Defence

In the film Balibo, five journalists paint an Australian flag and the word ‘Australia’ on the wall of their ‘safe’ house. They are then coldly executed by the invading Indonesians.

They believed – naively, in retrospect - that their very Australianness and their civilian status as journalists would save them.

Their brutal slaying outrages us, offends our sense of fairness – and shows that the concept of fairness is an odd sort of idea to have in the midst of carnage.

Continue reading "All’s not fair in war" »

There were two people at Wednesday’s state dinner for US President Barack Obama at Parliament House who seemed a bit out of sorts. The first was the man who until recently had looked like our de facto prime minister, Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown. The second was our alternative prime minister, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, who in the past fortnight has gone from being a dead-cert for PM to being the subject of criticism from conservatives about an election strategy based more on opposing things than proposing things.

As President Obama stood at the end of Parliament’s Great Hall in front of that remarkable tapestry of the Australian bush landscape, hand on his heart as The Star Spangled Banner played, Bob Brown grudgingly lifted himself from his seat to join in the standing ovation. Brown, the man who had shouted across the parliamentary chamber at Bill Clinton on his 1997 Australian visit, was up on his pegs and deferring to the Leader of the Free World, a man who represents pretty much everything Brown loathes.

The symbolism of it was one thing. Of more interest is the enormous and important policy shifts in defence and regional security which Prime Minister Gillard and President Obama have presided over this past fortnight which have helped Labor put some long-overdue distance between itself and its partner in power.

Continue reading "Bob and Tony’s awkward night with Obama" »

Claims of abuse with the ADF have emerged again. Community concern with a Defence culture has again been reignited; the continuing fallout of the ADFA Skype Affair and other occurrences like the HMAS Success and Cerberus sex incidents.

The more things change the more they stay the same. There comes a point when we must call a spade a spade and make a clean sweep. These may be clichés but I am in keeping with tradition.

In 1983 Major General Coates, the commandant of RMC, explained to the Melbourne Sun that bastardisation at the college was not of a ‘general or systemic’ nature. Major General Coates assured us, civil society, that he was ‘certain’ of this.

Continue reading "Defence’s head is in the sand, and I don’t mean Afghanistan" »

Another day brings another Defence scandal, prompting a colleague of mine to quip that the people of Inverbrackie and Woodside are probably grateful now there are refugees in the housing estate rather than military personnel.

He said it with a smile, but serious intent.

The Adelaide Hills’ Inverbrackie Detention Centre has not been without its own scandals since it became home to families from Sri Lanka, Iran and Iraq.

First there was the Fruit Picking Incident. About six young asylum seekers scaled a fence - an internal fence, mind, they never got as far as the outside world - to pick fruit. They spent at least ten minutes picking cherry plums.

Continue reading "Everybody needs good neighbours" »

Forget Iraq, Afghanistan and any other theatres of battle Australia has been involved in recent years. The Australian Defence Force is in the middle of a battle of its own - and the enemy is within.

The latest flashpoint started just over a week ago after revelations that a young female cadet at the Australian Defence Force Academy was allegedly secretly filmed having consensual sex with a male counterpart, and that he had allegedly broadcast the tryst to other soldiers via webcam.

Defence Minister Stephen Smith’s forthright and outspoken condemnation of the way the incident was handled and military culture in general blew the lid off a simmering internal dispute over incidences of bastardisation, bullying and the gender divide, and opened the wider question of whether women should be allowed to fight on the front-line.

Continue reading "Defence battling the enemy within" »

The problem with Defence has been that nobody gets sacked.

Pushed sideways with a higher salary and rank maybe, but never taken out of a job as a punishment for failure.

That is the major significance of what has happened under Defence Minister Stephen Smith. Australian Defence Academy Commandant Bruce Kafer has been temporarily stood down as a consequence of the Skype sex scandal. Not many senior military figures have had to publicly lose face because of mismanagement.

Continue reading "Skirmish with Defence a long time coming" »

The reputation of the defence force has once again been tarnished by its personnel behaving badly. A defence force cadet has allegedly filmed himself having sex with another cadet and broadcasting it to his peers in an adjacent room.

The 18-year-old female RAAF cadet spoke of her sense of betrayal and abuse on Tuesday as the federal police and Defence investigators launched an investigation. She alleges she had consensual sex with the fellow cadet who was broadcasting their moment of intimacy by webcam to his mates in a separate room.

UPDATE: Defence Minister Stephen Smith said this afternoon that the ADF will not tolerate conduct that was sexist, vilified women or was indecent or uncivilised. He also said it was possible the female cadet could face disciplinary action.

Continue reading "Will Defence ever stop defending the indefensible?" »

Jamie Larcombe is the fifth Australian Army combat engineer to be killed in action in Afghanistan. He is also the first to be shot during a firefight rather than blown up by an insurgent’s improvised explosive device (IED).

The engineers are a tight-knit and dedicated group of soldiers who bring a raft of skills and a great deal of courage to the fight against the Taliban. The Darwin based 1st Combat Engineer Regiment has now lost two of its best within a fortnight following the death of Corporal Richard Atkinson at the hands of an enemy bomb maker.

In addition to the five KIA they have also suffered much higher rates of injury as they take the lead role whenever a patrol leaves the security of an operating base.

Continue reading "The loss of brave young men is becoming hard to justify" »

Afghanistan, an uncertain world, and regional instability will make 2011 a challenging year for the Australian Defence Force.

The campaign in Afghanistan will dominate the military landscape this year as Australia and the other 44 nations involved in the International Assistance Force (ISAF) struggle to develop a workable exit strategy for the eight-year conflict.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has flagged a further decade-long involvement for Australian troops, but such a commitment will become increasingly difficult to justify as casualties mount during the coming fighting season. Pressure will build for a complete withdrawal once the training role is complete in Oruzgan Province (about 2014) where most of the 1550 Australians are working.

Continue reading "Afghanistan is one of many challenges for 2011" »

The ongoing criticism of the Australian Defence Force’s deployed resources in Afghanistan, firstly by the 6 RAR Digger’s email and now also by a senior soldier in Townsville and a recently returned Officer, raise the real issue of the Government’s commitment to the fight.

Has the Government deployed every possible resource needed to achieve the mission?

In response to that now widely publicised email, Defence stated that the Commander on the ground at Deh Rawood had a range of direct and indirect fire assets at his disposal. The Commander chose to use some of those assets and others he did not, for a variety of reasons such as airspace deconfliction.

Continue reading "We need to listen to those on the ground in Afghanistan" »

NOW there will be a new Defence Minister, Stephen Smith, who will have the rotten task of taking to the podium with Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston to announce that yet another Digger has been killed in action.

Senator John Faulkner did it too many times.

It was clear from watching Faulkner that he truly hated these death calls. He appeared to feel almost too deeply the burden of being the minister in the government which has ordered its troops to fight.

Continue reading "Grieving lost soldiers doesn’t equate to supporting the war" »

Advisory: The following post contains graphic content which some people may find distressing.

Everyone suffers in war. No exceptions. I have been travelling to Afghanistan now for over three years. Covering the conflict from an outsider’s perspective, not getting involved or emotionally attached to the people I photograph. This is hard. Maintaining perspective and impartialility each day is challenging.

Watching soldiers die on the battlefield for a belief in something so far remote from them, is at times very difficult. They fight because they are told to and because if they do not, they will probably be killed by an ill-equipped and under trained Afghan insurgent - or a farmer with a grudge and no money to feed his family.

Continue reading "Into an Afghan hot zone with a ‘Dustoff’ crew" »

The 18th Australian soldier, Jason Brown, died in Afghanistan last week.

Gillard and Abbott were united in simultaneously expressing condolences to Jason’s family and friends; whilst expressing their determination to remain in Afghanistan (all the while carefully avoiding the war slipping onto the election agenda).

Gillard and Abbott are united in their declaration that Jason’s death should not distract from their commitment to maintain a presence in Afghanistan.

Continue reading "Shameful silence on the Afghanistan front" »

There’s a tendency in some circles to see disclosures like the Wikileaks publishing of 90,000 documents about the war in Afghanistan as an inherently good thing.

Many people – from all parts of the political spectrum – see the release of secret government information as desirable as a rule because it allows people to look into the inner workings of the state apparatus and its agents. This makes governments accountable. Others, more insidiously – especially in technology and new media circles – welcome events like this mainly because they involve the internet.

The Afghanistan war logs are a watershed moment in government control over intelligence data. It’s not that battlefield information was published – that’s nothing especially new – but that the release of the information was so huge and co-ordinated between three countries and on the web simultaneously.

Continue reading "Wikileaks: friend of the truth, enemy of the troops?" »

Like Samson and his hair, I’ve a long held theory that John Faulkner’s powers actually reside in his huge red rimmed glasses.

This may have been an optical illusion, but in moments when Faulkner’s significant consolatory powers were most in demand, such as sitting between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard in the Prime Minister’s office two weeks ago, the glasses appeared to double in size.

Today, as the wise old owl of the Labor Party announced he would be moving back to the backbench, the size of his specs looked almost regular - or at least within the range of sizes recommended by OPSM before they give you long-term neck problems.

Continue reading "The PM needs to signal who will take charge of Defence" »

Well we’re leaving Afghanistan, it’s just not entirely clear when.

Today Defence Minister John Faulkner has announced changes to our role in Afghanistan that have been made necessary by the withdrawal of Dutch troops in August.

At the same time the Defence Minister gave a qualified timetable for withdrawal between 2012 and 2014, and then assured us that he wasn’t doing that.

Continue reading "Are we leaving Afghanistan or not?" »

EAST Timorese Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao has taken in recent weeks to heavily bagging Australia, including a strange speech in which he, seemingly apropos of nothing, dug deep into the past and said Australia had selfishly cost the lives of 60,000 East Timorese by coming to Timor to “wage war” against the Japanese in World War II.

Gusmao has also been claiming Australian interference in its sovereign rights. Australia is studying the rhetoric closely, with good reason. As Gusmao slams Australia, his country’s biggest aid donor, Gusmao has allowed China for the first time to gain a small de facto military foothold in East Timor.

China now has naval training crews operating out of Dili aboard two gunboats which East Timor bought from China, and which were formally handed over last week. Gusmao’s attacks on Australia, and his newfound military cooperation with China, are seen as related.

Continue reading "Watching East Timor as China gets a military toehold" »

On returning last month from 10 days in the Middle East Area of Operations (MEAO) that included five days in Afghanistan in Kandahar and Tarin Kowt, I was shocked to hear of another attempted extremist Islamic terrorist attack, on that occasion in Times Square.

This only reinforces my view that unless we defeat the Taliban and remove the opportunity for their Al Qaeda allies to spew venom through indoctrination, training and support, we will continue to fight them in our own backyard.

The Dutch unfortunately have decided their contribution has come to an end in Afghanistan leaving a capability vacuum in Oruzgan Province where the bulk of Australia’s combat forces are. The military has a maxim that ‘time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted.’ Likewise 10 days with our troops on operations was fertile time to reflect and I’ve personally concluded that Australia should consider expanding its contribution to fill this vacuum and take the lead in Oruzgan Province.

Continue reading "More Australian leadership is needed in Afghanistan" »

Nuclear warfare isn’t as popular as it used to be. There was a time when it was on everybody’s lips, from the cheery family man stocking up a bomb shelter to fresh-faced children learning to crouch under desks.

That old-fashioned pine was the best defence against hydrogen bombs was a bone of contention between engineers and education departments for years.

The Cold War was a time when the world was an uncomplicated place. Red was bad.  Smoking was good.

Continue reading "How to start worrying and love disarmament" »

The alliance between Australia and the United States is currently being managed by a Labor prime minister and a Democratic president – a situation that has not existed since the period 1993-1996, under Paul Keating and Bill Clinton.

The relationship between John Howard and George Bush was famously close, however the replacement of these two leaders by Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama has turned out to good news for the alliance. Howard was wildly out of synch with the new Democratic rulers in Washington and his regrettable comment in February 2007 that Al-Qaeda in Iraq should pray for a victory by Obama and the Democrats might have presented us with real diplomatic difficulties had he been re-elected.

Bush’s retirement has also benefitted the alliance. It is good news for Australia when our strategic ally is well-liked around the world rather than disliked.

Continue reading "Kev and Obama’s friendship bolsters the Alliance" »

Joel Fitzgibbon hasn’t just been skating on thin ice: he’s been hosting rave parties on it.

It seems Kevin Rudd has been left with little choice but to sack Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon after it emerged that a meeting had been organised in the Defence Minister’s office between defence officials, Mr Fitzgibbon’s brother Mark who is head of NIB and US insurance company Humana.

While no doubt the victim of some white anting by his own shambles of a Department, Fitzgibbon has proven himself to be one of the few genuine liabilities on the Rudd front bench and the Prime Minister should have done this months ago.

Continue reading "Joel’s gone: about time" »

The question of whether Kevin Rudd is a rude, ill-tempered sook is a valid one, there’s another issue that deserves some examination. How hard is it to get the bloke a cup of tea?

Continue reading "Goodbye. Now can someone get me a f***ing cup of tea?" »