My proposal for the establishment of a number of committees containing representatives of the Services and civilians from the Department came under particular criticism. They were seen as time-wasting ways of frustrating decisions. It was ironic that what I had intended as reassurance that decisions by, for example, an officer of a particular Service, placed in charge of an area of policy, would not be taken without consultation with another Service affected, would be so misrepresented. I had in mind the longstanding rivalry (and occasional outburst of antipathy) between the Air Force and the Navy that I had witnessed in the past. In the event, I decided later that one or two committees were superfluous and did not set them up.
Probably the most extravagant public criticism came from Professor T.B. Millar. Millar was a Duntroon graduate who had retired to academic life with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. I doubt that he had had experience at the level of Army policy-making and higher administration.
I do not recall any criticisms of my report from my former Minister, Malcolm Fraser. In the Senate, doubts about the intrusion of civilians into command decisions were taken up by the Opposition. Some were concerned about military command being centralised and remote from the battlefield. Much was made of past campaign experience (in which some Senators had been involved 25 years earlier). The Minister did not give the obvious answer that the arrangements left open the delegation of command.
The official definition of command issued by the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee was as follows:
Command includes the authority and responsibility for effectively using available [my emphasis] resources and for planning the employment of, organising, directing, coordinating and controlling military forces for the accomplishment of assigned duties. It also includes responsibility for the welfare, morale and discipline of personnel under command.
This was read by some as requiring unqualified control of resources needed for military action. One simple fact tended to be overlooked by speakers on both sides of the Parliament and by public commentators on the new organisation. Military command cannot extend to resources that the military do not already have. Yet much of policy activity in Defence, and control by the Defence Department of commitments falling on future budgets, involve requests from the Service Chiefs and not resources in their hands. When the Chiefs express their view of future needs, it comes to Defence in what, in the jargon, is called ‘bids’. Examination of the cost-effectiveness, and conformity to other standards in the use of taxpayers’ money, is exercised by suitably objective civilian and military officers. This was supposed to be the practice in Service Boards, whose members included a sole civilian who was outweighed by the uniformed petitioners from the various commands. The flaw was the absence of a test of overall Defence effectiveness. This was what the Defence Department, with its limited legal authority, was supposed to remedy.
I did not think it needed to be said that the nearer our commanders got to an actual battlefield, external supervision of their use of resources was bound to be modified. Yet much was made of the view that the recommended organisation was designed for peace and not for war. It was, in my opinion, very unlikely that in 1973 the public and Parliament would agree to a command by the military of money and other resources applicable in a time of war. What was needed was an organisation capable of adaptation, but not necessarily with the immediacy to meet a war without warning. Some doomsayers saw such a war as a possibility in our strategic environment in the 1970s. It was a view that suited the Services wanting more resources. It was not a view shared by me or by those making considered strategic assessments for the Government based on massive sources of information.
Nor did the critics acknowledge the intended use of Ministerial directives to provide safeguards for the Services from a so-called ‘civilian takeover’. One such critic who gained media attention was the former Director of Naval Intelligence and then Member of the House of Representatives, later Senator, David Hamer. Writing in the Melbourne Age he depicted the Defence Department as having had limited functions in the past and having only recently acquired some increase in authority, leaving the implication that this had been done by the Department’s officials. He chose not to acknowledge that Ministers of his own party had recognised the deficiencies in oversight of the Services, and had not shared his disparaging assessment of the professional capabilities of public servants.