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Before retirement in 1979 I served my remaining four years in government service under James Killen as Minister and Malcolm Fraser as Prime Minister. At the end there was a well-intentioned, but publicly controversial and financially impractical, proposal from Ministers that I accept an extension beyond the compulsory retiring age of 65, which I declined. On retirement, I was able to turn to neglected family affairs, some writing and occasional involvement in seminars, and to take a short-term appointment nominated by the Prime Minister to review the Public Service in Fiji for that Government.
Killen had held the Navy portfolio (now defunct) in the McMahon Ministry. After the now familiar formalities of inducting a new Minister into some classified areas which were subject to limited access, my first interest was to ascertain whether the reorganised system, and the policies put in place by his Labor predecessor, would be confirmed or wound back. Several matters hung in the air. Although amendments to the Defence Act had been proclaimed, they were not to come into effect until February 1976. The content of the Five Year programme would need to be reviewed by the Government, along with its underlying strategic assumptions. We could expect a call for a comprehensive review of those assumptions. Recommendations expected from the Hope Royal Commission affecting Defence would require decision. There was the Defence Force Academy project, several times deferred. There were inefficiencies, such as the low productivity of the civilian workforce in the Williamstown Dockyard managed by the Navy, which needed fixing. The Department had the problem of the over-manned technical and support staff which had been dedicated to the long defunct rocket programme at Woomera. I needed also to learn from the new Minister how he would respond to the unabated sniping from his backbench over the role of civilians in the Department.
Killen confirmed that the Coalition would not try to unwind the system embodied in the legislation. But he wished to place above it a Defence Council chaired by the Minister. I had the documentation prepared. My own attitude was that it was not really necessary to have a Council for him to call in the Secretary and the Chiefs to report collectively to him, but there was no harm in it. Unlike the kind of executive Board of Management for which some Chiefs had hankered, and with which Killen was familiar in his Navy portfolio, such a Council could not be reconciled with the new legislation establishing new lines of authority downwards from the Minister through the diarchy accountable to him. A new Council could advise the Minister but not make decisions. In the event it met rarely.