Much of the Department’s activity under Killen and the new Coalition Government from 1976 onwards was aimed at bringing to fruition the reforms initiated by its predecessor, and fighting for funds predicated in the ongoing Five Year Defence Programme. The programme under Labor had substantially moved towards a greater share for capital equipment and capital works on bases and fixed installations around the continent.

The days of Ministerially directed reforms were behind us. One reform whose origins preceded the Whitlam Government was the programming system now embedded in the management of the Services and of the activities of the Department. But its methods, and the priorities it recommended for Ministerial incorporation in his approved programme, continued to be challenged by Services whose equipment or manpower bids were reduced or denied under the discipline of the system. In addition, new strains were imposed on the system from the fiscal controllers in the Government as it began to address what threatened to become dangerous inflation. The Consumer Price Index, a standard measure of inflation, grew by 9.3 per cent in 1977 and tight fiscal measures still left it at a high growth of 7.8 per cent in 1978. A practical consequence of this, affecting me and others, was to spend very much time in conference with the Chiefs revising, reprogramming and debating where the axe should fall—time which could otherwise have been spent in addressing deficiencies in various parts of the sprawling Defence empire.

Moreover, I would surmise that this frequent recasting of plans, necessitated by the unwillingness of Ministers to provide budget funds at the level previously approved for planning purposes, fed into doubts about the legitimacy of the system. With a receptive audience among those backbenchers with a Service background, scapegoats could be found—particularly the role of civilians in assessing and disputing plans for their part of the total force structure put forward separately by each of the three Services.

Before long we also began to experience the Fraser style of directing the business of government, and the extent to which he subjected his Ministers and their officials to an inquisition as to what they were doing, and as to the validity of the policies they were recommending to Cabinet. In the main, the Defence Department and its Minister got off lightly, apart from cuts in expenditure aggregates, until the 1978–79 budget. I do not recall any Prime Ministerial intervention in the shaping of the force structure (this was, as I understand it, to change later when, after retirement, I was no longer privy to what went on). Fraser was directing his enormous energy, and his demands on others, to reforming the machinery of government and to meeting the economic and social problems of Australia. We nevertheless felt the backwash of his demands for re-examination of advice, and for a response to demands for information under short and sometimes unreasonable timetables. Some Parliamentary Committees noticeably began treating public servants more peremptorily than had been customary. The style was catching.

Towards the end of 1976 I used a session of the Minister’s new Defence Council to tell him that unreasonable strains were being imposed on both civilian and Service officers from the expenditure controllers of Cabinet in the campaign against inflation, and to request his intervention. We had particular problems when Cabinet demands began to be directed at designated expenditure activities without an understanding of the consequences. I believed that some had more to do with pandering to popular prejudice than with achieving rational economies. Cuts imposed on travel expenditure were such a case. Rather than preventing suspected high-living in luxury hotels, the cuts impacted more on the ability to send Servicemen to places where they could train with others in suitable formations, or on the ability of auditors to travel to the remote areas where expenditure delegations were exercised and waste might occur. But we had limited success in getting a hearing.

Beyond these irrationalities on particulars, Defence had eventually to accept a reduction of previously approved programmes in toto. In explaining to Parliament the 1978–79 Defence appropriation, Killen was obliged to explain that budget stringency had forced the rescheduling or modification of acquisitions planned in the White Paper two years earlier. He was nevertheless able to point to the transition of the Services to the new technologies of missiles and sensors which had particular value for a country where manpower was limited and had vast areas requiring protection. It was particularly satisfying to the Department that he linked the acquisition of some specified equipment to the requirements for operations in Australia’s near neighbourhood—the focus we were advocating. He spoke of patrol boats with an improved sea-keeping capacity for deployment off-shore, and of the stipulation that contenders for the major fighter replacement should have an air-to-surface capability against hostile shipping in the approaches to Australia.

In making his March 1979 statement to Parliament, Killen accepted the Department’s advice to marry an emphasis on ability to defend ourselves against credible threats to our own soil with, as he put it, ‘the practical option of contributing to Pacific defence in accordance with the ANZUS treaty’. As to the first, he said that our allies could be expected to look to Australia ‘to be reasonably self-reliant, and to make a maximum effort to look after its own security’. For me this was a satisfying recognition by a Minister of a conservative government of the outlook given shape by the earlier Labor Administration. Since he was at the same time announcing reduced expenditure targets, Killen went to some lengths to explain that few powers possessed the capability of overwhelming our sea and air forces at the end of a long logistic line, and that most of them are friends and allies.^[2] Lesser regional powers did not possess the capability to succeed; and, were they to set out to develop it over time, the intention would be blindingly obvious to us.

In later years, under a succeeding Labor Government, this view of ample warning time came to be challenged as being over-sanguine about the strength of potential local threats. But I saw a cause for satisfaction in that, subject to the ebb and flow of simplistic political rhetoric, there emerged at last a consensus that Australia should make defence of its own territory the first duty of a self-respecting nation without looking first to others.