There were other reforms canvassed in my Report which did not come to full fruition. This was partly due to my belief that the civilian side of the Department should not enter into the promotion and appointment practices in respect of the uniformed members of the Services—for reasons of respect for military leadership and for the unique relationship between officers and the rank and file in a fighting Service which were the foundation of morale. The Report suggested areas needing examination by the occupant of the new position of Chief of Defence Force Staff in exercise of his newly acquired power of command. In the event, reforms were few (for reasons that I shall return to later). One example was the failure of the Services, more particularly the two that are oriented to use of complex technology, to fill the posts they were offered in the Defence Department with people possessing, in my judgement, the requisite qualification for the intellectually demanding judgements needed for policy advising. I noted that one Service in particular had a promotion policy that advanced officers with past prowess in combat who could not meet this test. The Air Force had a practice of not promoting to two-star rank officers other than pilots (unless filling the chief engineer’s post). The result was the loss, through compulsory age retirement, of men qualified for defence policy advising. The exhortations of Minister Fairhall in the late 1960s were not having the intended results.

Intervention from Defence was needed in other areas in the moulding of a Defence Force out of disparate Services. Establishment practices differed, as did job evaluations, particularly among the many engaged in technical work. Manpower, beyond his control, was a substantial element in the budget that the Secretary of Defence was responsible for preparing.

A Chief of Staff and a civilian administrator look at Service personnel selection, education, training and promotion from different perspectives. The overriding objective is to satisfy the Service Commander’s need to have capable leaders of operational activities in war. The civilian adviser to Ministers has the lesser concern of wanting some Service officers to be available with ability to participate in strategic assessments or to assess the cost effectiveness of equipment proposals from Services other than their own; or to judge the risks and advantages of contracting with foreign manufacturers and much else. Such tasks call for analytical capability, fostered by education, as well as proven good judgement and willingness to overlay objective and critical judgement upon their single Service loyalty. The number of positions is small but, because of the unavoidable Service requirement to rotate its personnel, a large number of potential appointees are required throughout the Service at all times.

Streaming of some officers into continuous advising on strategic policy or force structure analysis might not be acceptable, for reasons of morale in which combat leadership rather than desk-bound achievement would command respect. However, I detected no effort to examine this or alternative means of improving the quality of officers available for this area of Service responsibility. It was disturbing to see training courses presented as a substitute for education, and confusion between training (skill in doing things) and education (ability to think). There were also some questionable standards in the free use of the term ‘graduate’ for some Service courses of study.

I was aware of (and opposed to) the Service demand that each Defence Department posting be rotated among the three Services, irrespective of the quality of people presented for appointment. Value systems for the bringing on of these officers differed from Service to Service. A clue to differences is suggested by noting which Service produced occupants of the top position of Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee and its successor positions in later years. I considered and described the rotation practice as mindless. But ultimately I thought it was for Ministers to direct the Services to raise intellectual standards. In this I was disappointed after Fraser had strongly stated the need for an Australian Defence Academy at tertiary level. Resistance delayed its achievement. Few Ministers after Fairhall and Fraser were interested in this matter. Ministerial objectives can be frustrated by rigid Service practices, or perhaps by poor communication. I recalled Casey, a Minister with great regard for the Services, prevailing upon a Defence Minister in the 1950s to appoint Service Attachés to diplomatic missions in Asia as a way of developing better understanding in the Services of the new environment of Australia’s important independent neighbours where they might have to be deployed. I discovered that the Services, far from preserving and spreading the experience of Asia by officers appointed in this way, in most cases sent officers not eligible for promotion and destined to retire from the Service when their two-year posting was finished. I suspected that some appointments were intended as a reward rather than a task (while other officers performed admirably).