Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry, Procurement and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This evening I rise to raise concerns about how the government is doctoring the facts when it comes to some embarrassing truths from the Department of Defence. The government’s sultans of spin have been working overtime, smoothing over some relatively recent rough patches that Defence has been going through.

I want to talk in particular about three press releases that were released in the month of August. One was headed ‘Defence ahead of schedule on military justice reform’; the second, ‘A new era in Defence logistics’; and the third, ‘The 2005 Defence Attitude Survey shows positive trends’—three rather interesting documents, put out by the Department of Defence on behalf of government in the last three or four weeks.

It will be a surprise to those who are listening, but the public relations section of the Department of Defence in the last financial year pumped out some 1,500 press releases and had a budget of over $18 million. It employs dozens of media types, dozens of journalists, to spend that $18 million and pump out those 1,500 press releases.

The three press releases I want to discuss, concerning poor morale, military justice and cost blow-outs, are very useful examples of government spin-doctoring and of how the government manages to get across a serious propaganda message whilst covering up or hiding from us a range of facts that it does not want to disclose and does not want on the public record.

The first press release I want to talk about is the one headed ‘The 2005 Defence Attitude Survey shows positive trends’, released on Friday, 18 August; CPA 205/06. The Defence Attitude Survey, not the media release, disclosed significant low morale throughout the armed forces. It found that just over one-third of personnel in the armed forces were considering leaving, two-thirds complained they did not have the resources to properly do their work, and a half showed a lack of confidence in their senior officers.

So those were remarkable findings in that survey. To some extent it reflects credit on the ADF for releasing it. When you think about it, a third of personnel were considering leaving, two-thirds complained they did not have the resources to do their work properly and almost a half did not have confidence in their senior officers.

But the media release that was put out by the government did not disclose any of that material; you only got that material if you went to the survey itself, went through the pages and pages of it and were able to pull out those facts. What the media release showed was that troops in boots have increasing confidence in Defence’s senior leadership and that there was a pleasing result in the proportion of people who say they serve with pride and think the service life is enjoyable. So this was completely ignoring the facts from the survey, but extrapolating some minor matters and making them the subject matter of a two-page press release.

In addition, in that press release there was a series of percentage statistics showing alleged improvements in the level of satisfaction relating to various matters. For example, the proportion of ADF personnel who believe they are well prepared for operational duties increased by 28 per cent for Army, 36 per cent for Air Force and 28 per cent for Navy personnel. On the surface of it, these were significant improvements. If those statistics were true, people could be proud of those results. But when you choose to think about statistics in percentage form, these are absolutely meaningless. They are designed to cover up, to obfuscate, not to disclose.

A simple example will explain the point. If there is an increase in the number of people who show satisfaction with a particular outcome from two to four, that is a 100 per cent improvement and appears to be a great result. But an increase from two to four, out of 10,000 people, is absolutely meaningless as a significant percentage increase. It can be the subject of a useful press release but, in terms of objective reporting of the results or an objective outcome, it is absolutely meaningless. And that is the type of spin put out by Defence. It is a disturbing trend that the government is now regularly engaged in this, because it is essentially propaganda. It does not disclose the truth; it does not disclose the real numbers. People who are interested in those sorts of outcomes are unable to get a clear and accurate picture of what might be going on.

The second media release I referred to was headed ‘Defence ahead of schedule on military justice reform’. That press release was also put out on 18 August—the day that a Senate review committee put out its first six-monthly report on the progress of the implementation of a series of reforms to military justice.

A little trip down memory lane will help us. There had been an intensive and extensive Senate inquiry into military justice. That found a whole range of things going on which were unacceptable by any standards, and made a series of recommendations to government. Government considered those recommendations and came up with a response. Part of that response was change to various institutions and involved legislative reform, and the government is in the process of implementing that.

As part of that package of responses, the government asked the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee to oversee the legislative change and to report every six months on the progress of military justice reform. In the first six months that that Senate committee was active, it reviewed what the government had done and, two or three weeks ago, it came down with a fairly lengthy report. That report found that there had not been significant change, that attitudes within Defence were poor and that matters of process were attended to but that those matters of process were not sufficient to warrant, guarantee or ensure significant reform of the kind we are told is being sought by the government and which was recommended by that previous Senate committee. Strong words were used in that Senate review report when it stated that there needed to be significant cultural reform.

But the media release put out by Defence gave a very different slant. It said that Defence was ahead of schedule on military justice reform. That ‘ahead of schedule’ referred to a series of minor reforms, such as five changes to the manual. Again, in that report, there was no conclusive evidence of change. The press release put out by government gave an indication of significant change and significant improvement, but it was contrary to the findings of that Senate review committee and it was contrary to all objective evidence. So, again, we have the practice of ignoring the truth, not disclosing the facts and attempting to put a propaganda spin on change when there has been no change and people continue to be disadvantaged.

The third press release I want to refer to was headed ‘A new era in Defence logistics’ and was released on Wednesday, 2 August. That was a good news story—again from the government—about a new $100 million computer system. It talked about how the government was on track with the system, tracking Defence’s inventory and how in the future there would be much better asset management of various things owned by Defence. What the media report did not say was that the project was originally slated to cost some $15.8 million, that the cost would blow out from $15.8 million in 2001 to $650 million in 2014, that what was originally slated as a one-stage process was going to take four or five stages, and that, because the inventory, the accounts and the asset identification issues were not going to be suitably resolved until at least 2014, by implication the responsible officers in Defence would not be able to sign off on Defence accounts. But if you read that press release you would be of the view that there had been instant action—a new system was in place and, sure, it was going to cost $100 million, but in the end we would have fine results.

What we were not told in that press release, and what Defence has since refused to confirm—although the figures are available in a combination of the annual report, the PBS and the defence capability plan—is that this new inventory system and asset management tool is going to cost $650 million, not $15 million; it is going to take at least 10 years, not two years; and, even when the system is up and running, there is still the possibility that there will have to be further phases introduced after 2014. (Time expired)