The experience that I brought to Defence, already related, was very different from that of the Service Chiefs with whom I was to work, and whose codes of Service loyalties and responsibilities I had to understand.

As noted earlier, my first international experience was not with matters military but with international plans and organisations in economic, social and, later, political areas. My first encounter with defence and security advice was when North Korea (later joined by China) invaded the South, and the United Nations authorised a military action against the invaders in which Australia joined.

Many people had earlier sharpened my awareness of the interests of Australia in the world requiring to be protected. H.C. Coombs and fellow economists whom I served had campaigned to convince a resistant United States of its obligations to conduct expansive domestic policies upon which the trade opportunities of other countries depended.

Some of my External Affairs experience had limited value in Defence. My financial responsibilities had not been great. My managerial experience had been directed at creating an effective organisation for the Department for the first time; and for assessing the suitability of people for particular responsibilities within it. I had much to learn in Defence (which was not the kind of assessment that came naturally to my predecessor and friend Henry Bland). I had by then formed a view of the Public Service and its disciplined performance that some of my earlier External Affairs subordinates may have found over-demanding. I had a deep conviction that public service was more than a career; that it was a duty to the public.

I recorded in earlier chapters my judgement that the Services were gripped overmuch by the experiences of the past in addressing Australia’s present and future. I came to recognise that this was to some extent an understandable product of deep attachments of loyalty and spirit that were fostered by living institutions. In Foreign Affairs it is easier and best to be pragmatic about whether or not to allow traditional friendships to affect policy. Rash misjudgements in the language of diplomacy seldom have long-lasting effects; and time is a healer. But in Defence the lag time in everything is long, and wrong preparations, or nomination of the wrong likely adversary, carry the risk of more lasting damage. Caution about change can be justified.

I had to think again whether the censorious views I had expressed before coming to the Defence Department (noted in Chapter 1) were less applicable to the Chiefs than to the defence organisation, kept in being by successive governments, that preserved rivalries for resources without a disciplined system requiring conformity to government-approved strategic priorities.

The most senior Service officers brought into the Department as Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee or Chief of Defence Force Staff brought an experience very different from that of a chair-bound civilian. My first had British Army experience pre-war and later served in combat with Australians in the Middle East and New Guinea during the Second World War. My second, a naval aviator, had had carriers sunk under him twice. The third had served in combat in the Middle East and later Korea. The fourth had commanded in Vietnam; and the fifth had commanded the Malayan Navy after many sea-going commands. The Service Boards contained officers who had served on the ground or in the air over Europe and North Africa.

As they rose to eminence in the fighting profession, they had one feature in common: with occasional exceptions, they had been commanded by, and been given their strategic instructions by, an ally (Britain or the United States). In 1970, Fraser proclaimed that the Services should prepare their military capabilities from a strategic assessment that was common to all three and accepted by the Government. It was this that subsequently occupied me in getting it articulated and observed in practice. The residual influence of Australia’s past associations, going back to earlier Imperial defence, helps explain how much grip the past had on the later response to the contemporary Australian environment. But there was more than that for the civilian administrator to understand. As I see it, the lifeblood of a uniformed Service is loyalty; and when it was directed upward it was directed eventually to Australia’s Head of State by three ‘Royal’ Services. Past campaigns fought under American as well as British strategic direction are honoured; and in addition there are public institutions preserving and honouring past service in these campaigns.

All of this called for respect on my part. But respect could not extend to accepting priority for modernising and replacing equipment and developing capabilities originating in past campaigns against enemies that no longer existed, or which no longer credibly related to this continent’s changing geopolitical environment. As I have tried to illustrate in this memoir, my work with the Services was mainly about getting a consensus on what capability was relevant to the future and within the country’s realistic willingness to support it; and about persuading Ministers to accept that conclusion. This was unfinished business in my time. And with so many uncertainties always up for judgement and debate, it is likely to remain so.