publicly available, both in Hansard and in the Tange Report, and need not be reproduced here. In drafting it for the Minister I thought that he should, for several reasons, confine himself to broad objectives, avoiding precision about detailed organisation. Obviously any conclusions I might reach would have to follow consultation with those already experienced in the daily management of the activities of the Services and in the satisfaction of the essential requirements of each Service (and they differed).
Unlike defence policy-making, this had not been the function of my Department. Because the Services had the constant requirement of a steady morale in meeting current and potential deployment demands, they needed assurance that arbitrary solutions would not be imposed on them by a new and unfamiliar Labor Government, and that consultations would be real. Politically, the Government would need to safeguard itself in Parliament on these points.
The stated objectives were the creation of a single Department containing the staff of Defence and the Service Departments (the Department of Supply being left for further study, which accorded with my own request). The statement said each Service would retain its own identity and exercise substantial delegation of authority; some areas under single-Service control would be transferred into central functional management in the Department; there was to be more effective central military control of operations and related military activity; and there was to be improved presentation to Parliament of the contribution made to Defence by the activities of the Services, and their cost. In later years, as other agencies developed programming of the kind pioneered in Defence, this was to be labelled measurement of ‘output’.
As the Ministers had accepted my draft, the words identified virtually everything that I had found deficient in the system in the previous three years. Approval by the new Government was encouraging and established a political signpost to the future.
How the statement was received in the Services I would learn only later. With their minds occupied with the redeployments and force reductions (in the Army), along with the daily tasks of the units and formations around the country and abroad, including Vietnam, there was likely to be less attention than we gave it in the Department of Defence.
To start the process I called together the three Service Departmental Secretaries. They were Sam Landau (Navy), Bruce White (Army) and Fred Green (Air). I spent several weeks meeting them from time to time and seeking their views on the shape of the future. I wanted to know how they functioned in relation to their two-star colleagues in the Service Boards and much else, before meeting with the Service Chiefs.
I did not expect that the Government would want the inquiry to examine the command structures of the Services at the operational level, below the boards to which the Departmental Secretaries belonged. This would in any case have been outside my experience and competence.