Why insist on free health services for all?

THE DISPUTE about the effects of declining private health insurance and the allegedly jumping of queues for treatment in public hospitals has produced a remarkable outbreak of muddled thinking.

Falling numbers of insured may come mainly from younger age groups who presently make less demands on hospital services, but it beggars belief to deny any substantive link between falling insured and the rapidly increasing call on taxpayers to fund free services, as reflected in the estimated 22 per cent increase in admissions of public patients to public hospitals between 1989-90 and 1992-93.  And it is just as fallacious to suggest that the treatment in public hospitals of patients prepared to pay deprives public patients of treatment.

In reality, queues for free services in public hospitals do not reflect any lack of beds.  The Commonwealth's National Health Strategy of August 1991 stated that improving treatment methods mean that "there may be a need for as few as 3.3 beds per 1000 population by 2001".  This target national standard is well above Victoria's current ratio of 4.5 beds per 1000 population.  In the next few years some additional public hospitals will be closed.

The queues arise because Commonwealth and state governments' funding for public hospitals is insufficient to pay for all those seeking free services.  This is scarcely surprising:  if a service is free there is bound to be a high demand -- and bound to be a justifiable limit on taxpayer contributions.

If charging is not used as a rationing device, waiting lists are inevitable.  Even with the improved productivity of Victoria's public hospitals under the case-mix system, and the resultant dramatic drop in public waiting lists, queues for free treatment are most unlikely to disappear.

It is common sense, therefore, for public hospitals to use surplus beds to treat patients prepared to pay.  As public hospitals usually more than cover running costs on services they sell to private patients, this reduces the net cost of free services.  Moreover, public bed patients benefit from having senior specialists on site more often and then available to treat such patients.

Private patients in public hospitals generally have the alternative of a private hospital.  Thus, if the public hospitals were now to restrict services only to public patients, private hospitals would expand services to meet the demand.

It is not correct therefore that private patients in public hospitals are "jumping the queue".  On the contrary, if someone on the free waiting list for a public bed pays for private bed treatment that allows others to move up the queue.

There is other nonsense promulgated both inside and outside the medical profession about health services and their funding.

One big puzzle is why there is such insistence on making services available free of charge to all.  Of course, low income groups should have free treatment, as they do now.  But it is absurd on both economic and equity grounds to make hospital and medical services available free to middle- and higher-income groups, except for the chronically ill.

The latter could receive a government subsidy for medical costs above a proportion of their incomes.  Otherwise these income groups should meet, not a "co-payment" (as the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Howe, proposed), but their whole bills.  If they are concerned about possible large bills, they can take out insurance.  Such a change would allow a substantial reduction in taxation.

Unlike her two predecessors, the new federal Health Minister, Dr Lawrence, shows little understanding of the direction in which reforms should be moving.  Her stated aim of not increasing the proportion of GDP spent on health is absurd: if people decide that is how they want to spend their incomes, governments should be concerned only to ensure the health services market is competitive.  Nor should she worry about "creating one health system for the poor and one for the rich":  such a system exists now in the sense that those prepared to pay for hospital treatment (and they are not all "rich") already do so.  And her reflex rejection of the states taking over several health services reveals a failure to understand the world-wide trend towards decentralised management.

The bipartisan agreement to maintain the present inefficient community rating system is also anomalous.  A government subsidy for the chronically ill would allow desirable changes to that system (which outlaws insurance charges that vary with the risk of illness).  If the chronically ill were largely insured by the taxpayer, private insurance would be at a lower average charge -- but with differential charges that encouraged preventative measures to improve health.

The health system needs a massive injection of competition.  For example, the main complaint about public hospitals treating fee-paying patients should not be queue-jumping but the provision of competition for private hospitals from an unfair base.  (Hitherto, their charges have not covered their capital costs:  the new Victorian system of requiring provisions for capital costs will help overcome this).  In the longer run the distinction between public and private hospitals should be eliminated by privatising public hospital services.

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Charities at work -- compassion with efficiency

Important questions need to be addressed about the extent and form of government intervention and whether such intervention is producing appropriate results.

THE INDUSTRY Commission inquiry into charitable organisations, which has produced record submissions, has set alarm bells ringing among some who fear the sword of economic rationalism is about to cut the private-sector welfare industry down.

The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney thought it "iniquitous" for the IC to investigate the tax deductibility of charitable donations, and proposed that the inquiry be postponed.  According to a Uniting Church spokesman, "We will get an economic analysis of the community services sector, an analysis from a group that is not itself knowledgeable about what we are doing".

Such reactions are unfortunately typical of the failure of church (and other) social justice advocates to understand that economists are concerned about issues of equity and are not preoccupied with economic efficiency.  They accept that assisting disadvantaged people should not be left entirely to private charitable decisions as this would result in less welfare being supplied than the community desires.  Hence economists readily agree that governments should intervene in the "charitable market" to supplement private charitable giving.

This is not the end of the matter, however.  Important queestions need to be addressed about the extent and form of government intervention, and whether such intervention is producing appropriate results.  A major justification for the inquiry is that, either through the tax deductibility of donations to charitable groups or through the financing by governments of their services, the taxpayer is the main source of funding.  It is entirely appropriate, therefore, to investigate whether taxpayer resources are being used efficiently and whether there should be any change in the relationships between governments and charities, including the extent to which welfare services should be provided through charities.

For their part, charitable organisations need to demonstrate that they are accountable not only to governments but to their donors and their customers for achieving the most efficient and effective delivery of services possible.  Indeed, even though some who should do so may not recognise it, charities have a moral obligation to work to this end.

The three large organisations I helped prepare a joint submission to the IC inquiry -- the Association for the Blind, the Spastic Society of Victoria and the Yooralla Society of Victoria -- emphasise that their aim is best practice in services delivery to their disabled customers and that this is most likely to occur in a competitive environment.

The title of their submission, "Compassion with Efficiency", highlights their belief that a business-like approach to the supply of welfare "should not imply any down-playing of the charitable side:  it should simply mean the delivery of 'compassion' within an efficient framework".

Their three high-powered chief executive officers have, in effect, concluded that pursuit of economic rationalist principles is in the best interests of their organisations and their customers.

These three organisations acknowledge, none the less, that there is both scope and a need to improve the efficiency of the private community services industry.  As with much of the government sector, the funding of charitable services has hitherto been based too much on a cost of inputs approach and too little on identifying the most efficient way of achieving a desired standard of service.  While welcoming as an appropriate discipline the Victorian Government's decision to move entirely to a contractual basis in its purchasing of services from charitable bodies, the organisations have therefore suggested that a small taskforce be established to develop agreed standards and a more business-like relationship with government.

Their argument that charities should be treated as independent groups and not simply as agencies of government is a powerful one.  The community has expressed a long-standing wish to be directly involved in helping people who are disadvantaged and governments should respect that wish.

This desire for direct involvement is expressed both through donations of money to charitable bodies and the free provision by volunteers of their time (as valuable as the monetary donations).

Tax deductibility on donations and tax exemptions to charities probably result in a net saving to the taxpayer.  But the community involvement produces a social benefit which may also be considerable.

This leads to an important conclusion.  If charitable organisations are fulfilling evident community desires and needs, there is a strong case for making greater use of them.  To do that would be consistent with the growing trend to separate the funding and delivery of government services.

This trend recognises that independent agencies are usually more efficient, more innovative and more responsive to individual needs than direct service provision by government departments or agencies.

While some charitable organisations may not like to think of themselves as businesses involved in an industry, they do have that function as well as their invaluable caring role.  Their operations can combine the best elements of a society that is both caring and concerned to use its resources efficiently.  The potential for expanding their role is considerable in a world that is moving increasingly away from direct government intervention in society.

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More reforms in education will improve quality

Children well understand that competition is a part of life.

LAST Saturday afternoon I made the supreme sacrifice.  Instead of going to see my Magpies trounce the Hawks I spoke at an education forum arranged by groups representing Victorian government school teachers and parents.  As it happened, the forum was at the back of the Collingwood football ground and when I began to hear cries of "rubbish" during my talk I at first assumed that Hawthorn supporters were reacting to umpiring decisions.  I quickly realised, however, that most of the audience was not entirely with me.

It emerged that the predominant group (government school teachers) strongly objected to an "outsider" suggesting that the reductions in teachers and closures of schools under the Kennett Government were fully justified and should not have adverse effects on the quality of education.

The audience was particularly taken aback by my statement that the reductions would even have been justified if Victoria had no debt problem.  How could a person without experience of teaching in a government school make such a judgment?  Would I be prepared, one woman challenged, to spend a week accompanying her around her teaching duties so that I could see what it is really like?  The idea that no one from outside a system can understand it or make sensible proposals for reform has superficial appeal.  However, history is full of disastrous political experiments that have been based on insiders thinking of themselves as the font of all wisdom.

The problem increases when one is told that it is not legitimate to compare different education systems.  Such comparisons are admittedly made more difficult by the paucity of data on the output of government schools, a paucity which reflects the hostility of teachers' unions and associated groups to external testing and to the publication of test results.

The adverse reaction to the Government's recent announcement of limited testing of primary school children for basic literacy, numeracy and other skills is the latest example of the incredible inwardness that exists.  Yet schoolchildren well understand that competition is a part of life and most are naturally competitive.  The trick is surely to teach them how to handle competition and to put it in perspective.

The dearth of authoritative Australian data on the possible effects of differences in class size means that one has to make deductions based largely on overseas research.  While this research is not completely conclusive, the overwhelming weight of evidence suggests that, within a range of about 15 to 35, differences in class sizes generally make no difference to students' results.  This does not mean that smaller classes are never desirable or advantageous since it is an "on average" conclusion.

One can also draw on the fact that the smaller class sizes (and smaller schools) in the Victorian government school system have not produced any evidence of a better education than in other states' systems or in the private school system.  Indeed, the large shift during the 1980s away from Victorian government schools into private schools (which generally have higher pupil-teacher ratios) suggests that parents have been voting with their feet.  Certainly the New South Wales government school system retains a significantly higher proportion of total students and the HSC exam there has developed into a standard which is attracting an increasing number of candidates from Asian countries.

The truth is that, even with the large reductions in teachers employed in Victorian government schools and the school closures, pupil-teacher ratios and school sizes are still lower here than in NSW.  In short, Victoria is not operating at the "best practice" levels which the Government's rhetoric would have us believe are its objective.  Yet Victorian teachers' unions are now seeking to have the federal Industrial Relations Commission restore through a federal award the even lower pupil-teacher ratios (and lower student contact hours) they previously had.  It will be a gross dereliction of duty if the Commonwealth Government allows the claim to proceed unopposed and another blow to state sovereignty if the commission accedes to it.

One other result of overseas research is that increased school autonomy produces an improved quality of education.  Yet (as with all other reforms) we again see the Victorian teachers' unions strongly opposing even the somewhat limited extent of decentralisation of management being implemented under the Schools of the Future program.

Their pathetic criticism is that giving principals greater power over staffing carries with it the potential for abuse.  But so it does in the private school system.  Remedies for abuse are available.

For an outsider to the government school system interested only in obtaining the best quality education it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the trenchant opposition of teachers' unions to obviously desirable reforms is primarily motivated by concern that their power and influence will be reduced.  Were it not for the hostility of the teachers' unions, the Victorian Government would not be holding back from the many reforms to teacher training, curriculum, external assessment and school management that are still needed to improve this state's government school system.  These are the reforms that will raise quality, not smaller classes or less teacher contact with students.

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Searching for Insecurity: Why the "Secure Australia Project" is Wrong about Defence

ABBREVIATIONS

ADF = Australian Defence Force
ADI = Australian Defence Industries
AGPS = Australian Government Publishing Service
ANZAC = Australia-New Zealand Army Corps
ANZUS = Australia New Zealand United States (Alliance)
ASC = Australian Submarine Corporation
ASEAN = Association of South East Asian Nations
ASTA = Aerospace Technologies of Australia
C-130 = Transport aircraft (Hercules)
CDF = Chief of the Defence Force
CJFA = Commander, Joint Forces Australia
CSBM = Confidence and Security Building Measure
CSP = Commercial Support Program
DCP = Defence Co-operation Program
DDG = Guided Missile Destroyer
EO = Explosive Ordnance
EEZ = Exclusive Economic Zone
F-111 = Strike aircraft
F/A-18 = Fighter aircraft
FFG = Guided Missile Frigate
FMS = Foreign Military Sales
HMAS = Her Majesty's Australian Ship
MHI = Minehunter (Inshore)
NORCOM = Northern Command
NSO = National Security Office
OTHR = Over the Horizon Radar
PNGDF = Papua New Guinea Defence Force
PMB = Program Management Budgeting
RAAF = Royal Australian Air Force
RAN = Royal Australian Navy
SAP = Secure Australia Project
UN = United Nations

"RESISTANCE AND IDEA-MONGERING"

In October 1992 a group called the Secure Australia Project launched a call for a "public inquiry into Australia's international security priorities".  Secure Australia Project members argue that current defence policy is too costly, overambitious, does not address fundamental defence requirements and creates insecurity in the region.  Their inquiry was to canvass options for "a greatly reduced military budget and a review of all defence co-operation programs", "a defence policy tightly geared to the defence of Australia and UN peace-keeping, rather than the projection of our national military power in the region" and "new and imaginative" policies on a number of regional security issues like Bougainville, East Timor and Irian Jaya. ⁽¹⁾  This call was taken up by the Australian Democrats who promised to introduce legislation in Parliament establishing terms of reference and appointing an inquiry panel. ⁽²⁾  Support from the Democrats makes it likely that there will be continuing interest in the Secure Australia Project's critique of current defence policy.

The ideas of the Secure Australia Project have been widely promoted through two books, The New Australian Militarism published in 1990 and Threats Without Enemies published in 1992 ⁽³⁾ as well as through an active and continuing media campaign.  The project counts among its members a number of prominent politicians such as Federal Labor backbencher John Langmore and former Green Senator Jo Vallentine, her former adviser Peter Jones, Australian Democrat adviser Richard Bolt, spokesperson for the Rainbow Alliance Joseph Camilleri, peace activist St John Kettle and a number of academics.  If this is the core of the Secure Australia Project (hereafter SAP), St John Kettle believes its membership spreads much wider:

I belong in it, and I imagine it to be part of a bigger group pressing for common security.  I like to think that this "we" includes my friends in Brisbane's peace network, and that it also has as an honorary member Mikhail Gorbachev, a statesman who understood how to promote common security.

Kettle and the SAP (with or without Gorbachev) see their role as being to "... seize the opportunity now open to move toward our vision" of a security policy based on the features noted above.  In doing this they employ "resistance and idea-mongering", in other words, "... the old-fashioned, laborious but imperative business of resisting the state system where it's moving in the wrong direction" [emphasis in original].  The SAP is therefore a call to arms, or rather a call to disarm.  Says peace activist Kettle:  "we should attack now while the ideologues of insecurity are regrouping". ⁽⁴⁾

Leaving the protest march rhetoric aside, the issues raised by the SAP are of enormous importance in debates about Australian defence and security policy.  Yet while the SAP view has had a substantial airing in Australian public forums and plays an influential role in academic and journalistic commentary, there has been almost no attempt directly to address or refute their arguments.  This deserves to be done both to encourage the growth of the defence debate in Australia and to ensure that the debate proceeds on an intellectually sound footing.

The case put by the SAP against current defence and security policy is fundamentally flawed.  The SAP case for "broadening" the security debate to include a variety of non-defence areas like environmentalism and issues of domestic violence serves only to confuse rather than enlighten.  I argue that comparisons of this sort do not establish an intellectually sound basis for cutting the defence budget or for drastically changing the way defence policy is developed.  SAP proposals for restructuring the Australian Defence Force (ADF) would, if implemented, severely damage the military's capacity to defend the country and ability to contribute to regional security.  In turn this would undermine Australia's approach to regional security, a development which would not be welcomed in South East Asia or the South Pacific.  Equally, there is no valid basis on which to argue that present defence policies are destabilising or threatening to the region.  Finally, I argue that the SAP call for a public inquiry to "democratise" the defence debate is not designed to promote greater community understanding of defence policy so much as it is to advance the defence agenda of SAP members and their political supporters.

BROADENING "SECURITY":  IMPLICATIONS AND PROBLEMS

THE SAP CASE

The Secure Australia Project begins with the premise that the idea of security has been "hijacked" by those promoting a "narrow, hollow and militarised" definition of security involving the consideration only of defence issues.  This hijack took place in the 1950s at the height of the Cold War and has dominated academic writing on security ever since.  Military security has thus stolen its legitimacy from broader, more inclusive concepts of security.  Not only has the subject matter of military security studies been too limiting, the SAP argues that the intellectual assumptions of analysts have been constrained by the so-called "realist" approach.  The result according to Jan Jindy Pettman is that:

The [security] debate ... is often framed within state-centric realism, where it is each state for itself or with its allies in a world of ungoverned and aggressive competition, with war as the ultimate sanction and preparation for war the ultimate security. ⁽⁵⁾

These arguments are based on a growing body of academic literature concerning the meaning of security and the need to broaden the concept to include a range of non-military threats.  Thus R.B.J. Walker argues that the state "has in many ways become a primary source of insecurity".  Security should be seen as a people-oriented rather than a state-centred concept.  The state advances the interests only of the elite group who control it, or at best only those who are citizens of the state.  Walker argues that this works against the interests of people:  "... in a world of connections, in a world of emerging solidarities, either security will be understood as referring to all people or it will not be at all". ⁽⁶⁾

What then should be the proper focus of security studies?  Richard Ullman offers the following definition of the term "security threat":

[A] threat to national security is an action or sequence of events that (1) threatens drastically and over a relatively brief span of time to degrade the quality of life for the inhabitants of a state, or (2) threatens significantly to narrow the range of policy choices available to the government of a state or to private non-governmental entities (persons, groups, corporations) within the state. ⁽⁷⁾

Unlike Walker, Ullman allows a role for the state, but even so his definition is very all-embracing.  So too is Jessica Mathews's approach in her frequently-cited Foreign Affairs article.  She lists the following security problem areas:  international economics, population growth, natural resource trends, genetic diversity, species loss, soil degradation, logging, high-technology fishing techniques, the hole in the ozone layer, greenhouse, rising ocean levels and family planning. ⁽⁸⁾  This is only a partial list;  other writers have added further categories including human rights and issues of domestic violence and violence within the family and local community.  For the SAP, the urgent need is to "reclaim" the concept of security because to leave the concept in its current confines "is to shut out from perception a series of security issues of fundamental significance to Australia's future in the international system". ⁽⁹⁾

ARGUMENTS AGAINST A BROAD DEFINITION OF "SECURITY"

What are we to make of the SAP critique of the current "narrow" use of security and their attempt to reclaim the concept by broadening the meaning of the term?  There are three principal arguments against the SAP position.  First, their description of the Australian approach to security is shallow and inadequate, and fails to acknowledge the variety of means by which Australian security interests are protected.  "Security" is already broadly defined in policy terms.  However, there are practical and intellectual limits to further broadening its meaning.  The second argument against the SAP case is that an even more inclusive definition of security would reduce rather than add intellectual clarity to the policy debate.  The third argument is that the SAP case does not offer an intellectually sound basis to support their claim that defence spending should be cut.

Existing policy approaches

If one accepted the SAP assessment about the quality of current security policy analysis, one could conclude that Australia is very poorly served by its defence and security officials.  However, that would not be a fair judgement based on a reading of either academic or official statements about security.  SAP members overstate their case by arguing that the present approach takes no account of factors other than military security issues.  Pettman's statement quoted above about the limitations of state-centric realism with its unsophisticated focus on "a world of ungoverned and aggressive competition" is not much more than an intellectual straw man.  Although there is a strong emphasis on the state-centred realist approach in Australian writing on defence and security, this has never been to the exclusion of the other areas nominated by the SAP. ⁽¹⁰⁾  Thus Pettman's conclusion that the security debate can be broadened with the inclusion of factors crossing state boundaries -- such as regional security co-operation, economic linkages and population flows between countries ⁽¹¹⁾ -- says nothing particularly new and, indeed, ignores a substantial and growing body of work dealing with these areas.

This is no less true of government statements on defence and security.  The 1989 document, Australia's Regional Security, by Foreign Affairs Minister Gareth Evans, comprehensively lists the elements which collectively make up security policy.  Evans classifies these into seven areas:  military capability, politico-military capability, diplomacy, economic links, development assistance, "non-military threat" assistance and, finally, exchange of people and ideas.  The Foreign Affairs Minister even admits the possibility that exchanges of academics may enhance security. ⁽¹²⁾  This acceptance of the broad nature of security is not limited to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.  Defence Department statements focussing on military security admit that this is but one dimension of a bigger picture.  Thus the 1987 Defence White Paper says that "our international political concerns and interests will always be more far reaching than our defence capabilities". ⁽¹³⁾  The public version of Australia's Strategic Planning in the 1990s says:

Defence is, of course, but one instrument of policy available to government in maintaining a positive security and strategic environment.  Through its various activities, the Defence Organisation both complements and supports activities conducted in the diplomatic, economic, social and commercial fields, at the government and private sector levels. ⁽¹⁴⁾

Even the Defence Report 1991-1992 endorses the broad interpretation of security, arguing that defence should be seen as a "total package":  "Strategy, foreign policy and domestic reform, including industry restructuring and personnel initiatives, have all contributed to a security approach that will serve Australia well into the next century." ⁽¹⁵⁾

It is regrettable that the Australian foreign policy establishment has, in fact, gone too far in embracing the intellectual fashion by adopting a broader definition of security.  The clearest example of this is in Cooperating for Peace, an October 1993 statement by Foreign Affairs Minister Gareth Evans proposing reforms to the United Nations in support of a greater peacekeeping role.  The "Blue Book", as it is called in Canberra, unquestioningly embraces the SAP definition of security, accepting that "... the state's security can be menaced, for example, by threats to its economic well-being;  political stability and social harmony;  to the health of its citizens;  or to its environment".  The book confidently states:  "international environmental issues are linked intrinsically to international security issues and require global solutions".  However, there is no exploration of what the "intrinsic" link might be, or a description of how one might craft a security policy around such a nebulous concept.  After having paid lip-service to the broad meaning of security, the Blue Book reverts to a compartmentalised study of military and diplomatic solutions to essentially military security problems.  In adopting the SAP approach the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has succumbed to "group think":  a common Canberra illness helpfully described by the Blue Book as:  "the tendency to filter incoming information in terms of the group's established framework and to reject information which contradicts these preconceived ideas". ⁽¹⁶⁾

Showing that the defence establishment is aware of the broader meaning of security is, however, unlikely to satisfy the SAP, which argues that governments err by separating the elements of security into different categories.  They argue that the official approach to security is too fragmented and not subject to rounded analysis.  By contrast, a focus on the broad meaning of security puts military security into its proper perspective, taking it out of the self-interested hands of defence specialists.

There is a strong case for the claim that more should be done to co-ordinate national security policy making in Australia.  Different government departments have different perspectives and priorities on security matters and the means of reconciling these differences are often not adequate to the task.  Thus, departments like Defence and Foreign Affairs and Trade differ over important details on matters like peacekeeping policy and arms exports procedures.  Defence and Customs could have different requirements and priorities over issues like surveillance;  and Defence and the Attorney-General's Department might part company over appropriate roles for police forces during time of defence emergency.  Security policy would be better served if a bureaucratic mechanism existed to co-ordinate the policy interests of relevant departments and to advise Cabinet about the best way to implement a single, consistent and rational policy.  The Federal Coalition proposed creating such an organisation -- to be called the National Security Office (NSO) -- in its 1992 defence policy statement, A Strong Australia.  The main functions of the NSO were to have been to:

co-ordinate the efforts of the relevant departments towards achieving unified policy in the security area, [to] ensure that departments operate within government policy settings in the security area, and [to] ensure that briefings for Ministers and Cabinet adequately address Australian security concerns in the broad and not simply from a narrow departmental perspective. ⁽¹⁷⁾

This proposal for better co-ordination extends only to those agencies concerned with defence, foreign affairs, trade and perhaps some customs and policing functions.  The theme which unites these concerns is a focus on co-ordinating responses to meet external threats to national security.  A Customs Department requirement, for example, to maintain surveillance of air movements into Australia is one best achieved if the ADF is closely involved.  It is difficult, however, to see how co-ordination of this sort could be improved by adding SAP concerns about personal security, health security and so on, to the list.

There is, therefore, some policy debate in Australia about the need for a mechanism to co-ordinate approaches to national security.  Additionally, government statements on security policy recognise that there is far more to security than simply military defence.  While this approach may not be as all-embracing as the SAP would like, it is also considerably more nuanced and sophisticated than their portrayal of Australian security policy-making.

A failure to add intellectual clarity

The second reason for rejecting an all-encompassing definition of security is that the broader the definition, the less likely that analytically useful judgements will be made in any area covered by the term.  It is already accepted that "security" covers military, economic and trade matters, to which SAP members add environmental security, personal security (from domestic violence), human rights and so on.  But why not add health security (smoking, cancer and heart disease are three of the most direct threats to personal security)? ⁽¹⁸⁾  Why not education security (access to a good education is a pre-condition for getting a good job and, hence, economic security)?  It is possible to go on widening the definition until practically every area of public policy and every dollar of State and Federal government spending is included.  This would not offer much analytical clarity.  Indeed, it threatens to do the opposite by encouraging people to misapply analytical tools used successfully in one discipline to other areas where the outcome may be less useful.

Threats Without Enemies offers an example of the poor quality of analysis which can result.  Di Bretherton, a psychologist researching in the area of "gender and non-violent conflict resolution" argues that "violence is fundamentally a gendered behaviour". ⁽¹⁹⁾  To Bretherton, national borders and political disputes are less important underlying causes of violence than the male psyche.  She argues:

The creation of a non-violent, secure society would need to be from within as well as from without.  Rather than locating threats to national security as coming only from an outer enemy the threat of community violence needs to be kept in mind.  The costs within Australia of military violence in "solving" the Gulf situation included the outbreak of racist violence, the increase in sales of war toys and the reinforcement of the Rambo mentality in small boys. ⁽²⁰⁾

Does the pathology of individual violence translate so easily into the international sphere?  SAP contributors tend to think so.  Both Pettman and Bretherton see international conflict as a manifestation of the same type of violent behaviour which can be shown by (male) individuals.  The only difference is the scope of the violence.  This proposition, of course, relieves people from having to consider the specific political, strategic, economic, military and historical causes of international conflict.  The SAP fails to give serious consideration to the traditional agenda of international political and security issues.  But what analytical methods do they offer as alternatives?  Was Saddam Hussein just a naughty boy with a socialisation problem or were the causes of the Gulf War more complex than that?  The answer is obvious:  the causes of the war were many and are not discernible from studies (which Bretherton has done) of how brawls develop in Melbourne nightclubs.  Measuring the war's outcome in terms of the movie-watching habits of children trivialises a grim and bloody conflict.

SAP members seldom move beyond their critique of existing scholarship by actually applying their ideas to an analysis of security issues.  Thus it remains to be seen exactly what would emerge from a study which located personal, domestic, environmental and other aspects of security on the same continuum as military and international security.  One suspects that defence and security analysts would not be very good at writing on the problems and remedies of domestic violence.  This is because they lack the training and specialist knowledge needed to make them competent in that field.  For the same reason, students of domestic violence are likely to be bad at international security analysis.  In transferring the simplicities and generalisations from one field to the other, we do not get valuable insights but rather misapplied simplicities and generalisations.

A poor argument to cut defence spending

The SAP argues for a cut in defence spending because, using their broadened definition of security, they believe military defence receives a disproportionate share of resources, some of which could be better spent on other security areas.  The third reason to reject their call for a broader definition of security is not because there are no good arguments for cutting defence spending -- rather, their case is a particularly poor one.  It is difficult to escape the conclusion when reading Threats Without Enemies that the contributors see defence as little more than a source of funds which should be spent on their various pet causes.  Thus Bretherton would like to see more resources devoted to conflict resolution within the community.  Gary Smith argues that "each dollar spent on military security is a dollar unavailable for economic security", and Richard Bolt says that "... the federal government, in neglecting the environment while spending heavily on defence, is failing to order its security priorities appropriately". ⁽²¹⁾  Few will be surprised that the interests of these contributors are conflict resolution in the community, economic security and environmental security respectively.

What would be more surprising, and indeed more useful, would have been for the SAP to resolve between themselves the amount of spending they think should be devoted to each component of security.  This task was not attempted.  Limiting themselves to the argument that complex policy problems can be solved simply by cutting defence spending, SAP members are vulnerable to the charge that they are simply promoting their own sectional interests at the expense of other areas of public spending.

The SAP approach also fails to acknowledge that spending on defence is subject to evaluation against every other area of Commonwealth spending in the lead-up to every national budget.  It is not as though defence were the only national priority (or indeed even a high priority) in government spending.  Indeed the recent history of defence finance has been a tale of high spending promises followed by lower spending commitments.  The government's Expenditure Review Committee annually evaluates the level of defence spending which is determined against a background of competing budget priorities and overall economic policy settings.  The SAP may not like the relative ordering of spending priorities which has produced a $10 billion defence budget, but they cannot say that no such ordering of priorities takes place.  Further, the pre-budget expenditure review process has the merit of comparing all categories of spending with each other.  The SAP makes defence spending the only target, but why should governments not compare the relative merits of spending between, say, environmental protection and spending on health policy?  It seems strange that while they broaden the meaning of security the SAP keeps defence squarely in the middle of the picture when spending is discussed.  A more even-handed approach would accept that all areas of spending must be compared with each other.  At that point one suspects that the SAP consensus would break down as the environmentalists argue with the proponents of economic security about which area should receive the greater portion of revenue.

In all of this it is curious that the SAP approach measures the value of security in terms of cost rather effect.  Gary Smith asks "does the $9.4 billion in the Australian military budget for 1991-92 provide two and a half times as much security as the Australian higher education system ... on a budget of about $3.6 billion?"  He argues for a five per cent cut in defence spending to fund a "100 per cent expansion in Australia's diplomatic capacity". ⁽²²⁾  But with diplomatic representation in over seventy countries, does Australia need to double its diplomatic effort?  The size of the defence budget has nothing to do with the number of diplomats Australia needs to represent its interests, nor should it play a role in determining spending on higher education.  The cost of one F/A-18 fighter aircraft could well pay the salaries of 100 diplomats.  But the comparison tells us nothing about the numbers of aircraft or diplomats Australia needs.  That can only be established by assessing our requirement for the particular capabilities each asset offers.  Presumably most assessments would conclude we need both capabilities.  But F/A-18s will always be more expensive than diplomats.

A final point:  demonstrating a need for greater funding in one area does not logically mean that the present level of defence spending is too high.  The Secure Australia Project would be on firmer ground had they presented an argued case to set defence spending at some specific level.  That case, surely, would have to rest on an assessment of Australia's requirements for military defence rather than on the dangers of deforestation or the need to curb domestic violence.  But the SAP case for restructuring the military is particularly weak.  It is to their discussion about the structure and capabilities of the ADF that I now turn.

CHANGING MILITARY STRUCTURE:  THE SAP CASE

The SAP general statement of concern about security says "Australia needs a focussed military defence system ... [but this] can be achieved by a restructured and far less costly military force". ⁽²³⁾  Several contributors argue for the need to change ADF structure and capabilities but only one, Graeme Cheeseman, presents an alternative structure for the military to adopt.  This section therefore largely concentrates on Cheeseman's analysis, which he summarises in Threats Without Enemies and presents in greater detail in his book, The Search for Self-Reliance. ⁽²⁴⁾

THE CASE AGAINST THE PRESENT SYSTEM

What is wrong with the ADF's present structure and capabilities?  Cheeseman argues that current policy requirements cannot be carried out effectively by the military.  The government is "... seeking to put in place a high technology military structure which is increasingly irrelevant, potentially counterproductive and cannot be sustained over the longer term". ⁽²⁵⁾  The main criticisms raised by the SAP and Cheeseman are these:

• Australia is tying to defend too much of the world

  Cheeseman argues that the 1987 Defence White Paper requires Australia to defend 10 per cent of the world's surface, but with less than one per cent of the world's population.  He is concerned that the 1987 White Paper extends Australian military reach over too large an area.  This stretches our defence capabilities far too thinly.

• ADF equipment is too "high-tech"

  A reliance on high-technology equipment means that the cost of defending Australia is too high.  Cheeseman is concerned that this makes the ADF reliant on equipment from overseas suppliers.  He doubts assurances that the military would have access to overseas supplies and support in times of crisis.

• Current policy threatens Australia's neighbours

  The SAP argues that Australian policy threatens the region because of the ADF's force projection capability and because of an aggressive political intention to intervene in the affairs of other countries.  They argue that there is concern in South East Asia that our F-111 strike aircraft and submarines give Australia a capacity to stage offensive military strikes.  Cheeseman says this could lead to an arms race with the ASEAN countries.

• Australia is interventionist in the South Pacific

  In Gary Smith's words, Australia has a "South Pacific military intervention doctrine", based on a desire to be the region's military policeman.  This leads Australia to ignore the legitimate aspirations of South Pacific peoples, and to pursue a militaristic policy in a region where "... military force need have no role to play". ⁽²⁶⁾

• ANZUS undermines Australia's policy of defence "self-reliance"

  Cheeseman says there is a contradiction between the idea of defence self-reliance and maintaining a relationship with the United States which is essential for defence policy.  He argues that Australia is becoming increasingly dependent on the US for equipment and logistic support.

• Defence industry policy is unsustainable

  Domestic demand for the production of defence equipment is not sufficient to sustain a viable local industry.  However the SAP opposes defence exports on moral grounds and because they believe exports would threaten regional stability.  They argue the ADF must reorient itself to adopt low-technology equipment, thereby freeing Australia from the need to import expensive defence equipment.  Further, a local "low-tech" industry base would not need to export to remain viable.

SAP REFORM PROPOSALS

These then are the criticisms the SAP levels at Australian defence policy.  Like their critique of the concept of security, their attack on current defence policy does not leave much untouched.  Graeme Cheeseman's reform proposals would completely alter the structure and capabilities of the ADF and fundamentally change Australia's regional security approach.  Readers must turn to Cheeseman's own work to appreciate the scope of his proposed changes.  However his main reform proposals centre around the following areas:

• Reduce the scope and focus of Australia's defence efforts

  Attempts to defend 10 per cent of the globe should be abandoned and replaced with a set of tasks much more narrowly defined to defend Australia and its immediate territorial waters.  A redefinition like this would make it possible to reduce the size of the ADF and to remove from the force structure a variety of unnecessary and potentially provocative equipment.

• Eliminate the ADF's strike and force projection assets

  The SAP argues that the ADF should abandon offensive weapons or weapons which provide capabilities to project force over great distances such as the F-111 bomber, ANZAC frigates and submarines.  This would remove any potential threat Australia presents to the region and focus military efforts on the defence of territorial Australia.

• Abandon regional defence co-operation programmes

  The Defence Co-operation Program (DCP) and an "interventionist policy" in the South Pacific ⁽²⁷⁾ undermine not only Australia's broader security interests but those also of the region.  In the interests of better relations with our neighbours, Australia should abandon use of the ADF as a vehicle for conducting relations with the South Pacific and South East Asia.

• Review defence ties with the United States

  Cheeseman calls for a review of defence relations with the United States because he believes it would be "... the best, and politically easiest, approach" ⁽²⁸⁾ towards a policy of substantially reducing military ties with America.  A review of relations is therefore a preliminary step to achieving the more fundamental aim of cutting all (or many) ANZUS defence links.

• Make greater use of the civilian infrastructure

  Civilian transport and surveillance capabilities as well as the civilian communications infrastructure would be able to shoulder a larger part of a generally reduced defence burden.  Cheeseman would also make greater use of reserve forces thereby reducing the permanent forces in size.

• Reduce and restructure the ADF to perform more limited territory defence tasks

  As well as removing force projection assets, Cheeseman proposes to restructure the ADF in ways which better support more limited territory defence tasks.  He abandons the traditional Service-based structure of the ADF and creates a unified force operating under a Home Defence Command and a Maritime Command.  Under this proposal personnel numbers would be substantially reduced as elements of the single Services, Headquarters ADF and the Department of Defence bureaucracy were cut.  Cheeseman comments:  "The privatisation of elements of the Defence Department, together with the decentralisation of many of its functions and personnel, would serve to reduce the size of Australia's higher defence organisation and make it both more efficient and manageable." ⁽²⁹⁾

If broadening the meaning of security is the starting point for the Secure Australia Project, their critique of current policy and consequent reform proposals are at the heart of their attempt to change Australia's defence outlook.  The obvious questions to ask are, first, does the SAP make valid criticisms of current policy?  Second, would their reform proposals make Australia more secure?  While some SAP criticisms hit the mark, their broad case against the present structure, role and capabilities of the ADF does not stand up to close scrutiny.  Moreover, the most likely outcome from adopting the SAP reforms would be the creation of a military force much less capable of defending Australia than the present ADF, the undermining of an increasingly favourable regional security situation, and a souring of relations with South East Asia and the South Pacific.  These conclusions, of course, need elaboration.  So I now turn to a refutation of specific aspects of the SAP case.

THE LIMITS OF AUSTRALIA'S DEFENCE INTERESTS

Defence policy is accused of "... an overextended concept of military reach" ⁽³⁰⁾ because of the 1987 White Paper's claim that the ADF must be able to "defeat any challenge to our sovereignty ... [and] respond effectively to attacks within our area of direct military interest".  The White Paper continues:

This area stretches over 7,000 kilometres from the Cocos Islands to New Zealand and the islands of the South West Pacific, and over 5,000 kilometres from the archipelago and island chain in the north to the Southern Ocean.  It constitutes about 10 per cent of the earth's surface. ⁽³¹⁾

To borrow Paul Kennedy's term, the SAP views this statement as an example of "imperial overstretch". ⁽³²⁾  They argue that it overstates the ADF's capacity both to enhance regional security and to defend Australia.

To assess this claim the White Paper statement should be read for its political as well as its geographic meaning.  The White Paper's rhetoric was intended to address a criticism made of its intellectual forerunner, Paul Dibb's 1986 Review of Australia's Defence Capabilities, which was faulted for a perceived tendency towards isolationism.  In stressing the geographic scope of Australia's defence interests, the White Paper was as much dealing with a domestic political debate as it was setting out an area of operations for the ADF. ⁽³³⁾  It should be remembered that much of Australia's area of direct military interest -- the Southern Ocean, the Tasman Sea, the bulk of our land area -- present a defence problem only inasmuch as they must be traversed to reach more strategically important areas.  These peaceful hinterlands are of strategic interest to Australia, but it is hardly accurate to suggest that ADF assets are constantly being called on to defend them.  Equally, the White Paper claimed only that Australia had an obvious need to protect its vital concerns in the "area of direct military interest".  Although the SAP may imply it, Canberra was not announcing an exclusion zone like the British established around the Falklands Islands in 1982, but merely stating the obvious point that the ADF needed to be able to respond to whatever military situations might arise in that area.

As such, the SAP claim that a reduction of Australia's area of direct military interest would make it possible to reduce the size of the ADF is simply not credible.  In the Kangaroo exercises in 1989 and 1992 it was apparent that the ADF found it a strenuous task to defend a 320 kilometre corridor between Darwin, Tindal and Katherine, let alone 10 per cent of the earth's surface.  Cheeseman argues that the zone of direct military interest should be limited "... to the Australian mainland and its territorial waters as defined under the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea". ⁽³⁴⁾  This area still covers all of the key strategic points vital to Australian defence, including the air-sea gap to the north.  A more limiting definition of this sort would therefore do nothing to lessen the core tasks of the ADF.  Nor is it possible for Australia to abandon defence responsibilities for the Christmas and Cocos Islands simply because they are some distance from the mainland.  (The Cocos Islands are 1768 kilometres north west of Perth.)  These islands are territories of Australia:  refusing to defend them would be unconstitutional and unethical, and leave exposed two potential staging posts in any attack against the mainland.  A policy which explicitly excluded the Cocos and Christmas Islands from Australian defence concerns could itself cause a regional security problem if another country took this to be an open invitation to annex the territory.

Ten per cent of the earth's surface is a large area, but Australia is a large country.  The distance between the Cocos Islands and the Great Barrier Reef is 5,000 kilometres, greater than the distance between London and Beirut.  Australia's land area is 7.68 million square kilometres and its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) covers 1.85 million square nautical miles. ⁽³⁵⁾  These dimensions may impose a degree of "over-stretch" on the ADF, but they are an inescapable feature of defending the nation and its economic interests.

Cheeseman argues that "a military strategy that was limited to the Australian mainland and the surrounding maritime zone would rule out the need for a range of high technology weapons systems and capabilities such as aircraft carriers, missile carrying destroyers and frigates and long-range submarines".  It is difficult to see how this proposal can be reconciled with the scope of Australia's defence interests -- even if this is limited to the requirement to defend Australian territory over the 5,000 kilometre "front" from Cocos to the barrier reef.  Distances of this sort impose a requirement on ADF forces for both mobility and range.  Navy vessels, for example, must be able to patrol enormous distances in the EEZ and to meet defence responsibilities for Australian island territories.  Ships must therefore have both adequate range and sea-keeping capabilities.  Using former Royal Navy Leander class frigates, the New Zealand Navy is unable to transit without refuelling between Auckland and the Cook Islands for which New Zealand has statutory defence responsibilities -- a major weakness until the acquisition of a tanker able to refuel the frigates at sea. ⁽³⁶⁾  It would be pointless to hamper ADF operations by using ships without adequate range.

The ability to perform naval operations in a range of sea-state conditions also imposes minimum size requirements on Australian vessels.  The inshore minehunters (MHI) are an example of the negative consequences of opting for vessels too small to operate in usual sea-state conditions.  The MHIs were designed to be able to hunt for mines at a speed of four knots at sea state three, and to make transit at sea state four. ⁽³⁷⁾  On the north west coast, where the MHI would most likely be used in defence contingencies, average sea state conditions are such that the MHI could not have been used for around 40 per cent of the year.  On the north coast, sea conditions would have made the MHI inoperable between 20 and 35 per cent of the year. ⁽³⁸⁾  The New Zealand Navy has concluded that a vessel of frigate size is about what is needed to cope with the rough sea states found in their EEZ.  Conditions are much the same in Australian waters.  The Fremantle class patrol boats, operating in the shallower waters of the Timor and Arafura Seas, are often hampered in their ability to perform missions because of poor weather conditions.

Cheeseman's requirement that the ADF use craft able to track and intercept "incursions into Australia's Exclusive Economic Zone" ⁽³⁹⁾ also has implications for the size and capabilities of ship used.  Given the limited number of platforms available and the vast areas to be patrolled, ships need to operate at high speeds and to have sophisticated sensors for locating other vessels.  The performance of sensors can be degraded if they are placed too closely together, thus the desired electronics fit of a ship, its speed requirements and likely operating conditions, will determine the length of the vessel.  Collectively this suggests that Cheeseman's proposal to use patrol boats rather than destroyers or frigates is not realistic for operations in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

The SAP call to reduce the scope and focus of Australia's defence efforts is therefore not realistic.  It ignores the fact that Australia's geography imposes a requirement on the ADF to "think big".  Australia could reduce the size of its zone of direct military interest only if the government decided not to defend certain areas of Australian territory.  Claims that a narrowing of focus would make it possible to reduce the size or capabilities of the ADF are spurious because of the mobility and range requirements needed to deal with the physical extent of Australia's interests.

OFFENCE AND DEFENCE

SAP calls to abandon "offensive" equipment like the F-111 and the Collins class submarine are linked to their arguments for a narrowing of defence effort, and are based on the concept of non-offensive defence developed originally with a focus on Europe.  Cheeseman believes that Australia should "... reject any means of attacking the homeland of a potential adversary".  This can be done:

1, by relinquishing all components with a "critical" range and mobility in favour of a stationary network of defences;  2, by deliberately omitting offensive military components -- such as a blue water navy or a deep strike system -- from the overall force structure;  or 3, by "linking" mobile units to stationary networks and so effectively immobilising the total force structure.

Cheeseman acknowledges the difficulties of applying this "in the case of large nations whose internal geographical dimensions exceed those between the country and neighbouring states". ⁽⁴⁰⁾  But this does not prevent him from arguing that Australia should abandon the F-111s, submarines, the (foreshadowed) helicopter support ship, frigates and destroyers with guided weapons and, one can assume, air-to-air refuelling.  Scrapping these "clearly offensive weapons", he says, would relieve tensions in the region and "provide the basis for achieving a stable balance of power".  It would do nothing of the sort.  The proposal to abandon strike weapons should be resisted for the following reasons.

First, the SAP has not come to terms with the ambiguous meaning of the term "offensive weapons".  This is a rather tired debate but one which Cheeseman and others do not handle well.  A C-130 Hercules is a transport aircraft, about as inoffensive a piece of technology as one could imagine.  But it is also an offensive weapon if it is used to land special forces on enemy soil (as it did for the "enemy force" during exercise Kangaroo 92, for example), or to lay mines in a maritime choke point.  So, should the Hercules be abandoned because of its potentially offensive uses?  The SAP might concede this point, but argue that the F-111 and the Collins submarines fall into the few cases where a weapon is inherently offensive.  This is not so.  The F-111 could be used in a variety of roles without leaving Australian airspace, for example, in striking enemy force concentrations on Australian soil in support of ADF ground troops, or in carrying out photo-reconnaissance missions.  The distance from RAAF base Williamtown near Newcastle to, say, Port Hedland in Western Australia or the Cocos Islands is such that the F-111's enormous range is very necessary for defence of Australia requirements.  Sadly, no aircraft has yet been developed which has enormous range east to west, but none on a north-south axis.  Until that technological moment arrives the SAP would be better off recognising that the offensive nature of most conventional weapons has more to do with the use to which they are put than any inherent capability.  The point can also be made that Australia does not possess large enough numbers of strike weapons for these to provide anything other than a very limited capacity to hit a small number of targets.  During the Gulf War, the United States was flying up to 24 F-111s together on a single mission against a single target. ⁽⁴¹⁾  That is a larger number of F-111s than Australia has operational at any one time, notwithstanding the 1993 acquisition of 15 additional F-111s.  These will be kept in reserve and not added to operational air force squadrons.  So, the ADF's limited capabilities need to be kept in perspective.

The second reason for maintaining a strike capability is that Australia should not relinquish its capacity to attack enemy formations before they land on Australian soil.  Would a strike against forces mobilising to attack Australia be an offensive or a defensive act?  By maintaining that the ADF should relinquish its strike capability, the SAP undermines Australia's ability to defend itself in anything other than a tactical and reactive way to attacks taking place on our territory.  Such a policy would put Australia at a substantial disadvantage, where its ability to compel an enemy to cease hostilities would be very limited.  Strike assets are an essential part of a defensive posture.  Abandoning them would cede all initiative to enemy forces and reduce the ADF's ability to end hostilities on terms favourable to Australia. ⁽⁴²⁾

Thirdly, non-offensive defence concepts do not translate well from Europe to Australia's strategic circumstances.  Given the small size of the ADF and the area to be defended, "maginot" style fixed defences are simply not feasible for Australia. ⁽⁴³⁾  Cheeseman accepts this because he argues that mobility is important for the ADF.  His study, however, confines the mobility requirement to ground forces.  This ignores the need to back up ground forces with mobile fire-support and reconnaissance capabilities, as well as medium- and long-range air and sea transport.  Arguing simultaneously that Australia should not have a blue-water navy because this is "clearly offensive" but that the Navy must be able to "track and intercept" targets out to 200 nautical miles is self-contradictory.

The last reason for rejecting SAP arguments about strike capability is that there is very little evidence to suggest that the region is disturbed by Australia's possession of such weapons, and none that stability is somehow threatened by their presence.  This point is central to the critique of the SAP position on regional security, which I turn to in the next section.

AUSTRALIA AND THE REGION:
THE SAP SEARCH FOR INSECURITY

In Threats Without Enemies, the SAP statement of concern contains a typographic error which inadvertently sums up their approach to Australia's relations with its neighbours:

The most effective counter against future military threats is to prevent them from arising by building common security with out [sic] neighbours rather than against them. ⁽⁴⁴⁾

It is reasonable to suppose that the SAP team actually meant "security with our neighbours", but "security with out neighbours" rather more accurately captures the approach some SAP members would like Australia to follow.  The Secure Australia Project is ambivalent at best, hostile at worst, about Australia's regional defence and security links.  On the one hand, they argue that the Defence Co-operation Program should be cut because it "... directly implicates us in the repressive policies of the regional elites and reinforces the perception of Australia as a regional policeman and agent of international commerce and diplomacy". ⁽⁴⁵⁾  On the other hand, the SAP maintain that Australia's policies for its own defence create instability in the region and encourage arms racing as countries arm in reaction to the ADF's strike capabilities.

At a time when South East Asia is adopting unprecedented levels of security co-operation, when the South Pacific looks more stable than it did just five years ago, and when Australia is on good terms with both regions, the SAP position amounts to a search for insecurity.  There is no evidence to support the argument that Australian policy is prompting a regional arms race, no evidence to suggest that Canberra follows interventionist policies in the South Pacific, and no good reason to promote Australian military isolation from the developing regional security dialogue.  Let us consider each of these issues in turn.

IS AUSTRALIA ENCOURAGING A SOUTH EAST ASIAN ARMS RACE?

Cheeseman argues that Australia's acquisition of Collins class submarines and other strike weapons "... foster[s] the trend already evident within our region towards the acquisition of advanced military technologies and force projection capabilities".  He quotes a retired Indonesian general and an article from the Jakarta Post expressing concern about Australian equipment acquisition and says:

Indonesia may also be worried by the fact that Australia is clearly shifting the focus of its defence efforts to the north and north west of Australia and is expanding its military forces and infrastructure there.  As a number of external and relatively dispassionate observers have pointed out, it is difficult to see these moves as anything other than preparations against a future Indonesian threat. ⁽⁴⁶⁾

The fact that the SAP found a retired Indonesian general critical of Australia does not prove that Jakarta believes there is a threat from the south.  Indeed the weight of Indonesian official statements suggests that they see Australia as a benign and stabilising presence. ⁽⁴⁷⁾  Cheeseman is probably right in suggesting that the Indonesians note a discrepancy between the declaratory emphasis of the 1987 White Paper on defending the north and Canberra's de facto policy of pursuing greater regional security ties.  This is, however, simply a question of the language used to describe policy, rather than policy substance.  Indonesia's hard-headed military officers are unlikely to be surprised that Australia is positioning its military in the one area which logic, geography and history show is the direction from which any threat to our nation must come.  Indeed, they would probably be puzzled were our forces deployed otherwise.

There is no evidence to suggest that the Indonesian Armed Forces -- or indeed the forces of any of the ASEAN states -- are arming themselves out of concern with Australian defence acquisitions.  For an arms race involving Australia to exist, several conditions would have to apply.  First, a cycle of defence equipment purchases would develop whereby countries were seen to be buying equipment in reaction to Australian equipment programmes.  Second, equipment capabilities would be linked so that, for example, an Australian submarine programme would encourage ASEAN acquisition of submarine counter-measures.  Third, one could expect an escalation of political rhetoric as regional tensions climbed.  Fourth, countries within the region would become more protective of their relations with defence equipment suppliers.  In particular, countries would be reluctant to support industry joint ventures with Australia because of the exchange of information on force capabilities and the shared reliance on support systems.  Finally, one would expect defence budgets to increase substantially over time.

Looking at Australia and South East Asia, none of these conditions prevail.  Australian and ASEAN equipment purchases do not follow an "action-reaction" cycle, nor does a study of acquisition programmes suggest that the ASEAN states are arming in the expectation of having to repulse an Australian attack.  The South East Asian countries are modernising their militaries and changing force structures.  Once geared for internal counter-insurgency roles, now the ASEAN militaries are developing more conventional capabilities to protect sovereignty and economic resources.  Among the major equipment types being purchased are maritime patrol aircraft, frigates, multi-role fighter aircraft (in small numbers), submarines, precision guided weapons and command and control systems.  Ground forces capable of rapid deployment operations are being developed.  Desmond Ball has argued that many factors account for these developments, not least the requirement to replace an outdated generation of equipment, the demands of national prestige, and greater economic capacity to purchase such equipment.  He accepts that competitive purchasing may have been one element in South East Asia's fighter aircraft acquisitions, but Australia was not a part of this process, the F/A-18 purchase taking place over a decade ago. ⁽⁴⁸⁾

While this modernisation is taking place, South East Asia and Australia have developed closer forms of co-operation.  In particular, relations between Canberra and Jakarta have improved.  The prospects for joint procurement of equipment are better now than they have ever been. ⁽⁴⁹⁾  Finally, with the exception of Singapore, ASEAN defence budgets have remained static in real terms since 1991 and the Australian budget has been cut.  In sum, the main weakness of the SAP case about Australia's encouraging a regional arms race is that there is not a shred of evidence to support the proposition.

IS AUSTRALIA INTERVENTIONIST IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC?

SAP concern that Australia was developing an interventionist policy for the South Pacific was expressed in their 1990 book, The New Australian Militarism.  Richard Bolt claimed that Canberra had "... established an almost open-ended pretext to intervene, Grenada-style, in the affairs of regional neighbours.  This compromises the sovereignty of Papua New Guinea and the small island states". ⁽⁵⁰⁾  Cheeseman continues this line of argument:

As we have seen since the Fiji coups, the ADF has been improving its capacity to deploy forces off-shore.  The greatest danger in the future is that, given the means to intervene, Australian politicians may be unable to help themselves. ... [T]hey will unleash our military forces without giving adequate consideration to the underlying issues involved in the case at hand.

Policies like this, Cheeseman believes, are "alienating Australia from the region". ⁽⁵¹⁾  Australia's size and position as a substantial aid donor in the South Pacific will always make the conduct of relations with the islands a delicate matter.  It is difficult to escape the conclusion, though, that the SAP made a substantial meal out of slim pickings in trying to show that Australia behaves like "big brother" in the South Pacific.  Australia did put some forces on higher states of readiness during the 1987 Fiji coups and in response to the Bougainville situation in 1990.  In neither case, however, did Australia intervene.  At the request of the democratically-elected government of Vanuatu, Australia provided riot gear to the Vanuatu Mobile Force in 1988, but no Australian forces were sent to Vanuatu.  Since early 1990, no security situation has developed in the region to raise even a remote possibility of ADF deployment.  This is not much of a record of Grenada-style interventions.

In terms of force structure developments, nothing has been added to the ADF inventory since 1987 which is designed to project power into the South Pacific.  The Navy did develop a requirement for a Helicopter Support Ship which was justified on the basis of improving "the ADF's ability to respond to regional requests".  Originally scheduled for construction between 1993-94 and 1998-99, the project was first deferred to some time after 2001 and then cancelled altogether in the August 1993 Budget.  The Coalition's 1992 defence policy statement also deferred the project in favour of higher priority equipment.  With the decommissioning of the troop transport and roll-on, roll-off cargo ship HMAS Jervis Bay later in the decade, the trend is to reduce, not increase, the ADF's ability to project force into the South Pacific. ⁽⁵²⁾

Finally, Cheeseman underestimates the caution which politicians rightly bring to the use of military forces.  The record of the 1980s shows that politicians do not "unleash" the ADF simply because certain military capabilities exist.  Australia may at times have pursued flawed policies in the South Pacific, but Grenada-style interventionism is not one of them.

SHOULD THE ADF BE ISOLATED FROM REGIONAL MILITARY CO-OPERATION?

The SAP position is clear:  defence co-operation with most regional governments should be opposed.  Australia should be giving more emphasis to "new and imaginative approaches to continuing conflicts in Bougainville, East Timor, Irian Jaya/West Papua, Burma -- wherever Australia can make a difference". ⁽⁵³⁾  There are two reasons for rejecting the SAP case.  First, they underestimate the importance of the DCP and other forms of military contact as a way of strengthening civil society (and the role of armed forces in it) and as a means to support economic development.  The ADF has a tradition of respect for the rule of law.  It trains under stringent rules of engagement, is subject to the Geneva Protocols and other international conventions on the use and behaviour of armed forces.  The DCP provides a means by which these qualities can be passed on to regional armed forces, from training troop formations in rules of engagement, to training officer cadets at the Australian Defence Force Academy, to higher level instruction at the Joint Services Staff College.  The role of the ADF as a net contributor to improving human rights standards in the region should not be underestimated.  The SAP team calls for the establishment of a "centre to train UN peacekeeping forces from a variety of countries", ⁽⁵⁴⁾ without apparently realising that much of this training would be in the types of basic military skills already promoted by DCP.  In fact, a peacekeeping centre has been established for officers in staff-level positions at the ADF Warfare Centre at Williamtown in New South Wales.  However, this is not designed to train troops in peacekeeping skills, but rather those people who will run peacekeeping operations.

In the South Pacific, the DCP is closely involved in surveillance operations to protect economic resources.  This involves regular P-3C Orion surveillance flights, and a project to give island states patrol boats, thus increasing their independent capacity to protect their fishing zones.  Other defence resources are used to perform civil-aid work, including survey mapping and hydrographic charting throughout the region, constructing housing for Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF) units, provision of a recompression chamber for the PNGDF diving unit, building a police vehicle workshop in Vanuatu, disposing of World War II ordnance in the Solomon Islands, providing road building equipment and an adviser in Fiji, and a wide range of communications, medical and engineering services to the islands.  More directly, military-related training includes the training of island defence and para-military personnel in basic military skills both in Australia and on the islands, support for pilot training for the PNGDF, and financial support to underwrite combined military exercises with Australia. ⁽⁵⁵⁾  ADF contact with regional defence forces can have a positive impact on human rights.  Cutting DCP and other forms of co-operation would hinder the promotion of acceptable norms of civil and political conduct in regional military forces.

The second reason for rejecting the SAP call to cut defence contact with the region is that it would have the effect of alienating Australia from other regional states, which would not welcome a policy giving primacy to human rights campaigning.  In Peter Jones's view "... the [Australian] military are unlikely to worry much about the nature of the countries whose forces they cooperate with, as long as they are perceived as being basically on 'our side' ". ⁽⁵⁶⁾  This is an uncharitable judgement which fails to acknowledge the position which Australia took when it suspended defence co-operation with Fiji between 1987 and late-1992 following the Fiji Military Forces coups d'état, or when most forms of co-operation were halted with Thailand following the military's involvement in civil disturbances in 1991, or indeed on other occasions when Australian co-operation has been suspended or in some way restricted as a result of concerns about regional developments.

It is not clear from Jones's account what premium he believes should be put on human rights initiatives at the potential expense of good relations with countries of the region.  A policy which, for example, cut all defence co-operation with Indonesia and imposed trade sanctions following the Dili massacre would probably have resulted in a significant freezing of Australian-Indonesian relations.  This would impede Australian efforts to develop closer links with the ASEAN region and, arguably, would not have a positive impact on Indonesia's internal human rights situation.  The key problem for policy makers is defining the right balance between promoting human rights concerns as against other Australian interests.  The sweeping judgements made by the SAP in support of a much stronger human rights policy are of little practical use to governments which have to balance competing concerns.  What is clear is that regional security would not be enhanced if Australia were to cut its ties with the ASEAN countries when difficulties arise over specific single-issue problems.  The SAP position would carry more policy credibility if it dealt with some of these complexities.

On broader areas of defence co-operation, SAP members are divided about the role the ADF should play.  Cheeseman says that so-called confidence and security building measures (CSBM) -- which actually require increased contact between defence forces -- "are important and should be pursued", but worries that they "could also serve to divert the attention and resources of Australia's defence establishment away from its primary task of defending Australia". ⁽⁵⁷⁾  Joseph Camilleri is more enthusiastic about CSBMs, saying that Australia should promote such developments as "... regular contacts among military chiefs and field commanders ... notification of exercises and troop movements, and joint agreements for handling piracy, smuggling, illegal movement of labour [and] illegal fishing". ⁽⁵⁸⁾  Camilleri's approach is more realistic because it acknowledges that contact between defence forces can be stabilising.  Cheeseman's proposition that the ADF should concentrate on territory defence and not be diverted by co-operation with Indonesia would surely reinforce a situation of which he is also critical.  Were the ADF to adopt a purely defensive strategy, who would they be defending against?  If Cheeseman is critical of policies which increase the ADF presence in northern Australia -- because he says this can only be directed against the possibility of Indonesian attack -- then surely this criticism can also be made of his preference to avoid regional contact and concentrate instead on building defences?

ALLIANCE AND SELF-RELIANCE

Australia's defence alliance with the United States is the one area of defence policy subject to a thorough and sustained academic scrutiny.  The SAP does not mount a detailed case against ANZUS so much as they adopt the views of other commentators who have called on Australia to abandon the alliance. ⁽⁵⁹⁾  Cheeseman's account therefore tends to focus on a few specific aspects of the alliance relationship and the impact which this has on Australian defence policy.  In particular he argues that the alliance is incompatible with the concept of self-reliance in defence.  Second, he maintains that Australia is becoming more reliant on the United States for defence equipment and logistic support.

IS AUSTRALIA BECOMING MORE DEPENDENT?

On the face of it, there does appear to be a logical contradiction in the claim -- to quote former Defence Minister Kim Beazley -- that "our alliance [with the US] is literally essential to our self-reliance". ⁽⁶⁰⁾  This is a problem of the government's own making because of the rhetorical emphasis it has placed on self-reliance.  The Defence Corporate Plan 1993-97 illustrates the dilemma.  The plan baldly states that the government's intention is "... the establishment of self-reliance in defence supported by ... strong alliances". ⁽⁶¹⁾  There are no qualifying statements to limit the application of self-reliance, even in areas such as weapons procurement where it is obvious that Australia could not support the industrial base necessary to manufacture all its own equipment.  One has to look at the detail of policy statement to appreciate that self-reliance is regarded as having a more limited definition in defence circles.  The 1987 White Paper more openly states the limits to self-reliance:

It is not our policy, nor would it be prudent, to rely on US combat help in all circumstances.  Indeed, it is possible to envisage a range of situations in which the threshold of direct US combat involvement could be quite high. ⁽⁶²⁾

Bluntly put, self-reliance in the Australian context means maintaining a capability to fight a low-level contingency without direct US combat force involvement.  This is a much more limited concept than the phrase might ordinarily be taken to mean.  To the extent that government defence statements use the term to imply more than it really does, Cheeseman is right to point out the inconsistencies which result.

Cheeseman, however, is not correct when he argues that Australia is becoming more dependent on the United States, or that the level of dependency which exists is undesirable.  He presents figures which show that between 1984 and 1988, 95 per cent of imported defence equipment came from the United States.  This contrasts with a figure of 86.1 per cent from the United States between 1965 and 1974.  This shows a growing dependency, Cheeseman concludes. ⁽⁶³⁾  Two points can be made about these figures.  First, as Cheeseman recognises, they are proportions of significantly differing totals.  The trend has been for an increasingly large proportion of the capital equipment budget to be spent in Australia.  In 1983, less than 30 per cent of the capital equipment budget was spent in Australia.  Today the figure is about 65 per cent. ⁽⁶⁴⁾  Overall, then, Australia is becoming significantly less dependent on defence imports from any country.  Second (a point Cheeseman does not recognise), the 1984-88 period coincided with the most costly phase of the purchase from the United States of the F/A-18.  Later years show a much diminished level of spending on imports from the US.  This is illustrated in the following table, which shows that defence imports from the United States drastically declined as a proportion of total defence imports between 1985-86 and 1989-90.  These figures give a more up-to-date picture of Australian defence imports from the United States, and show the early successful results of a policy to build and refit equipment locally.  The figures point to a considerably reduced Australian dependence on US-sourced military equipment -- the opposite of the Cheeseman thesis.

Table 1:  Defence imports from the United States 1985-86 to 1989-90

	1986-86	1986-87	1987-88	1988-89	1989-90
Australian defence imports from the US ($A million) 1:	1077	996	561	475	280
Total cost of defence imports ($A million) 2:	1543	1542	1004	924	989
Percentage of defence imports from the United State:	69.8	64.6	55.9	51.4	28.3

Sources:

⁽¹⁾ The Auditor-General, Department of Defence:  Management of Australian Purchases under the United States Foreign Military Sales Program (FMS) (Audit Report No. 18, 1991-92) (AGPS, Canberra, 1992), page 26.  The Auditor-General presents these figures in US dollar values.  I have converted them to Australian dollar values using the conversion rate nominated each year by the International Institute of Strategic Studies in The Military Balance.

⁽²⁾ Hansard (Senate) Answers to Questions, 6 September 1989, pages 1134-35;  11 April 1991, page 2409.

Cheeseman also argues that ADF dependency on US equipment is becoming more pronounced at the "high-tech" end of weapons systems.  A level of dependency does exist, but not to the degree that Cheeseman maintains.  It certainly is the case that the F/A-18 and F-111 aircraft are of US design (although the F/A-18 was assembled in Australia).  Much of their munitions as well as sophisticated weaponry on other ADF platforms comes from the United States.  Australia is therefore dependent on continuing access to US supplies.  The overall trend, however, is towards a greater indigenous capacity to maintain and modify sophisticated equipment.  For all but a few systems, this is reducing Australian dependence on the United States.  Ten years ago, Australia was buying guided missile frigates (FFG) from the United States, but the last two of six FFGs were built at Williamstown in Melbourne, the same dock which modified the guided missile destroyers (DDG) to carry the Seahawk helicopter.  The British-designed, Australian-built destroyer escorts are being replaced by Australian-built ANZAC frigates, the Force Structure Review announced that the DDGs will ultimately be replaced by Australian-built vessels, and the British Oberon submarines are being replaced by Swedish-designed, Australian-built Collins class boats.  Although based on European prototypes, the ANZACs and Collins class vessels contain a substantial amount of Australian-designed equipment, including computer software to support weapons systems and sensors, and other modifications to meet ADF requirements and local conditions.  The Jindalee Over The Horizon Radar (OTHR) system being developed by Telecom represents a very high level of sophistication in software systems development.  In terms of Army equipment, the 155 mm howitzers are American as are the Blackhawk and Chinook transport helicopters.  But the ADF has replaced the Belgian-designed FN L1A1 rifle with the Australian-built, Austrian-designed Steyr, operates a German tank and is buying Canadian-manufactured wheeled armoured vehicles (not American as Cheeseman says).

Over the last decade Australia has diversified its sources of supply for military technology.  The tendency is to adopt weapons systems designed overseas but to manufacture and make substantial modifications in Australia.  Far from simply importing, large-scale Australian equipment projects usually involve a joint venture operation where foreign companies team up with a local prime contractor.  On this basis it is unlikely that the ADF will return to a situation where it buys the bulk of its equipment "off the shelf" from overseas.  These developments do not make Australia self-reliant in military technology, but they point to substantial changes in equipment acquisition strategies which undermine rather than support the Cheeseman case.

In this regard the SAP critique is some years behind global defence industry developments.  The trend is away from items of equipment being sourced in only one country, and towards a situation where several countries produce components for a single weapons system.  The F/A-18 provides a useful example.  Although obviously a product of American design, some components are manufactured internationally.  This includes Aerospace Technology of Australia (ASTA), which at Avalon in Victoria is the sole manufacturer of wing trailing-edge flaps for the F/A-18 C and D model. ⁽⁶⁵⁾  The United States, incidentally, appears unconcerned about this growing dependence on Australian sources of supply.

ACCESS TO MUNITIONS AND STOCKHOLDING POLICY

Cheeseman has a specific concern about ADF access to supplies of "sophisticated munitions" for which the United States is the prime supplier.  He argues that there can be no guarantee of access to US logistic support, but that Australian politicians have used the US relationship as an excuse not to build up adequate stocks.  This, Cheeseman says, "is not only inconsistent with our desire to be self-reliant in defence, it also leaves us open to American influence or coercion in peacetime and makes us potentially vulnerable in war".  There are grounds for supporting these conclusions, at least in part.  The defence establishment has been widely criticised for its failure to develop a stockholding policy which could be used as a basis for determining appropriate stockholding levels. ⁽⁶⁶⁾  Faced with this lack of policy there has indeed been a tendency to rely on US sources of supply.  Even with a more well-developed stockholding policy, however, it is doubtful that Australia would be able to develop local or alternative sources of supply for guided munitions.

A September 1993 report on explosive ordnance (EO) by the Auditor-General found that:

As a general rule un-guided EO is procured from Australian sources ... and guided weapons are procured from overseas.  If guided weapons are excluded, 80% of EO (by value) is manufactured in Australia with 5% of the components of Australian manufactured EO sources from overseas.  The self-reliance advocated by government will probably never be greater than it is now, given the low demand and high cost of producing guided munitions domestically. ⁽⁶⁷⁾

The Auditor-General criticised the assumption that defence would not have any difficulties in obtaining resupply of munitions in times of security crisis, or in the event that Australia was "... involved in a war which the US did not support". ⁽⁶⁸⁾  The December 1992 Parliamentary Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade report entitled, Stockholding and Sustainability in the Australian Defence Force also came to the judgement that the decision to minimise stockholdings and to depend largely on "... international support agreements represents too high a risk level".  The committee's call for Defence to investigate "alternative supply arrangements including new sources of supply" ⁽⁶⁹⁾ received qualified support from the Minister.  His detailed reply, however, does not lend much confidence to the hope that anything will be done:

[M]any of the foreign sourced long lead items, including missiles, in service with the ADF are produced only by a single supplier or by a single nation.  Having selected a parent equipment, the ADF is generally committed to relying on the sole supplier.  The maintenance of reserve stocks and government-to-government agreements provides insurance for assured supply. ⁽⁷⁰⁾

Thus the government response runs full circle back to the failure to articulate a stockholding policy the better to determine adequate stocks.

Cheeseman's concern about ADF access to sophisticated munitions is therefore well founded.  His solution to the problem, however, is not the right one.  He argues that Australia should abandon high-technology weaponry.  This is possible, he argues, because a more limited defence focus on the "Australian mainland and the surrounding maritime zone would rule out the need for a range of high technology weapons systems". ⁽⁷¹⁾  It has already been shown that Cheeseman's narrowing of focus does not change the requirement for the ADF to be able to operate across northern Australia, or in the air-sea gap, or the EEZ.  Asking the ADF to operate in this area without guided munitions at a time when all other countries in the Asia-Pacific are modernising their forces is hardly a realistic proposal.  Nor should it be taken too seriously in the absence of SAP proposals about alternative weapons systems.  Cheeseman maintains that the ADF should retain a residual capability to deal with more substantial levels of conflict.  This, surely, means that some stocks of guided munitions would be needed for training purposes.  Even at lower force levels then, the only realistic solution to Australia's requirement for sophisticated munitions is to develop a realistic and sustainable stockholding policy.  This will have to balance more effectively than at present the twin goals of maintaining adequate stocks without over-burdening the budget.

On the particular ANZUS-related issues which Cheeseman explicitly addresses, he does not present a strong enough case to justify reviewing the alliance with a view to cutting ties.  He exposes a semantic flaw in the government's use of the term self-reliance, but this is a matter of presentation rather than substantive policy.  Australia is dependent on the United States for access to a small number of guided weapons.  But the trend is towards a reduced, rather than an increased, reliance on US sources for equipment.  Australia has diversified its sources of supply for the design of weapons and, more importantly, has developed a competent and sophisticated industrial base to support the local design, building, modification and support of defence items.  ANZUS continues to offer important benefits to Australia -- not least, access to sophisticated munitions, spare parts, software and electronic information and weapons systems for combat aircraft -- but the character of the alliance has changed.  As Paul Dibb puts it:

Australia's alliance with the US will continue to be an important element of our defence planning and for regional security, but we need to recognise that things have changed with the end of the Cold War.  Australia is not quite so important to the United States ... as it was in the Cold War.  And as we develop a more self-reliant defence policy and a community of strategic interests with our ASEAN friends, the US will be not quite so central in our defence policy.  It will still be important but ... we will have a much more equal alliance partnership ... in the coming decade. ⁽⁷²⁾

The rhetoric of at least some SAP members (Cheeseman is a moderate in this respect) suggests that they have not caught up with the changes of which Dibb speaks.  Richard Bolt, for example says that "Australia remains a loyal cog in the United States' military machine", and that the "United States still has overriding influence".  St John Kettle claims that "ANZUS locks Australia into the most offensive defence strategy yet conceived", while Peter King writes about the "... utterly anomalous anti-Soviet strategic infrastructure which we [Australia] have housed in the American interest for the past generation".  King claims to identify a US "pathological nostalgia for the Cold War", but his phrase more accurately describes the SAP anti-US alliance rhetoric. ⁽⁷³⁾  While the alliance has adapted and moved on, it is the SAP criticisms of ANZUS which are outdated -- the relics of a long-past Cold War era.

DEFENCE INDUSTRY AND CIVILIAN INFRASTRUCTURE

Australia's defence industry requirements raise complex questions about the extent to which the Defence Force should rely on the civilian infrastructure to perform essential support tasks, the extent to which government should underwrite industry to maintain strategic capabilities and the extent to which defence exports should be encouraged as a way to strengthen the industry base.  The key to all of these issues is finding a cost-effective balance between maintaining military skills, relying on civilian resources, and supporting local industry -- but not through excessive cost premiums.  Although the SAP proposes quite drastic reforms, they do not address these questions of balance.  Indeed, elements of the SAP position are mutually contradictory, particularly where industry issues are concerned.

BALANCING MILITARY SKILLS AND CIVIL RESOURCES

Cheeseman's proposals to lower the technology level of the ADF would have a substantial effect on the size and capabilities of local defence industry, damaging most particularly the area where industry is developing an international comparative advantage:  electronics, information technology and computer software.  Against this, Cheeseman argues that a low-tech ADF would be able to sustain a simplified defence industry base.  He advocates the commercialisation of many defence support tasks because this would cost less and "... provide a better basis for establishing a more self-reliant system of logistics support". ⁽⁷⁴⁾  Industry would not need to export because local demand would be sufficient to soak up production capacity.  Similarly, the ADF would be less dependent on overseas supplies because of its reduced requirement for high-tech equipment.

Cheeseman is certainly correct in maintaining that Defence would be able to make greater use of civilian technology and to contract out some support functions to provide lower-cost alternatives for a number of present military operations.  Indeed there is a growing consensus in Defence that this strategy should be followed.  The Commercial Support Program (CSP) is now in the second phase of a plan to assess over 20,000 ADF and Defence Department positions for their suitability to be contracted out to the private sector.  This will be done over a five-year period, which itself post-dates a two-year trial period when 31 areas of Service activity were assessed for commercialisation.  Of these "Tier One" decisions, 17 went to industry, 11 remained "in-house" with the ADF, two were split between industry and the ADF, with one yet to be decided. ⁽⁷⁵⁾

Elements of Defence's implementation of CSP can be questioned.  The pace of implementation appears too slow.  The Tier One phase yielded savings averaging 30 per cent but ranging from 14 per cent to 70 per cent.  This could be taken as a signal to implement Tier Two much faster than Defence is planning to do, but now the Department says of the Tier One result:  "this is a very small sample, and does not necessarily indicate future trends".  So what was once a pilot study precisely to see how CSP could be implemented is now discounted as offering a reason to move faster on commercialisation.  One might equally question the practice of allowing the ADF to make in-house bids for CSP tenders.  Defence maintains that this offers an incentive for the Service bid to be put on a commercial and cost-effective basis.  In the longer term, however, in-house bids could lead to an unbalancing of the forces.  For example, if the ADF wins in-house bids to provide catering at some bases but not at others, this will greatly complicate the structure of Service catering.  A more fundamental question is whether the ADF should regard base-level catering as an essential "core" activity which must be maintained, or one which is "non-core" and should therefore be dispensed with.  Defence acknowledges that "progress in this area has been slow" in determining core and non-core Service functions.  There will always be a grey area but in many cases (including catering at static bases) a decision that something is a non-core activity should lead quickly to commercialisation.

For all these matters of detail, though, the major point is that Defence has accepted the need to commercialise many support activities.  Equally, there is an acceptance that civilian technologies offer lower cost alternatives to the use of specialist military equipment.  This is certainly true in communications where, in tabling the 1991 Force Structure Review which re-evaluated the White Paper's equipment plans, the Minister said:  "future communications projects will be directed away from costly, military specification programs to make more extensive use of the civilian infrastructure and of commercially available equipment". ⁽⁷⁶⁾  It is likely that both the CSP and greater use of commercial infrastructure could be taken further -- to the benefit of local industry.  The art, of course, is determining the limits of the process.  The ADF already uses both civilian transport and communications infrastructures.  However, it would not be prudent to assume that in time of conflict the ADF could rely on civilian air, land or maritime transport to get equipment where it was needed.  Civilian companies have powerful insurance obligations which usually prevent them from crossing a dangerous operational area.  Similarly, Defence could not necessarily rely on civilian strategic communications:  during a conflict these relatively vulnerable assets could become targets.  Defence needs its own secure communications links, if only to back-up the civilian network.

An obvious but overlooked point is that the most likely area of military operations, the Australian north, does not have a well-developed civilian infrastructure.  The plan to relocate to Darwin a brigade group of around 2,000 personnel and their equipment by the year 2000 will place considerable demands on the Darwin infrastructure during peacetime.  The enormous distances between the regions where the ADF may have to fight and the places where the civilian infrastructure is available to support and maintain equipment cornplicate proposals for the use of the civilian infrastructure.

While acknowledging the value of extending CSP activities and use of the commercial infrastructure, neither Cheeseman nor the SAP offer realistic guidelines within which such a programme could be extended.  Any such guidelines would need to take into account the financial cost of redundancies which inevitably slows the rate at which reforms can be introduced.  They would also need to address the problems of developing guidelines for grey areas where either civilian or military resources could be used depending on the situation at the time;  and for defining residual capabilities which the ADF should maintain regardless of the capacities of the civilian infrastructure.  In the face of such complexities, hardly even acknowledged by the SAP, their proposals for greater reliance on the civilian sector are just the beginning of the story rather than the answer to Australia's defence needs.

PROPPING-UP DEFENCE INDUSTRY?

There are, moreover, difficulties with some of the assumptions underpinning SAP arguments about defence industry.  Cheeseman assumes that Australian industry would find it easier to provide for the ADF's needs if it were producing low-technology equipment.  This is not so.  Indeed, simple-to-manufacture equipment with low unit costs would most likely be highly uneconomic for local industry to produce without substantial government subsidies -- something Cheeseman would rightly like to avoid.  In the production of a unit like, for example, a low-technology small patrol boat, Australian industry would find it very difficult to compete with the lower cost Korean or South East Asian ship-building industries.  The Royal Australian Navy would be unlikely to order sufficient numbers of any vessel to create substantial economies of scale to sustain a local production run.  Governments would find it more cost-effective to make low-technology purchases off-shore.  This then would have the effect of making Australia more dependent on overseas-sources for defence equipment -- anathema to Cheeseman but not to all other SAP members.  Kettle, for example, would be happy for Australian defence industry to wither altogether and rely on overseas sources of supply.  (This raises an interesting question about double standards.  Kettle has no difficulty in maintaining that Australia should be able to buy weapons from overseas at the same time as he opposes all Australian defence exports.)

Australian defence industry has proven skills at designing, supporting and maintaining high-technology equipment.  This is where the high economic value of most defence projects rests.  In a typical naval vessel, for example, the cost of hull systems and personnel required to operate them amount to ten per cent of the total cost, propulsion systems and personnel 20 per cent and weapons systems and the personnel required to operate them fully 60 per cent. ⁽⁷⁷⁾  It is the latter areas which are attractive to Australian industry rather than the "metal-bashing" involved in hull fabrication, and these areas also where industry has international-standard skills to market.  Contrary to Cheeseman's position, the most appropriate strategy for Australian defence industry is to concentrate on high-technology skills and processes rather than low-technology construction work.

Cheeseman also argues that Australian defence industry faces a dilemma because of a failure to export enough product to remain viable in the face of insufficient demand from the ADF.  This means that "if the existing market conditions remain in force, the level of subsidisation and further [government financial] support will have to increase". ⁽⁷⁸⁾  But the level of government subsidy for defence industry has reduced markedly in recent years in contrast to the time when a large part of industry was run by the Defence Department as the Office of Defence Production.  By corporatising the ODP into two companies run on private-sector lines -- Australian Defence Industries (ADI) and ASTA -- and by selling Williamstown dockyard, the Commonwealth saved an estimated $1.3 billion between 1987 and 1993 in reduced subsidies. ⁽⁷⁹⁾

Beyond this, however, Defence continues to pay a premium to support local production of defence equipment.  The 1987 Defence White Paper said that preference for local content would be given to the extent of providing a "... notional discount to the tendered price equivalent to 20 per cent of the value of local content". ⁽⁸⁰⁾  In fact it appears that the premiums paid for local production are lower than that figure.  In an assessment of the strategic priorities for Australian industry, Paul Dibb says that maintaining the industrial capabilities to build ships and submarines "... is very important in strategic terms.  But generally, there is no pressing strategic requirement to justify paying a significant premium (say, more than about 10 per cent) to retain a shipbuilding capability".  Dibb maintains that other, more strategically important industry capabilities, such as those involving "electronics, information technology and telecommunications", could require the payment of a price premium.  This should, however, be "kept in reasonable bounds".

There have been cases, clearly, where the Australian government has paid too high a premium to ensure substantial local involvement in equipment projects.  Dibb nominates the F/A-18 project as one example where "the premiums Australia paid for assembling the F/A-18 fighter locally were in the order of 30 per cent ... this is too high a price to pay for self-reliance". ⁽⁸¹⁾  How high will the premiums be for the ANZAC frigates and Collins submarines?  The answer to that question will not be known until the projects are nearer completion, but sections of the Canberra bureaucracy are already concerned that they will be too high.  The Auditor-General's office has reviewed the submarine project and concluded that "... contract amendment procedures may have resulted in excessive prices being charged by the contractor". ⁽⁸²⁾  Problems of that nature have less to do with paying a premium for local content than they do the administration of the project.  The fact remains, though, that questions about the appropriate premiums for Australian industry involvement in defence contracts will continue to be asked for the foreseeable future.

None of this lends much comfort to the Secure Australia Project perspective on defence industry.  The collapse of Australian defence industry would make the ADF wholly dependent on overseas sources of supply for defence equipment, thus undermining the SAP goal of developing substantially greater self-reliance.  On the other hand, propping up an industry which is trying to meet most of the ADF's needs but is prohibited from exporting will cost the Commonwealth substantially more than current subsidies and cost premiums.  That too is an outcome the SAP would not like, given their position on defence spending.  Cheeseman and his colleagues offer no way through this problem other than with the even less sustainable proposition that industry move into the types of low-technology production at which Australia's economic competitors are so efficient.

The solution to the problem is in setting the right balance between maintaining cost-effective industries, occasionally (but seldom) accepting that premiums for local production must be paid, and importing equipment when this makes better economic sense than the first two options.  Total self-reliance in defence is a myth, but there would be no need to worry about dependence on overseas suppliers if Australia could get its stockholding policy in order.  There is an inconsistency in SAP thinking about access to imported weapons.  Cheeseman expresses grave concern about potential problems Australia may have in securing access during time of crisis.  This conflicts with another SAP argument about the difficulty Australia faces in exporting its own defence goods.  St John Kettle says this is "... a time when bargains aplenty are available in an arms market glutted with arms", and that Australia will find it difficult to break into "... a buyer's market". ⁽⁸³⁾  Yet despite the conditions of the market, Cheeseman maintains that for Australia "... access [to resupply] is far from guaranteed". ⁽⁸⁴⁾  While Australia should not be complacent about overseas-sourced equipment, the seriousness of SAP concerns about losing access can, to a large degree, be discounted.

THE IMPORTANCE OF DEFENCE EXPORTS

If there is some SAP confusion about Australian imports of weapons, this confusion is even more pronounced about Australian defence exports.  This is most neatly captured in the following passages from The Search for Self-Reliance.  Contrast this:

[I]n view of Australia's relatively small and unsophisticated defence industry, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, for Australia to capture major new markets or to significantly expand its defence exports.

with this:

[T]he transfer of sophisticated weapons to countries in our region could precipitate local arms races, alienate us from neighbouring states, or embroil us in a military conflict. ... And the export of unique technologies, such as those associated with the Jindalee over-the-horizon-radar, gives the recipient information about Australia's defence capabilities. ⁽⁸⁵⁾

So, according to the SAP, Australian defence products are too unsophisticated and will not find a market or they are too sophisticated and we should not market them.  Perhaps this is an example of "idea-mongering" (discussed at the very beginning of this monograph) where any arguments, even mutually contradictory ones, will do as long as the desired goal (in this case to halt defence exports) is achieved.

What cannot be denied about defence exports is the marked lack of success with which Australia has tried to increase them since the 1987 White Paper.  In 1991-92, only $90 million worth of defence goods in total were exported.  Of this, over $30 million came from sporting rifles and ammunition, $28 million were offset arrangements from other trade deals, and $15 million from Australia's own defence co-operation budget.  In effect, only $17.5 million came from real sales of defence equipment. ⁽⁸⁶⁾  This is far short of the projections for sales presented by Robert Cooksey in his 1986 Review of Australia's defence exports and defence industry.  Cooksey estimated that annual sales of $500 million could be reached some time between 1989 and 1991 if defence industry policy were clarified and governments decided to promote such exports. ⁽⁸⁷⁾  Unfortunately neither the clarification nor the promotion has been sufficient to help industry reach the target.  This complicates the government's view that defence exports are a vital part of a vital industry, and therefore an essential pillar of Australia's defence capability.

With the failure of exports to reach anywhere near the target predicted by government, should we accept the SAP proposition that defence industry will never be able to develop a viable base in Australia, and therefore stop worrying about defence industry's prospects?  Alternatively, was government wrong to say that exports were vital to sustain local industry?  To both questions the answer is "no".  In retrospect, Cooksey's prediction about the growth of exports was unrealistic and created false expectations about what industry might realistically achieve over just five years.  Since the mid-1980s, defence industry in Australia has undergone three significant changes.  First, the components of the government-controlled Office of Defence Production were corporatised to be run on private sector lines.  This led to a large reduction in employee numbers and a redevelopment of plant and equipment.  Second, industry geared up to handle a massive programme of defence reinvestment which included the regeneration of the naval shipbuilding sector and development of sophisticated computer software and processing capabilities around weapons systems and sensors and the OTHR project.  In financial year 1993-94, Defence has contractual commitments on 169 major capital equipment projects with a total value of over $30 billion, around 60 per cent of the value of which will be spent domestically. ⁽⁸⁸⁾  This represents a major expansion of local industry involvement in defence projects.  Third, industry has begun to bid for CSP tenders, and to expand into maintenance and support roles once undertaken by the ADF itself.

These developments have wrought big changes in the structure, capabilities and size of Australian defence industry.  It is not surprising that industry has been slow to develop export markets at a time when such massive domestic opportunities arose and restructuring was occurring.  This is not to say, however, that industry can afford to overlook export markets in the future.  The ADF is presently going through a process of equipment modernisation which, towards the end of the 1990s will slow considerably.  Navy requirements for new ships in particular will tail off, placing instead a much reduced demand on industry for maintenance and refit activities.  This reduction in demand for the production of major items of defence equipment will have two impacts on industry.  First, some sections of industry will have to be rationalised.  In the case of shipbuilding, this could have a major impact in the number, size and structure of companies involved.  ADI, Transfield Shipbuilding, the ANZAC frigate builders, and the Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC), with the Fremantle-based Australian Shipbuilding Industry a smaller player, will find the competition for domestic work increasingly intense.  The most likely result will be some reduction and consolidation of activities within the industry. ⁽⁸⁹⁾

The second major impact on the shipbuilding industry will be a greater incentive to find overseas markets for defence equipment.  Transfield is negotiating with Malaysia on a joint project to build 42 offshore patrol vessels, 30 for the Malaysian Navy and twelve for the Australian.  At 80 metres long and 1,200 tonnes the ships would have the capacity to carry a helicopter or missile system.  If finalised, the deal will be the third largest in Australian shipbuilding history after the Collins submarines and ANZAC frigates.  ASC are well advanced on a deal to build three fast patrol boats for the Philippines Navy at a cost of $180 million.  Possibilities also exist for patrol boat deals with Brunei, Indonesia and Taiwan.  ASC and the Australian Government have also held discussions with some ASEAN states about joint ventures for building submarines. ⁽⁹⁰⁾

At the launch of the first Collins Class submarine in August 1993, the Defence Minister, Senator Ray, announced that Australia and Sweden had signed a letter of intent on future marketing co-operation which will focus on market opportunities in the Asia-Pacific region for the ASC-made, Kockums-designed submarines. ⁽⁹¹⁾  The announcement signals a government intention to promote defence exports more actively than in the past.  This reflects a realisation in Canberra that much has to be done to sustain current activity and employment levels in defence industry after the present procurement phase slows down.  Thus, a balanced judgement would not dismiss the export prospects for defence industry as a result of Cooksey's optimistic expectations and the poor performance between 1986 and now.  The more important issue will be how industry responds to the challenge of the late 1990s.  A failure to develop strong overseas markets at that time will certainly have an adverse impact on industry's ability to cater for the ADF's domestic needs.

Success, if it comes, is more likely to be in the form of joint ventures involving companies from Australia and other participating countries.  The level of pure exports, as such may never markedly increase if joint venture operations become the more usual way of doing defence business.  This is certainly the preference of the South East Asian countries, which are looking to develop their own defence industry capabilities.  Apart from the economic benefit to Australia this form of co-operation offers, joint ventures in equipment production and procurement with regional states should also be regarded as a confidence- and security-building measure.  Such activities would be a tangible sign of Australian commitment to the region, increase mutual understanding of the capabilities of armed forces and improve their capacities to operate together.  Far from being a negative feature of regional security as the SAP argues, the development of an interlocking defence industry network in the region would tie countries more closely together in trade and security matters, thus contributing to the developing sense of a regional security community.

Of course, defence exports or procurement joint ventures with foreign countries need to be governed by guidelines placing restrictions where appropriate on the sale of equipment.  This is a matter of particular concern to the SAP, and rightly so.  Australian defence equipment sales should be guided by a set of principles prohibiting export to aggressor states, or where there is a likely probability the equipment could be used to violate human rights in importing countries.  In this respect, Australia's record is very good.  Over the last four years since 1990 there have been perhaps two cases where approvals were wrongly granted to export defence equipment.  In both cases it related to aircraft engine parts to be exported to Somalia and Iraq (approved in financial year 1989-90).  In both cases the exports did not go ahead, the latter because of the United Nations arms embargo brought into effect in August 1990.  A sale of former Airforce Mirage jets to Pakistan was ineptly handled at the political level and was of questionable value in foreign policy terms.

This contrasts with 1,600 approvals granted for export in 1989-90 and 1,181 in 1991-92, the vast bulk of which went to New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom and, through the DCP, to the Pacific islands. ⁽⁹²⁾  This hardly amounts to an "open slather" export policy as Graeme Cheeseman describes it. ⁽⁹³⁾  Indeed the main fault of the defence export guidelines is not that they encourage sales to the wrong countries, but rather that they are so vague that there is no clear basis for determining what applications will be accepted and what refused.  As the government goes through its third review of the guidelines since 1988, it is hoped that their aim is to make them clearer, both for the sake of industry (which wants clarity and certainty to plan export programmes), and their critics, who keep a necessary watch over broader foreign policy concerns.

RESTRUCTURING ADF COMMAND ARRANGEMENTS

Cheeseman devotes six pages in The Search for Self-reliance (reproduced in Threats Without Enemies) to a proposal for restructuring the command arrangements of the ADF.  To understand his argument a brief (but necessary) description of current ADF command arrangements follows.  There are three separate Service structures -- Navy, Army and Airforce -- responsible for raising (recruiting) forces, training them in all military skills, and maintaining them with equipment and stocks at predefined levels.  The Army is headed by a Lieutenant-General (a "three-star" general) and the other services by an officer of equivalent rank.  For the business of fighting a war, the ADF has a separate command structure at the top of which is the Chief of Defence Force (CDF) who is a four-star general.  Under the CDF, from October 1993, will be a three-star Commander, Joint Forces Australia (CJFA).  Through the Headquarters of the ADF in Canberra, it is CJFA's role to command the ADF at the broadest level of a military operation. ⁽⁹⁴⁾  CJFA can call upon three established command structures, Land, Maritime and Air Command, known as the functional commands, headed by a Major General (two-star) or equivalent to command elements of all three Services in a theatre of operations.

In addition to this panoply of command arrangements, there is also Northern Command (NORCOM) headed by a Brigadier (one-star) based in Darwin, who could be called upon to command the early stages of a low-level contingency, only to hand over command responsibility to a designated functional commander or to the CJFA as the conflict escalated.  Over the last 20 years the trend has been for the ADF to develop command structures weakening the role of the single Services and emphasising "jointery" or close tri-Service co-operation.  The creation of CJFA is likely to be a forerunner to collocating the three functional command headquarters in one physical location.  Ultimately the three functional commands may merge into a single structure designed to command the whole of the ADF in wartime operation. ⁽⁹⁵⁾

This is a complex, indeed overly cumbersome, arrangement generating too many command levels for what is, after all, a small force of less than 70,000 regular personnel.  The Kangaroo series of exercises in northern Australia demonstrated in 1989 and again in 1992 that relations between different levels of command are difficult to clarify, and that problems in allocating functional responsibilities can lead to unedifying turf-battles which would not be helpful in war. ⁽⁹⁶⁾  There are strong grounds for saying that ADF command arrangements should be simplified.  Is Cheeseman's structure the answer?  He suggests abolishing the three Services as separate entities, creating instead a Maritime Command responsible for all defence tasks in Australia's air and sea approaches, as well as control of NORCOM, land surveillance and counter-insurgency roles.  Maritime Command would also perform a range of peacetime tasks including surveillance, hydrographic survey, mapping, liaison with civil authorities, and provide its own logistic support.  In addition to Maritime Command there would be a Home Defence Command, responsible for raising, training and maintaining forces for larger-scale military conflict.  Home Defence Command would have two component elements:  a Support Command for training and logistic support roles and Contingency Forces which would be kept at low levels of readiness (with equipment in storage) against the possibility of a major threat arising. ⁽⁹⁷⁾

There is at least some superficial attraction to Cheeseman's structure because he is proposing an arrangement with fewer command organisations, therefore answering a need that the system be simplified.  He achieves this simplification, however, by amalgamating the support and the war-fighting components of the ADF.  Thus Cheeseman's Maritime Commander, for example, is responsible not only for surveillance operations as the present Maritime Commander might be in a defence emergency, but also for a range of peacetime activities like hydrographic survey work and also for logistic support (although Home Defence Command would carry out an unspecified part of Maritime Command's support needs).  This complicates rather than simplifies the task of the Maritime Commander.  Is that individual a war-fighter or a peace-time organiser?  There is a logic to the current system which takes the Chief of each Service out of the war-time command structure and requires them instead to focus their efforts on raising, training and maintaining the forces.  By proposing to conflate this function with the war-fighting function, Cheeseman is suggesting nothing new, but actually arguing for a return to something like the system of twenty or more years ago when the Service Chiefs carried out both roles.

The first difficulty with Cheeseman's structure, therefore, is that it brings together two things which should be kept apart:  the ADF's war-fighting role and its support and training role.  The second difficulty is that it pulls apart one thing which should be kept together:  that is the ADF's ability to fight low-level and high-level conflicts.  Cheeseman's Support Command would be responsible for most of the high-technology equipment so disliked by the SAP:

All major equipment and assets not required by Maritime and Home Defence Command would be placed in store and maintained at appropriate states of readiness by civilian contractors and would be allocated to training or operational units as the need arose.  In this way, Australia would retain some capacity to expand or mobilise its forces within likely warning times, but without the expense of having them as part of the "force in being". ⁽⁹⁸⁾

This suggestion raises a number of practical difficulties.  The first would be in deciding what types of equipment should be put into storage because the force remaining would have to be sufficiently capable of providing a first response to any military threat.  The penalties for maintaining the residual force at too low a level of capability would be great indeed.  The second problem would be working out at what point in an international crisis the stored force should be reactivated.  If the decision to reactivate is made too late, that would undermine Australia's ability to defend itself.  On the other hand, mobilising forces during a time of international political crisis could itself be taken as a provocative act, further destabilising the situation.  Finally, the proposal assumes that the ADF would not require "high-tech" equipment to fight a low-level counter-insurgency operation.  I have already argued that this is not so in the context of the ADF's so-called offensive weaponry.  While a low-level conflict may ultimately be resolved at the tactical level between small groups of infantry forces, why should the ADF hamper itself by limiting the amount of battlefield mobility or fire support it needs in order to bring technological superiority to the battlefield?

On balance then, Cheeseman's proposals for restructuring the ADF's command system would complicate rather than simplify the task of commanding forces in the defence of Australia.  There is a need to address the over-complexity of current command arrangements, but the SAP model is much worse than the one it proposes to replace.

"DEMOCRATISING" THE DEFENCE DEBATE

Finally, we come to the SAP call to "democratise" the defence debate and to hold a "public inquiry into Australia's international security policies".  There is every reason to encourage a more open defence debate in Australia, and the SAP call for more openness on the part of the defence establishment should be supported.  In fact, there is no real shortage of information about, and by, the defence establishment in the public arena.  In addition to occasional white paper statements and its Annual Report, Defence also issues an annual Corporate Plan providing a five-year rolling framework for defence planning.  Since 1992, annual public versions of capital equipment and facilities plans have been issued.  The advent of Program Management and Budgeting (PMB) has led to the creation of a detailed and informative annual defence budget breakdown running to over 600 pages.  Other government agencies often provide detailed assessments of specific areas of defence policy.  Several reports from the Auditor-General have been referred to in this monograph as well as reports produced by the Parliamentary committee system.  In addition, the Defence Inspector-General is charged with carrying out programme evaluation and the Industry Commission is currently conducting a major review of the equipment procurement process.  The Senate budget estimates and supplementary estimates committee hearings are able to question departmental officials and request information.  There are also ministerial statements, and Parliamentary questions on notice and without notice.

In short, there are abundant sources of information reporting and evaluating defence activities.  Improvements and additions can certainly be made.  In particular, the Defence Annual Report would benefit from a re-evaluation of the priorities which in 1991-92 allowed it to devote three-and-a-half pages to energy management, but only four paragraphs to defence export policy, and only five paragraphs to ANZUS.  The problem is not inadequate sources of information but rather the relevance and value of the information provided.  Defence's own reports are less questioning than those of the outside agencies, and the Corporate Plan has a formalistic quality which changes little from year to year.  That said, no other country in our region is as open as Australia is in explaining its defence policy.  No other country in the region subjects its defence policy-making process to review from outside authority. ⁽⁹⁹⁾  This is entirely appropriate for a democracy, but while there is room for improving the quality of information offered, it is difficult to see that there is a need greatly to increase the volume of information available.

The SAP call for a public inquiry argues for government financial support to establish hearings "conducted by a group representative of community concerns, drawn from non-government organisations, academic life, the media and security professionals".  It would examine the case for adopting the SAP defence and security agenda. ⁽¹⁰⁰⁾  There is an informal rule of political life that one should never establish a committee of inquiry unless one is absolutely certain about the committee's conclusions.  SAP members should therefore be wary about their proposal to investigate community concerns on defence issues.  Opinion poll data shows conclusively that a substantial majority of Australians do not accept any of the SAP's fundamental premises.  Appendix One presents some of the defence and security opinion poll data gathered in the 1993 Australian Election Survey conducted by Professor Ian McAllister of the Politics Department at the University College, Australian Defence Force Academy.  The poll was conducted nationally, using a large sample of over 3,000 individuals.  The findings confirm past polling results of Australian opinion on defence and security. ⁽¹⁰¹⁾  For example, only 13.8 per cent of respondents said that the government should spend less or a "lot less" on defence, while 42 per cent would like to see more or "much more" spent on defence.

Australians remain supportive of the defence alliance with the United States.  Only 20 per cent of those surveyed say that ANZUS is "not very important" or "not at all important", while 77.6 per cent say it is "fairly" or "very important".  Support for hosting the joint defence facilities at Pine Gap and Nurrungar remains high.  Support for providing port access for nuclear powered ships is also high.  Support for visits from potentially nuclear-armed vessels is somewhat lower.  Earlier polling found that popular support for the alliance actually increased during the Gulf War. ⁽¹⁰²⁾  Contrary both to the SAP view and that of the security policy-making establishment, Australians continue to feel threatened by other countries in the region.  More than 55 per cent of people nominate Indonesia as posing a threat to Australia in about five years:  31.6 per cent feel the same way about Japan and 27.6 per cent about China.  This should give governments cause to ponder how effective they have been with their domestic constituents in promoting the shift to greater regional security co-operation.  Last, the poll data shows that Australians remain open-minded about the possibility of using the ADF to intervene in foreign countries.  When given a range of possible reasons which might prompt overseas military intervention (such as if Australian citizens are at risk, or if the country in question cannot maintain order), Australians tend to remain equivocal, the majority saying such interventions could sometimes be justified.

There is an obvious and considerable gap between the SAP agenda and the security views of the wider community.  At the very least one could question the SAP desire to initiate a process that would result in demonstrating the gulf between mainstream public views and their own position.  It seems likely therefore that the SAP would regard a public inquiry as offering an opportunity less to gather public views as much as it would provide a forum for the promotion of their own agenda, or as St John Kettle calls it:  "resistance and idea-mongering".  Providing public funds for an exercise like that would be of dubious value in promoting a more informed defence debate in Australia.

CONCLUSION

In presenting the case against the Secure Australia Project, I do not want to leave the reader with the impression that current defence and security policy is without fault -- far from it. ⁽¹⁰³⁾  Defence policy suffers from a lack of focus which has seen a growth of non-combat support elements at the cost of the fighting capabilities of the ADF.  In 1992, only 29 per cent of regular Army personnel were in combat positions;  55 per cent were in support positions, mostly in Canberra, Melbourne or Sydney, and unlikely ever to move from these locations even during a defence emergency.  With a total strength of 28,000 people in 1992, the Army could field only four regular infantry combat battalions.  New Zealand with an Army of 4,700 could field two regular battalions.  The comparison should not be taken too far because the New Zealand Defence Force's lack of adequate logistic support capabilities should not be treated as a virtue.  In broad terms, however, this comparison shows the result of a worrying drift over twenty years or more in the ADF's "teeth-to-tail" ratio.

This lack of appropriate focus on combat capability stems in part from a political reluctance to become too closely involved in the management of the Defence Department.  Australia's economic problems finally changed this situation in the early 1990s, the Force Structure Review in 1991 beginning the process of bringing micro-economic reform to the defence establishment.  Commercialisation and a rationalisation of ADF support activities and force structure have a long way to go before one could comfortably judge that taxpayers were getting maximum value for their $10 billion annual investment.

The government and defence establishments have also been slow to change strategic assessments in the light of the end of the Cold War.  This has given a ponderous and heavy-handed quality to some of Defence's regional security co-operation initiatives.  There have been problems in determining the right emphasis to give to peace-keeping, to reserve forces, to acquiring strike capabilities, to detailing industry priorities, even to working out the appropriate curriculum of studies for officer cadets.  The list of areas in need of reform is long indeed.  In some cases, for example, on stockholding, the SAP has identified areas which are genuinely in need of fresh thinking.  More generally though, the SAP case for restructuring the ADF and refocusing defence policy simply misses the mark.

The SAP case for broadening the meaning of security has, to a degree, been adopted by sections of the official community, particularly the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, but neither the SAP nor the bureaucracy have been able to demonstrate how a broadened definition could be turned into a workable security policy.  One can accept that the term "security" may be applied to many areas of life;  from locksmiths who advertise their product in the "home security" section of the yellow pages, to those who concern themselves with the defence of the country.  Attempting to treat these separate areas as a single entity -- where health security, environmental security and military security are simply different points on the same intellectual continuum -- does not add clarity, and indeed confuses fundamental issues.  The approach has nothing of value to offer from a policy-making perspective.  Indeed the SAP's inability to decide between themselves appropriate levels of funding for different security areas suggests that a broadened definition of security is really little more than an elaborate means of calling for a cut to defence spending in order to fund the pet projects of special interest groups.

On specific defence policy issues, I have argued that the SAP has failed to come to terms with some of the enduring features of Australian defence policy.  It is not possible, for example, to reduce substantially the size of the area the ADF must defend.  Canberra cannot arbitrarily decide not to defend the Cocos or Christmas Islands.  The geographic scope of Australian defence interests imposes requirements for range and mobility which the SAP believes are potentially threatening to the region.  There is, however, no evidence of Australia being the cause of a regional arms race for any type of military equipment.  While the SAP is critical of so-called "offensive" weapons systems in the ADF, they do not address the point that most types of military equipment can be used in an offensive role.  As such the issue is not the capabilities of specific weapons but rather the policies which direct their use.  Australia does not have aggressive intentions against any country, nor does any country in the region have a defence policy based on an assumed Australian threat.  In the South Pacific, SAP claims about an Australian doctrine of interventionism are hampered by the failure of the ADF to intervene anywhere.  More generally, there is some confusion about the role the ADF should play in regional security co-operation.  The SAP supports the growth of confidence and security building measures between countries, but would ban ADF contact with repressive "regional elites".  There is no consideration of the positive contribution the ADF can make towards strengthening the norms of civil society in the region, no practical suggestions for policy makers in balancing human rights against other national interests, and little recognition of the fact that confidence-building requires contact with the region rather than isolation from it.

Not unexpectedly, the SAP is opposed to Australia's defence alliance with the United States and expresses this opposition in strident Cold War terms.  SAP members misread current trends by arguing that Australia is becoming more reliant on the United States for military equipment.  In fact, the trend is for Australia to become less reliant through a combination of diversifying overseas sources of defence equipment and by developing a more capable defence industry.  This latter feature is disturbing to the SAP, some members of which seem uncomfortable both with the alliance and with the price Australia pays for increasing defence self-reliance.  As such, there is no clear-cut SAP alternative to present policy, which tries to find a balance between alliance and self-reliance.

SAP discomfort with the idea of developing greater defence self-reliance is particularly apparent in their discussion of industry issues.  They generally support civilianisation of defence support activities, seemingly not realising that this gives a substantial boost to defence industry, whose growth they oppose, and involves more people performing services for an organisation they dislike.  The SAP argues that governments should not prop up uncompetitive defence manufacturers, but they are reluctant to permit exports of defence goods through which industry could reduce reliance on the Australian public sector.  Cheeseman argues that Australian industry should aim for the low-technology end of the defence market.  This would drive Australian industry into a competition with low-cost foreign producers of simple defence equipment, the long-term outcome of which would be the closure of Australian defence industry and a reliance on imports.  The SAP inability to reconcile competing priorities between alliance and greater self-reliance, between importing defence equipment and developing local industries, is a major intellectual flaw in their argument.

Finally, while one can accept the principle of the SAP call for a more open defence policy debate, their call for a public inquiry into defence policy hardly achieves that goal.  Opinion poll data shows a wide gulf between SAP perceptions and community thinking on defence issues.  The danger is that, if a public inquiry were established along the lines advocated by the SAP, it would be used not as a means of exploring and informing community opinion, but rather as a forum for more of the "idea mongering" favoured by St John Kettle.  Given the inconsistencies and irrationalities in SAP thinking on defence, using public money to establish a forum for their ideas would be an enormous disservice to the defence debate in Australia.

APPENDIX ONE

PUBLIC ATTITUDES TO DEFENCE ISSUES -- DATA FROM THE 1993 ELECTION SURVEY

Do you think that the government should spend more or less on defence?

	(Frequency)	(%)
Spend much more on defence	428	14.1
Spend some more on defence	845	27.9
About right at present	1258	41.6
Spend less on defence	315	10.4
Spend a lot less on defence	104	3.4
No answer	77	2.5
Total	3027	100.0

Will any of the following countries pose a threat to Australia?

	In about 5 years (% saying yes)	In about 10 to 15 years (% saying yes)
Russia	10.5	36.6
China	27.6	36.6
Indonesia	55.3	56.6
Japan	31.6	36.6
Vietnam	15.1	16.8
India	5.7	9.4

If Australia's security were threatened by some other country, how much trust do you feel Australia can have in the United States to come to Australia's defence?

	(Frequency)	(%)
A great deal	774	25.6
A fair amount	1284	42.4
Not very much	795	26.3
None at all	120	4.0
No answer	54	1.8
Total	3027	100.0

How important do you think the United States alliance under ANZUS is for protecting Australia's security?

	(Frequency)	(%)
Very important	1097	36.2
Fairly important	1253	41.4
Not very important	513	16.9
Not at all important	93	3.1
No answer	71	2.3
Total	3027	100.0

Do you favour or oppose?

	Strongly Favour (%)	Favour (%)	Oppose (%)	Strongly Oppose (%)	No Answer (%)
... the Joint Defence Facilities	19.7	62.2	11.8	3.1	3.2
... port visits by nuclear powered ships	7.8	49.1	26.4	12.5	4.2
... port visits by potentially nuclear armed ships	6.1	37.8	30.4	18.6	7.1

Would Australian military intervention in another country be justified?

	Always justified (%)	Sometimes justified (%)	Never justified (%)	No answer (%)
... if Australian citizens are at risk	49.2	41.3	5.9	3.5
... if other foreign nationals are at risk	4.9	70.4	19.3	5.5
... if the other country oppresses its own citizens	12.9	58.7	21.8	6.6
... if Australia's overseas trade is threatened	16.0	47.0	31.6	5.4
... if the government of the country requests intervention	10.3	74.5	10.7	4.6
... if the country cannot maintain order	11.3	61.6	21.9	5.1

Source: 1993 Australian Election Study.  (Further information about the study can be obtained from Professor lan McAllister of the Politics Department, University College, Australian Defence Force Academy.)

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ENDNOTES

1.  "Call for an Inquiry into Australia's Security" in Gary Smith and St John Kettle (eds), Threats Without Enemies:  Rethinking Australia's Security (Pluto Press, Sydney, 1992), pages 331-32.  (Hereafter, Threats ...)

2.  Senator Sid Spindler, "Democrats to move for defence probe", Media Release, 93/140, 8 March 1993.

3.  In addition to Threats ..., the SAP has also produced:  Graeme Cheeseman and St John Kettle (eds), The New Australian Militarism:  Undermining our Future Security (Pluto Press, Sydney, 1990).  (Hereafter Militarism ...)

4.  St John Kettle "Restraining the arms trade:  Judo and resistance" in Threats ..., pages 267-292;  pages 268, 290.

5.  Jan Jindy Pettman, "National identity and security" in Threats ..., pages 53-68;  page 54.

6.  R.B.J. Walker, One World, Many Worlds:  Struggles for a Just World Peace (Lynne Reinner Publishers, Boulder, Colorado, 1988), page 127.  Other quotations in this paragraph come from the section entitled "Interpretations", pages 115-128.

7.  Richard H. Ullman, "Redefining Security" in International Security, 8 (l), Summer 1983, pages 129-153;  page 133.

8.  Jessica Tuchman Mathews, "Redefining Security" in Foreign Affairs, 68 (2), Spring 1989, pages 162-177;  passim.

9.  Gary Smith, "Demilitarising Security" in Threats ..., pages 25-52;  page 26.

10.  See, for example, Martin Indyk "The Australian Study of International Relations", in Don Aitkin (ed.), Surveys of Australian Political Science (George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1985), pages 265-311, who is critical of the realist school in Australian writing on security, but accepts that this approach has been leavened by a "rationalist" interpretation -- characterised by a belief in the common interests of states to behave in an international environment mediated by accepted norms of behaviour;  page 266.

11.  Jan Jindy Pettman, "National identity and security" in Threats ... passim.

12.  Senator the Hon. Gareth Evans, QC, Australia's Regional Security:  Ministerial Statement (AGPS, Canberra, December 1989), Paragraph 58.

13.  Department of Defence, The Defence of Australia 1987 (AGPS, Canberra, 1987), page 8.

14.  Department of Defence, Australia's Strategic Planning in the 1990s (Departmental Publications, Canberra, 1992), page 3.

15.  Department of Defence, Defence Report 1991-1992 (Departmental Publications, Canberra, 1992), page 6.

16.  Senator the Hon. Gareth Evans, QC, Cooperating for Peace:  The Global Agenda for the 1990s (Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1993), pages 6, 42, 90.

17.  Liberal/National Party Federal Coalition, A Strong Australia:  Rebuilding Australia's Defence (Liberal/National Party Coalition, Canberra, October 1992), page 128.

18.  Indeed the May 1993 issue of Pacific Research, journal of the Peace Research Centre at the Australian National University, carried an article on "Globalism in Health" by Jonathan Mann.

19.  Di Bretherton, "Towards a secure community" in Threats ... pages 71-87;  page 74.

20.  Ibid., page 80.

21.  Di Bretherton, ibid., page 82;  Gary Smith, "Demilitarising Security" in Threats ..., pages 41-42;  Richard Bolt, "Greening Australia's security policy" in Threats ..., pages 88-112;  page 109.

22.  Gary Smith, "Demilitarising Security" in Threats ..., pages 40, 35.

23.  "Call for an Inquiry into Australia's Security" in Threats ..., pages 331-32.

24.  Graeme Cheeseman, "An effective and affordable defence for Australia" in Threats ..., pages 293-313;  Graeme Cheeseman, The Search for Self-Reliance:  Australian Defence Since Vietnam (Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1993).  (Hereafter, Search ...)

25.  Graeme Cheeseman, "An effective and affordable defence ..." in Threats ..., page 294.

26.  Gary Smith, "Demilitarising Security" in Threats ..., page 31.

27.  Graeme Cheeseman, Search ..., page 156.

28.  Ibid., page 196.

29.  Ibid., page 224.

30.  Gary Smith, "Demilitarising Security" in Threats ..., page 28.

31.  Department of Defence, The Defence of Australia 1987, op. cit., page 2.

32.  Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers:  Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (Random House, NY, 1987).  Kennedy coined this phrase to describe what he considered to be the current dilemma of the United States:  where the total of its interests and obligations is greater than the national capacity to defend them.

33.  A point addressed by Stewart Woodman, Australian Security Planning at the Crossroads:  The Challenge of the Nineties (Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Working Paper No. 271, Canberra, June 1993), page 5.

34.  Graeme Cheeseman, Search ..., page 215.  Discussions with Cheeseman clarify that he is referring to the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone, not the 12 nautical mile territorial claim.

35.  Ross Babbage, A Coast Too Long:  Defending Australia Beyond the 1990s (Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1990), page 64;  J.R.V. Prescott, The Maritime Political Boundaries of the World (Methuen, London, 1985), page 197.

36.  Peter Jennings, "The ANZAC Ships:  A Vital Choice for New Zealand" in New Zealand International Review, XVI (2), March-April 1989, pages 2-7;  passim.

37.  At sea state 3, the highest 1/3 of waves are a mean height of 0.88 of a metre.  At sea state 4, mean wave height is 1.88 metres.  See P.J. Gates and N.M. Lynn, Ships, Submarines and the Sea (Brassey's Defence Publishers, London, 1990).

38.  For MHI sea state data see, Hansard (Senate), Answer to question No. 523, "Inshore Minehunter Vessels", 9 April 1991, pages 2148-50.

39.  Graeme Cheeseman, Search ..., page 219.

40.  Ibid., pages 206, 213.

41.  Gary Waters, Gulf Lesson One -- The Value of Air Power:  Doctrinal Lessons for Australia (Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, 1992), page 166.

42.  These issues are discussed further in Peter Jennings, "Presumptuous and Provocative?  Australian Defence policy in the 1990s" in Policy, 7 (4), Summer 1991, pages 41-44.

43.  Although Richard Bolt in The New Australian Militarism proposed creating "community-based surveillance units" made up of "civilians operating sea, air and land craft which would be relatively small and cheap".  Their job would be to report "suspicious activity" to co-ordination centres.  It is curious that, in a book which argued Australia was becoming a militaristic danger to the region, one of the few alternative defence proposals involved turning the country's entire northern population into a para-military.  Not only would this violate the Geneva Protocols on the treatment of civilians in combat, it also reveals a lack of understanding about the north's population distribution.  Under Bolt's scheme, Darwin harbour would be well guarded, but what about the thousands of kilometres of uninhabited coastline?  Richard Bolt, "The New Australian Militarism" in Militarism ... op. cit., pages 25-72;  page 62.

44.  "Call for an Inquiry into Australia's Security" in Threats ..., pages 331-32,

45.  Graeme Cheeseman, Search ..., page 166.

46.  Ibid., pages 145, 150.

47.  For example, "Perceptions of Indonesian-Australian Co-operation" in Richard J. Wood, Australia and Indonesia:  A Partnership in the Making (Toowoomba, 1991), pages 13-15.

48.  Desmond Ball, Trends in military acquisitions in the Asia-Pacific region:  implications for security and prospects for constraints and controls (Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Working Paper No. 273, Canberra, July 1993), page 12.

49.  On which, see Peter Jennings, "Sink or Swim for the Australian Military Industry" in The Asian Wall Street Journal, 27-28 August 1993.

50.  Richard Bolt, "The New Australian Militarism" in Militarism ..., op, cit., page 51.

51.  Graeme Cheeseman, Search ..., pages 155, 156.

52.  Department of Defence, Force Structure Review:  1991 (Departmental Publications, Canberra, May 1991), page 28;  "Defence Acquisitions and the 10-Year Plan", Defence Industry and Aerospace Report, 11 (8), 22 May 1992;  Department of Defence, Defence New Major Capital Equipment Proposals:  1992-96 (Departmental Publications, Canberra, 1992), page 32;  Minister for Defence, "Defence Investment Plans and Efficiency Initiatives Remain on Track", News Release No. 92/93, 17 August 1993;  Liberal/National Party Federal Coalition, A Strong Australia ..., op. cit., pages 81-83.

53.  "Call for an Inquiry into Australia's Security" in Threats ..., pages 331-32.

54.  Ibid., pages 331-32.

55.  See "Defence Co-operation 1993-94:  Summary" in Department of Defence, Program Performance Statements 1993-94.  Budget Related Papers No. 7.3 (AGPS, Canberra, August 1993), pages 625-642.

56.  Peter D. Jones, "Human rights and security" in Threats ..., pages 113-131;  page 123.

57.  Graeme Cheeseman, Search ..., pages 159-60.

58.  Joseph Camilleri, "New approaches to regional security:  the Asia Pacific context" in Threats ..., pages 153-190;  page 181.

59.  Readers will find the most rationally argued anti-ANZUS case is by Gary Brown, Breaking the American Alliance:  An Independent National Security Policy for Australia (SDSC, Canberra, 1989).

60.  Kim Beazley, quoted in Graeme Cheeseman, Search ..., page 172.

61.  Department of Defence, The Defence Corporate Plan 1993-97 (Departmental Publications, Canberra, 1993), page vi.

62.  Department of Defence, The Defence of Australia 1987, op. cit., page 10.

63.  Graeme Cheeseman, Search ..., page 181.

64.  Department of Defence, Defence Policy and industry:  Report to the Minister for Defence (AGPS, Canberra, November 1992), page 2.

65.  "ASTA gains F/A-18 flaps contract" in Australian Defence Report, 10 June 1993, page 10.

66.  Most particularly in Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Stockholding and Sustainability in the Australian Defence Force (AGPS, Canberra, December 1992), page 74.

67.  The Auditor-General, Explosive Ordnance:  Department of Defence (Audit Report No. 5. 1993-94) (AGPS, Canberra, 1993), page 43.

68.  Ibid., page 45.

69.  Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Stockholding and Sustainability ... op. cit., page 30.

70.  "Response by the Minister for Defence to the Parliamentary Joint Committee report on Stockholding and Sustainability in the Australian Defence Force" (Transcript, page R-7.  The response was tabled in the Senate on 19 August 1993.)

71.  Graeme Cheeseman, Search ..., page 216.

72.  Paul Dibb, The future of Australia's defence relationship with the United States.  Address to the National Press Club, Canberra, 1 September 1993, Transcript), page 10.

73.  Richard Bolt, "The New Australian Militarism" in Militarism ..., page 53;  St John Kettle, "Conclusion" in Militarism ..., pages 191-205, page 193;  Peter King, "Military Security After the Cold War" in Threats ..., pages 131-152;  pages 139, 136.

74.  Graeme Cheeseman, Search ..., page 218.  See also his Chapter 2, "Arming Australia and the Region", passim, for his arguments on defence industry

75.  Information for this and the following paragraph come from:  Report of the Interdepartmental Committee (IDC) on the Wrigley Review, The Defence Force and the Community (AGPS, Canberra, 1991), passim;  Department of Defence, Defence Policy and Industry, op. cit., page 4;  Department of Defence, CSP Update, Issue 13, August 1993, pages 2, 7.

76.  Senator Robert Ray, Minister for Defence, Defence into the Twenty-First Century:  Ministerial Statement (Transcript, paragraph 16.).  Appears in Hansard (Senate) for 30 May 1991.

77.  P.J. Gates, Surface Warships:  An Introduction to Design Principles (Brassey's Defence Publishers, London, 1987), page 21.

78.  Graeme Cheeseman, Search ..., page 58.

79.  Department of Defence, Defence Policy and Industry, op. cit., page 4.

80.  Department of Defence, The Defence of Australia 1987, op, cit., page 79.

81.  Paul Dibb, The Strategic Priorities for Australian Defence Industry (Report to the Department of Defence) (AGPS, Canberra, 1992), pages 64, 65.

82.  The Auditor-General, Department of Defence:  The New Submarine Project:  Efficiency Audit (AGPS, Canberra, 1992), page vii.

83.  St John Kettle, "Restraining the arms trade:  Judo and resistance" in Threats ..., pages 267-292;  pages 286, 288.

84.  Graeme Cheeseman, Search ..., page 187.

85.  Ibid., pages 56, 59.

86.  Department of Defence, Exports and International Programs Branch, Export Facilitation (Department of Defence, Canberra, November 1992), page 3.

87.  Robert Cooksey, Review of Australia's defence exports and defence industry (AGPS, Canberra, 1986), pages 3, 42-3.

88.  Department of Defence, Program Performance Statements 1993-94.  Budget Related Papers No. 7.3, op. cit., page 608.

89.  Prospects for the shipbuilding industry are discussed in Parliament of Australia, House of Representatives Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, The Shipbuilding Industry:  In the Wake of the Bounty (AGPS, Canberra, May 1992), pages 69-77.

90.  Cameron Stuart, "Malaysia close to deal on Warships", The Australian, 7 July 1993, page 1;  Chris Milne, "Sub Corp targets $1bn exports", Advertiser (Adelaide), 22 June 1993, page 33.

91.  "Swedish Defence Minister in Australia", Australian Defence Report, 2 September 1993, page 9.

92.  Department of Defence, Defence Report 1989-90 (Departmental Publications, Canberra, 1990), page 65;  Department of Defence, Defence Report 1991-92, op. cit., page 115.

93.  Graeme Cheeseman, Search ..., page 50.

94.  Minister for Defence, "New Commander Joint Forces Australia Announced", News Release No. 120/93, 7 October 1993.

95.  On the evolution of ADF command arrangements, see Parliament of Australia, Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, The Management of Australia's Defence (AGPS, Canberra, 1987);  Gary Brown, "The Management of Australia's Defence", Defence Force Journal, No. 70, May-June 1988, pages 5-14.

96.  For a more detailed critique of current command arrangements, see Liberal/National Party Federal Coalition, A Strong Australia: ..., op. cit., pages 139-44.

97.  Graeme Cheeseman, Search ..., page 218-224.

98.  Ibid., page 223.

99.  New Zealand is an exception to this rule, but a weaker Parliamentary committee system in Wellington has seldom investigated defence matters.

100.  "Call for an Inquiry into Australia's Security" in Threats ..., pages 331-32.

101.  For an analysis of past results, see Ian McAllister and Toni Makkai, "Changing Australian Opinion on Defence:  Trends, Patterns and Explanations" paper presented to the first international conference on Defence and the Media in time of Limited Conflict, Brisbane, 3-5 April 1991.

102.  Murray Goot, "The Polls" in Murray Goot & Rodney Tiffen (eds), Australia's Gulf War (Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1992), pages 140-181;  page 180.

103.  The following paragraphs draw on Richard J. Wood, "An Agenda for Defence Policy Reform", Backgrounder, 5 (5), (September 1993).