Defence shake-up must work

If Defence Minister Richard Marles’s bureaucratic reforms of the defence establishment improve our national security the exercise will be time and effort well spent. The process could involve limited spending on severance packages. But it should free up resources for badly needed upgrades of weapons and equipment and new recruits to overcome the current shortfall of about 5000 personnel.

Mr Marles has indicated he is open to lifting the defence budget. But given Anthony Albanese’s stubborn resistance to calls from the US to do so, the minister must work with the resources currently available. As he told The Australian’s recent Defending Australia 2025 summit, the challenge is to ensure the Defence establishment is “fit for purpose”. To that end, “everything is on the table, including bureaucratic reform of the Department of Defence, of the Australian Defence Force and of defence agencies”.

As many as 25 star-ranked ADF officers (about 10 per cent) could be forced out in the overhaul, foreign affairs and defence correspondent Ben Packham reveals, with 20 to 40 senior executive public service positions also on the line. Ahead of next year’s two-yearly update of the National Defence Strategy and the Integrated Investment Program, and new acquisitions of missiles and drones pending, reform of the bureaucracy needs to help make the ADF more efficient and agile to meet what Mr Marles has described as the “most challenging strategic environment” facing Australia since World War II. The government has a colossal “to do” list in defence. The expected creation of a new armaments directorate that would roll together several teams currently overseeing responsibilities as diverse as guided weapons and shipbuilding should be helpful. With the navy’s combat fleet at its smallest and oldest in decades, basic gaps need to be fixed. These include repairing the navy’s two supply and replenishment vessels.

One of the ADF’s biggest projects, the $45bn Hunter-class frigate program being built in Adelaide, with the first ship due to enter service in 2033, has been delayed by cost blowouts and union disputes. In 2022, a classified Defence Department report warned the ships would be substantially slower, with a shorter range, than originally intended. They also could be vulnerable to detection by enemy vessels. The report warned that inclusion of a US combat system and ­Australian-designed CEAFAR2 radar had pushed the ships’ “space, weight, power and cooling margins” to their limits, posing “significant potential risk”.

Preparation for acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines under AUKUS, the subject of a 30-day review in the US, is stretching the defence budget. Resources and bureaucratic reform are both needed to bring the services up to strength. More broadly, the Prime Minister’s focus, as Paul Kelly writes, needs to be on dealing with Donald Trump, minimising the differences and maximising the alignments of our relationship with our most important ally.