Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, I present the committee's report entitled Inquiry into the Department of Defence annual report 2021-22.

Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).

by leave—There are about five discrete topics in this report. I will make remarks on two of them and try and just summarise the others. The first one I want to outline is a serious matter. You could frame it as the long shadow of Afghanistan. Concerns were raised through the inquiry regarding Defence's response to date to the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force's Afghanistan inquiry, including difficulties and delays in accessing and making redress to Afghan victims and their families. Defence's assurances in public hearings and private briefings are welcome, and the subcommittee will continue to monitor these issues.

While in Western Australia, the subcommittee was privileged to spend time at Campbell Barracks with the Special Air Service Regiment. Formal and informal discussions make clear the scale of the regiment's transformation in light of the inspector-general's recommendations and the strategic circumstances that Australia faces. Australians have every right to expect our public institutions to confront wrongdoing, for individuals to be held to account and for leaders to take responsibility to lead the required change. As is appropriate, there is a clear and unequivocal acknowledgement by senior leaders in our armed forces of an institutional failure over a decade ago, in Afghanistan, in upholding international law and the standards expected. Detailed briefings make clear to the committee the deep strategic alignment and cultural alignment work that has occurred.

Past failures, of course, in any human endeavour must be kept in perspective and need not define an institution or every individual, provided that change has occurred. Public discourse and some media reporting in relation to these events has implicitly and wrongly conflated the past and the present. The events of concern occurred well over a decade ago. The rightful acceptance of institutional and collective responsibility for cultural failings and the process of holding individuals to account, including those alleged to have committed war crimes, must not be allowed to tar the reputations of the majority of those who served then and who serve today.

Overwhelmingly, Australians who served in Afghanistan did so with distinction. The SAS Regiment has a proud history, has accepted responsibility for the failings of a few and has been transformed as it continues to self-reflect and learn. The SAS have risked, and continue to risk, their lives in the service of our country, including on missions past and present that cannot and can never be publicly disclosed. It is notable that more SAS members have lost their lives in training than in operational service, such is the dangerous nature of what they are asked and required to do.

The subcommittee concluded that, frankly speaking, it is time to draw a line in the sand and rebalance our national conversation about this period. Most Australians who served in Afghanistan did so with distinction. The Special Air Service Regiment has a proud history, has accepted responsibility, sought to learn from past cultural failings and transformed.

As a society, Australia risks repeating the experiences of Vietnam and callously increasing veteran suicide if we lose perspective and balance. Individual and institutional failures over a decade ago do not define all those who served, and security classifications mean the majority of their good work to keep our country safe may never be known. Hence, parliamentarians, along with reputable media outlets, bear the responsibility to highlight the importance of their service.

I want to touch on another theme in the inquiry, and that's the impact of Defence's support in natural disasters and crises. Over 50 per cent of Defence members have been assigned to domestic disaster relief tasks in the last few years. The near persistent requirement for Defence to respond to domestic crises is unsustainable and creates an unacceptable concurrency pressure that will soon degrade the ADF's war-fighting capabilities. Given our nation's strategic circumstances, the words and the conclusions in this section should not be taken lightly by any Australian or indeed any parliamentarian. Plain-speaking conclusions may be confronting to some, but the risks to Australia are genuine and profound. The climate is changing, and state and territory governments need to lift their collective game in building resilience and resourcing natural disaster responses. The ADF cannot continue to be seen as some kind of shadow workforce, especially in circumstances where certain states and territories have not adequately resourced and increased their own capabilities in community resilience and responses. The ADF must be a force of last resort to aid the civilian community in natural disasters and be called on only to provide truly unique capabilities or essential surge capabilities when state and territory responses are genuinely overwhelmed.

From a national security point of view, these concurrency pressures are also creating new opportunities for potential adversaries and malign actors to exploit the vulnerabilities via information operations and hybrid warfare. Put plainly again, if the civilian community across the country in the states and territories continue to be too over-reliant on the ADF to provide responses to the now predictable natural disasters that occur annually in Australia and our near region, then this provides an easy opportunity for hostile actors to deploy cyber, kinetic or hybrid actions which then coerce Australian governments into making truly impossible choices about where to assign the ADF. The committee supports the work by the federal emergency management minister to develop options for resilience.

A final couple of topics: we did invest four days touring most of the remote RAAF bases and defence facilities in Western Australia and then into the Northern Territory, and we acknowledge the inspiring professionalism displayed by all of the ADF and Department of Defence personnel. We saw firsthand how critical infrastructure upgrades at strategically remote important air bases and bare bases have been neglected. There were investments proposed there in the 2010-12 cycle, but they never occurred, so it's welcome that we're now seeing investment in RAAF Tindal and that planning is well underway at RAAF Curtin and RAAF Learmonth in the context of the DSR. The subcommittee doesn't seek to become a roving complaints shop. I'm sure the Department of Defence and the ADF are very happy about that, but members were seriously disturbed to visit to pier supporting the diesel refuelling Harold E Holt naval station, and the committee is seeking advice as to how Defence allowed it to get into such a state of disrepair. The old adage 'prevention is better than cure' seems to have been ignored, and urgent action is required within the next few months before Christmas, as this is a critical capability for Australian and the United States submarine operations. Further information has also been sought on a range of matters.

There are serious issues in the defence workforce in recruiting and retention. Instead of the net growth in the order of 1,000 people in uniform per year, the Australian Defence Force actually went backwards by about 900. We're now over five per cent below funded guidance from the last financial year, with 42 workforce categories now in critical skill-shortage areas, including many in STEM fields. Plainly speaking, the overriding issue is the strength of the Australian economy and labour market, because defence recruits well in a recession and badly in a boom. It's difficult to address in the current strong labour market, but the sliding numbers cannot be allowed to continue. Defence recognises the challenges. They're doing a whole bunch of worthy stuff, but, if more needs to be done, then more must be done.

Finally, there's a section in the report which I commend to members regarding Australia's space commanding capability. There are opportunities to strengthen the alignment with industry, to build more sovereign capability. There's an urgent need for the government to work out who's taking the lead on space traffic management internationally in terms of space traffic governance. I commend the report to the House and I move:

That the House take note of the report.

Debate adjourned.