Defence Minister Richard Marles has backed continuity over generational change by appointing the Vice Chief of the Defence, Vice Admiral David Johnston as Australia’s next chief of the Australian Defence Force.
Vice Admiral Johnson is a highly competent and extremely experienced officer who will command respect from his troops, but his appointment comes with risks.
Mr Marles describes his new defence chief as a safe pair of hands, but the ADF will require far more than just a safe pair of hands from its new chief as it restructures itself to face the challenge of a rising China.
Australia needs Vice Admiral Johnston to act as a bold, noisy and visible agent for change rather than a continuation of the sort of overly-bureaucratic, staid and uninspiring military leadership we have witnessed in recent years.
He comes to the job at a time when the ADF is at a tipping point as it restructures itself for this new era of political instability as China spreads its tentacles across the Indo-Pacific.
So far, defence has handled this challenge poorly. There has been a fractious relationship between the defence leadership and government, both with former defence minister Peter Dutton and the current minister Mr Marles.
Put simply, ministers have become frustrated with what they see as an entrenched culture of caution, red tape and inflexibility on Russell Hill.
The restructure of the ADF, especially the Navy’s surface ship fleet has been plagued by delays and bureaucratic obstacles. Vice Admiral Johnson needs to harness his new defence leadership team and shake it up to ensure that it prioritises outcomes over process. As the first defence chief from the Navy for more than 20 years, Vice Admiral Johnston is well placed to lead the repair of the country’s most troubled service. The Navy has struggled with severe shortages of crew, an ageing fleet and poor operational availability, so much that it had to refuse a US Navy request in December to send a warship to help protect vital trade routes in the Red Sea from terror attacks.
Above and beyond this, defence needs more inspirational leadership.
The outgoing ADF chief General Angus Campbell, the ADF chief since 2018, had both strengths and weaknesses. He struggled to deal adequately with the Brereton report into war crimes where he clashed with Mr Dutton. Mr Dutton also criticised General Campbell for making the ADF too ‘woke.’
General Campbell did not create a significant public profile with ordinary Australians in the same way that some of his recent predecessors like David Hurley, Angus Houston and Peter Cosgrove did.
Australia would be well served if Vice Admiral Johnston can try to kick aside the red tape and abandon the bureaucratic bluster to act and sound like a defence chief who can inspire his sailors, soldiers and airmen and women to go into battle if needed. He also needs to have a robust public profile to inspire other young Australians to join the ADF at a time when recruitment levels are dangerously low. Vice Admiral Johnston will have the generational challenge of kick-starting and steering the AUKUS nuclear submarine plan in the right direction to make sure that it provides the security that future generations will be seeking. There is no single task that is more important for him in the two years he will have in this role. Taking over the ADF at this difficult moment is a huge task for any new leader. Let’s hope, for the sake of our national security, that Vice Admiral Johnson is a risk-taker and a bold military leader rather than an invisible bureaucrat in uniform.
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