 My name is Brendan Taylor and on behalf of the Strategic and Defence Study Centre here at the ANU, it's my very great privilege to welcome you to this evening's lecture on the 2013 Defence White Paper. Last year, SDSC launched a new series of policy papers that were called the Centre of Gravity series. Indeed, the inaugural presenter in that series who also authored the first paper was Rory Metcalf from the Lowy Institute for International Policy and those of you who are at the launch of the series will perhaps recall that Rory opened his remarks with the quip that the title of that paper was certainly not an unassuming one. Rory was of course making those remarks with reference to the fact that he was very daunted and privileged at the same time to be contributing the first paper but I think it was a fair comment nonetheless. However, if one looks at the panel that we've been fortunate enough to assemble for tonight's lecture, the term gravity is certainly one that springs immediately to mind. Each of our speakers this evening has reached the very top of their profession, both as scholars and as practitioners of Australian Strategic and Defence Policy. Some of them have actually been writers of their policy and all have been responsible at various points in time for implementing it. So they are really particularly well qualified to speak to us on the subject this evening of the 2013 Defence White Paper. What does it say and what should it have said? Each of the speakers will speak for approximately 10 to 15 minutes, allowing plenty of time for questions and answers from the audience thereafter. We'll be hearing from Admiral Chris Barry who was the former Chief of the Defence Force from the years 1998 to 2002. We'll be hearing from Emeritus Professor Paul Debb, a former Deputy Secretary in the Department of Defence and also the author of the 1986 Debb Review which went on to form the basis of the 1987 Defence White Paper. We'll be hearing from Professor Hugh White, also former Secretary of Defence and the lead author of the 2000 Defence White Paper and last but not least we'll be hearing from Dr Richard Braddon Smith, again a former Secretary of Deputy Secretary in the Department of Defence and also Chief Defence Scientist. Gentlemen, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to share your thoughts, your insights with us this evening. Without further ado, Chris Admiral, the floor is yours. Thanks, Brandon, for that introduction. I got my copy of the Prince White Paper last Friday, about four hours before I was doing ABC television on it. And you can see what it looks like. I guess I approached the reading of the 2013 White Paper in a rather curious frame of mind, for these reasons. Firstly, what is the purpose of the White Paper? In my view it's to set out the rationale for the decisions that the government's going to make and how it sets priorities. And in that context it seems rather curious that the government would issue a Defence White Paper exactly four months away from a federal election. And so in a sense, if we were to criticise this White Paper for lack of substance, and I think we can in some areas, that partly explains it. Secondly, I was looking in the White Paper for a vision statement. What sort of Australian Defence Force do we want in the future? How is it going to relate to our activities? And do we recognise that we're on the cusp of quite significant change, certainly from the last 15 years about how we use military forces? And I think in that sense this White Paper does address that issue. It really in a way pulls back from the 2000 and non-Defense White Paper and continues what I think is a quite orderly trend going back as far as 1986, 1987 and forward in setting a framework for why we need our Defence Force. I was struck in the opening paragraphs by the Minister's forward statement, which is paragraph four. The government must make judgements about defence posture, operational capacity, capability, sustainment and defence budgets and finances. I emphasise the word must because this White Paper does nothing about finances and budgets. So it does seem to me that we've got a White Paper that is not actually fulfilling all the things that even the Minister says are important. And I think that's one of the big errors in this White Paper. If I was, for example, sitting in Australian industry and looking for something in this White Paper then I'm not founding it. We have some statements about things we ought to do. We've, for example, made some decisions about the future submarine project. It will be a submarine built in Australia. It's going to look either like derived columns or a new design. And we also know that it's going to be on a pipeline model. It will be built in South Australia. That's in the White Paper. We're going to have a new frigate program. The new frigates are going to concentrate on anti-submarine warfare. I guess that's because lots of countries in our region are acquiring submarines. But because there is no action plan in this White Paper about the frigate program, I guess there's some possibility other countries in the region will have their submarines before we've got anti-submarine warfare capability. And that, I think, is an exemplar of how I read the White Paper. I really enjoyed the reading of the first four chapters. And I frankly think it stands a bipartisan geostrategic analysis of Australia's current position. But then as we go into the subsequent paragraphs of the White Paper, it starts to get a lot more airy-fairy. For example, we find ourselves having to read a whole bunch of other government documents to find out what the government really intends to do. And I'm not saying just the national security statement or the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper, but there are a whole bunch of other references in there too. The White Paper does away with Hugh White's China choice idea and says that we still think there is an accommodation to be had working both with the Alliance, with the United States and with China. And of course it wouldn't have missed most of you that after the Prime Minister's visit to China and going beyond the already interesting links that we have with the People's Liberation Army were actually starting to engage with formal military exercises rather than passage exercises. And I think that's to be applauded. I also quite like the cute emphasis given to Indonesia. I think frankly we have neglected Indonesia, not in high level terms, but across the board in defence over the last 12 years. And as we're on the cusp of deciding what to do with our military forces as we withdraw from Afghanistan in great numbers and from other parts in our region in numbers and I think re-emphasis on the relationship with Indonesia deserves a lot of attention. But where I don't find any substance is what does this actually mean apart from the fact that we're going to have a strong strategic relationship and partnership that will continue to deepen and broaden you. There are a couple of areas that I want to be quite critical. I am not a fan for the women in the room of affirmative action but this white paper has references to affirmative action in it. I'm not a fan of spending money on bureaucracies in the pretence that we're actually going to do something. And I fell into the trap on Friday night of talking up the government's commitment to spend $25 million on post-traumatic stress with returnees from operational theatres. I was reminded on Saturday when a whole bunch of former ADF doctors bashing me up that this was money to be spent on a bureaucracy and not one cent was intended for a sufferer of PTSD. And so those are the sorts of things that they worry me about a statement of government policy like this. And finally, I had in my mind Hugh Straughan's essay on the last meaning of strategy when I was reading this white paper and as I'm sure many of you know, Hugh has made quite a living in recent years about defining the difference between policy and strategy. The same I read of this white paper was to try and discern whether or not we'd taken that lesson on board and the truth is we haven't. And just to finish off, an area where I think we need to do a lot more work is in drone technology. It's referred to in this white paper. I think there is quite a lot of argument going to appear about how we employ and use drones, but I don't see a lot of it covered in this white paper. They are wonderful tools, but there are also limitations on what they should be able to do and what they can do. And of course it reinforces once again that Australia is going to have a maritime strategy in the future. Thank you. Well, unlike the Admiral, I was at the actual launch and as some people present in this room know, it was quite an occasion, not least the press conference that was held in the bowels of a $240 million C17. It was interior is about the size of this room. I kid you not. So that was quite something. This is the sixth white paper that has been produced in the last 37 years. It's interesting that four of those were produced by Labour governments and only two by coalitions. And it seems in question as to why that is the case and I'll leave that to your questions perhaps later. So what is different about this white paper? What is good about it? What is not? And what should it have said? No white papers are perfect. They're all matters of unlike academic documents, compromise, political timing and money. My general theme is that this is a much sounder and more realistic strategic analysis than the 2009 white paper, the Kevin Rudd paper. True, what is different is that not only a certain strategic circumstance is altered, but money is short and ambitious force structure priorities remain the same in this white paper even though the money is much tighter than in the 2009 white paper. As Chris Barry and others have implied, why didn't it more realistically reduce key force structure ambitions and recognise that if fiscal circumstances remain very constrained as the Secretary of the Treasury, Martin Parkinson, keeps telling us, then we will have to make some serious decisions in the future about the appropriate balance between personnel numbers, operating costs and capital acquisition costs. Those are the realities of a fixed amount of money. Turning then to strategic policy. The white paper strategic policy analysis, in my view, repairs much of the damage of Kevin Rudd's 2009 defence white paper. It focuses accurately on the post-Afghanistan situation of the last decade and the need for the ADF to return its priorities to the defence of Australia and Australia's own region of primary strategic concern. It acknowledges that important strategic changes are occurring across the Indo-Pacific region and you'll hear tonight many of us have different views on this, but importantly, unlike the Rudd white paper, the rise of China's military power, in my view, is not exaggerated. There is no mention this time of imposing substantial military costs on what the 2009 defence white paper cutely termed, and I quote, quote, a major power adversary. And I'll let you think about what that major power adversary's name is. It starts with C and ends with A and ain't Cambodia. In fact, the new document states, and these words are very, very carefully drafted, and I quote, Australia does not approach China as an adversary, end of quote. It also says that Australia does not have to choose between China and the United States, and I quote again, nor do the United States and China believe that we must make such a choice, unquote. Rather than inferring that the US must move over and make strategic space for China and can see, for instance, a sphere of influence in Southeast Asia, the white paper says clearly that the US will continue to be the strongest military power and the most influential strategic actor in our region for the foreseeable future. These are crucial strategic judgments, and you'll make your own mind about them, and you'll hear, I think, from my good colleague, Hugh White, some different views. I can tell you that these judgments that I've just quoted to you have involved the considered professional advice of Canberra's four most influential security policy advisors. Dennis Richardson, the Secretary of the Department of Defence, Peter Varguez, the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Alan Gingel, the outgoing Director General of the Office of National Assessments, and Margot McCarthy, the National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister. And of course, the Chief of the Defence Force was closely involved in this and has his own serious concerns about us not repeating the errors in the post-Vietnam situation of the rundown of the Defence Force and a lack of sense of strategic direction and money. This white paper concentrates quite correctly on two force-structured determinants for the ADF. They are the Defence of Australia and our own immediate region. Over the last decade, successive governments of both persuasions have given insufficient attention to our bases and the ADF's presence in the north of the continent. This now needs to be remedied, given the crucial strategic importance to our economy and the resource provinces in the remote north and northwest of Australia, where we now have accumulated investments of over $560 billion. The other force-structured determinant identified in the new white paper, and this is an echo of both the White's 2000 white paper and the 2009 one, is the security of our immediate region. Geography except for continental drift does not change, and so our immediate region is of abiding strategic concern. The white paper makes it clear that such a definition includes Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea, and the islands, and indeed New Zealand, but it includes the vast maritime territory and approaches that we have, and our critical sea lines of communication are not least again those leaving the north of Australia. What the white paper cites as the new concept of an emerging Indo-Pacific region, a concept I have some difficulty with, but which is qualified in the white paper as an emerging or nascent region. In this Indo-Pacific region, the white paper envisages the security of Southeast Asia as increasingly central to our own security. In my view, we should focus on Southeast Asia as the new geopolitical linchpin between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. That means that the ADS primary operational area must now encompass the eastern Indian Ocean, the waters of Southeast Asia, including the South China Sea, the South Pacific, and the Southern Ocean. This amounts to more than 10% of the Earth's surface and poses a substantial challenge to a defence force of only 59,000 people. So much for those commentators who have recently proclaimed that Australia is in strategic retreat. This is an essentially maritime environment that we must hedge our bets on and build a technologically advanced force on. The question is what level of technology over what period of time, and again you'll hear different views. When it comes to force structure priorities in the defence budget, as you've heard from the Admiral, this defence budget, I think, this defence paper is on weaker ground. If we are no longer structuring the defence force to fight a major power in high-intensity combat, why do we still need 12 of the world's largest conventional submarines? I'm not against submarines. We can debate whether we should have 6, 9, 12 or more. But if the situation has changed in terms of your force structure priorities from the 2009 White Paper, why has not the acquisition programme changed? The idea of 12 large submarines, it is well known in Canberra, was an idea spawned by Prime Minister Rudd's advisers without any rigorous strategic analysis. If you want to ask questions about the next generation submarines and the options that we face, please ask questions. The Admiral mentioned the Evolve Collins. If it's a new design, which I think will be risky and costly, it will be designed by Electric Boat from the United States and Cochum's HDW out of Sweden. It will have an American combat system, and it should and must have Australian sensors like ASW capability. Secondly, the proposal that we now urgently acquire more super hornets is based on what I think is a contestable view that we currently face a gap in our air combat capability. Again, that's something you may want to ask questions about. I think we can wait for the delivery of three squadrons of White Fighters, and I think you should forget those people in the commentary who will try to tell you that any Russian fighter, Sukhoi 35 or any other, is superior to any American fifth or indeed fourth generation fighter. But the issue of numbers of J7 timing is a debate. What I'm saying is this urgency for super hornets is a contestable issue. But the greatest disappointment is the opportunity was not taken in this white paper to Kaibosh Army's bid to completely replace all its armored and mechanized combat vehicles at a cost of $19 billion in order to, and I quote, defeat a peer competitor army, unquote, whatever that means. Army would be well advised to concentrate instead on the challenge it will soon face to incorporate the two new 27,000 10 LHD amphibious ships into its operational concepts. This is a challenge the life of which army has not experienced since the Second World War. Finally we come to the all important issue of the defence budget. In launching the 2013 defence white paper, the Minister last Friday said that the government had aspirations, that's a familiar term, to return defence spending to 2% of GDP when fiscal circumstances are now. It is clear to me that the Australian economy faces a significant period of structural and secular adjustment to less favourable economic circumstances. And let me repeat that my good friend Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson has repeated this several times. This will not go away, change of government or not. Defence, of course, will still be spending over $100 billion over the forward estimates, a non-trivial amount of taxpayer's funds. And the deferred acquisition foreshadowed, I think, the circumstances of both the new submarines and the JSFs, means that it will be well into the 2020s and maybe the early 2030s before heavy new demands exceeding $40 billion of new submarines and JSFs are made on the defence budget. Even so, and I want to stress this, it will be difficult in the coming years to keep the ADF at the same size as it currently is, acquire new weapons like the ones I just discussed and maintain increasingly expensive old equipment. This comes back to my earlier point about most likely having to adjust in future the balance between personal costs, operations and acquisitions. In these challenging fiscal circumstances for whichever government we have in future, it is in my view unlikely that the defence budget will return quickly to 2% of GDP, which is at least where it should be in my view. The difference between the current defence budget of 1.5% of GDP and the aspiration to grow to 2% means that an additional $8 billion a year or $32 billion over the forward estimates will have to be found. Where is this sort of money going to come from? Education, health, aged care, welfare? I'll leave that to you. Two final points. What do I expect of the opposition? Well, it may not be all that different, frankly. Do we actually think they're going to reject the strategic analysis in favour of some more threatening situation? That remains to be seen, but my judgement and information is they will be reasonably comfortable with this strategic analysis. They will of course revisit the whole federal budget and find out what shocks and new challenges there are. Senator David Johnston, Opposition Shadows Fertinand for Defence says the difference between the opposition and the government is that he, they have a plan. But I don't see what this plan is. We need to have from the opposition once they've settled in a clear plan of how much they intend to spend on defence over what period of time and what are the key force structure acquisitions they see as core capabilities and which ones do they see as non-core capabilities. And we need clear judgements about what is vital to Australia's defence security and what is just nice to have. Okay, to summarise my bottom line. First, in my view, and some will disagree with this, we do not face now or foreseeably a clear imminent military threat directly to our security on which to prudently plan. China is not going to attack us tomorrow and the US is not going to disappear. The balance is changing progressively and we'll see how that develops. Three, we need to focus more on managing the peace in our region and building regional security institutions and especially the security cohesion of ASEAN which is under some pressure. Four, of course, for any defence planners as prudence demands that we hedge our bets and focus on the defence of Australia and our immediate region and surrounds. The white paper has some good words on warning time and preparedness for force expansion and that needs to be applied to whether we can maintain the margin of technological superiority that successive governments have required or not. That will depend on a whole bunch of things for the closer cooperation between DSTO, the defence science organisation and defence industry and that frankly is new. And finally, and I think for the time being at least maybe for the foreseeable few years we've got to stop dreaming that any government in Australia is going to spend more than 2% of GDP in the absence of a demonstrable and serious deterioration in our strategic circumstances. Final, final point. Too much of the debate is on the defence budget itself. It's ups and downs. What percent of GDP? I expect this minister and a minister in any future opposition government to also focus on how internally defence managers currently 24,000 million dollars a year of your taxpayers' monies. And let me give you one outstanding example of comparative priorities in that regard. The defence material organisation which employs 7,000 people including 2,000 military if you please think of what you could do with those in the military it's running costs, it's day-to-day running costs remember this organisation acquires the major kit and maintains a sustainability. So what's its annual running costs? The same as the entire budget of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for running this country's foreign policy and the entirety of our overseas representation. I'll leave you to think about that. Thank you. Well, thank you Paul. Thank you Brendan for that brief introduction. Thank you all for coming. It's so nice to see so many people here I've got them at white papers. What's that interesting? Except those of us crazies. Well as Paul's to some extent foreshadowed I'm going to take a slightly different view. I'm going to stress the continuities between the 2009 white paper and our new white paper the 2013 white paper and my way to express that in a general way is to say that at least in my approach to these things the core task of a defence policy is to identify strategic risks as best we can in our certain world to identify the strategic objectives or is the defence white paper would say principle defence tasks that we want our armed forces to be able to undertake to manage those risks to identify the capabilities that can most cost effectively deliver those principle defence tasks and to identify the sums of money required to buy those capabilities and a good defence policy is one that has all of those things in line it's an alignment between risk assessments the setting of strategic objectives or principle tasks the allocation of capability priorities and the allocation of funding if they are lined up, if they fit together you've got a defence policy that can work if they are not lined up then you've got a problem in 2009 they were not lined up and we had a problem in 2013 they're still not lined up and we still have a problem 2013 white paper has the same essential judgment of strategic risks as the 2009 white paper it has the same essential judgments about strategic objectives principle tasks it has the same essential judgments about Australia's capability priorities and although it's a little bit less flagrantly dishonest than the 2009 white paper was about the funding projections it in the end has the same dollars as we've ended up with in other words we have the same misalignment and the same very deep inadequacies it does of course have a different tone and the difference of tone is welcome and certainly welcome diplomatically I think is sensible too I think there are elements of the tone in the 2009 white paper which were frankly analytically unsupportable and diplomatically unnecessary but the thing that strikes me most about the 2013 white paper is its tone of beguiling optimism this is all going to work out fine it actually has a rather abbreviated title you might notice most people who write white papers can't resist trying to do something more interesting than calling it defense white paper 2013 or whatever this one is very it misses a title so I'm going to offer one borrowed appropriately enough from the other states of America I think we should call it the audacity of hope because it is built on seven optimistic assumptions and I call them assumptions not judgments or arguments because they are not argued for they are not explained and in many cases they then state it nonetheless they are fundamental to the defense policy which this document presents the first instead of assumptions about the future of the US-China relationship which the white paper, like its predecessor correctly sees as critical to Australia's strategic risks and therefore to the whole policy logic that flows from there but this white paper says that that strategic relationship is most likely to be fine because both sides wanted to be fine now there's a lot to be said about the validity of that judgment so I was to say that I do think it's very optimistic I don't rule out the possibility that the US and China can get on well in future but I think the idea that we assume that as the basis for our defense policy is heroic there is no analysis of that there is no analysis of the risks and circumstances under which it might turn out to be false there's no examination of the various pressures out there right now for example in the China-Japan relationship which leave one to be less optimistic than the judgment that I just described and there's no analysis of the implications if it turns out to be wrong the future of the US-China relationship is the central issue in assessing Australia's future defense needs because it is the central issue in determining the strategic environment in which Australia's defense policy will have to function and deliver results for this country the White Paper to its credit more or less says that it then just squibs the whole task of making a judgment about what that should be so that's assumption number one assumption number two is that something we might broadly call regional engagement will be enough to ensure a stable future in Asia for Australia the language in the White Paper talking about regional engagement is what you might call classic ASEAN boilerplate it doesn't explain the White Paper doesn't explain how this is going to work what a stable US-China relationship is going to look like and what a broader stable regional structure is going to look like even though it acknowledges in its analysis that it's going to be very different because of the fundamental changes in power relativities it doesn't explain how this is going to work in fact it embeds an assumption that it's going to work just the way it used to work and it doesn't explain how such a structure, so much continuity could be developed it doesn't explain what needs to happen in the region and what Australia needs to do in the region to help bring this down in fact it tends to assume that all of us need to do in Asia is to be friendly to everyone and all will be well is what we might call the Miss World approach to strategic policy now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that regional engagement isn't central to Australia's strategic future in fact it absolutely is Australia has an extraordinarily important task in doing whatever it can diplomatically to try and contribute to the reshaping of a new Asian order which provides a robust foundation for expecting that the US-China relationship will work fine, that Japan will have a place in a new Asian order, that India can be fitted in, that the rest of us can find a place that works for us, that's an extraordinarily important task, a task that deserves much more attention than this document gives it because we will not make a contribution to that great regional task and we won't do what's needed for Australia if we don't acknowledge and engage the real challenges that the region faces in accommodating the appearance of countries of the scale of China and India and the very significant other tensions that sets up for example an extraordinarily important question of Japan's future role, what the White Paper is doing is not addressing and engaging those challenges but assuming them away in fact I think building regional relationships in the Asian century will require us Australia as well as many other countries in the region to make some extraordinarily difficult choices, what kind of relationship are we going to have with Japan what kind of relationship are we going to have with Indonesia, like others I'd rather welcome the long discursive I think rather muddled passage in the White Paper about the relationship with Indonesia because it does somewhere in there express an aspiration for us to build a strategic relationship with Indonesia of much greater depth than anywhere developed so far, I do think that's extraordinarily important but I think it's an extraordinarily difficult thing to do, it's not just a matter of saying let's be friends The third assumption is an assumption about warning time that is the document assumes in a critical passage that if the regional order turns out to be tougher than we think we will have the warning of those trends required to build the forces we need to achieve the principal tasks that are required to manage the increased risks this is a classic warning time analysis, as a conceptual proposition there's nothing wrong with it it's had an honoured place in Australian strategic policy in the past and I've taken a bit of skin off my knuckles defending it in the past the core question, the analysis that this White Paper does not undertake is whether or not that concept works for us now, whether it's legitimate for us to assume now that we would have sufficient warning of a significant deterioration of our strategic environment to fundamentally change our force structure as the White Paper suggests I don't rule out that there could be such an argument that I might find persuasive but I think it's inexcusable to simply assume that as this document does and we can't assume it on the basis that we thought it would work for us in the 1970s and 1980s because today is fundamentally different from the 70s and 80s when warning time did I think make a lot of sense The fourth assumption is that Australia to sustain a strong alliance with the United States in the Asia of the Asian century will need to do no more to support America in Asia than we did in the 1970s and 80s and 90s that is that this level of support provided to the United States in Asia in the past when its primacy has been uncontested will satisfy America's expectations and lead Australian strategic objectives in an era when its primacy is at least on pressing indications clearly contested I think that is an unjustified assumption if for no other reason that it is very clearly not the American view if we want to maintain the alliance in the good shape which will be required if it's to play the central role in Australia's strategic posture that this white paper assumes if and as rivalry with China escalates we will need to do a lot more than this white paper for shadows Fifthly the white paper assumes that the capabilities are now planned and there is a great deal of continuity vast degree of continuity between the capability plans of the 2009 white paper and the 2013 white paper it assumes that those capabilities will indeed deliver the principal tasks the very modest principal tasks that the document identifies including some very important central and I think highly implausible judgments about for example the capacity of the force structure we are building to achieve sea control in relevant strategic circumstances that's a big subject I won't go into it now, I'll just make the point that the white paper provides no argument to support the assumption that the capabilities they are building are going to be adequate to achieve the tasks they have set the ADF almost certainly false and false by a long way the sixth assumption is that the Australian Defence Organization as exists today can deliver the capabilities we are talking about one of the most striking things about this document is that the even the rhetoric of reform of the Defence Organization has dropped by the wayside there is I notice a chapter up towards the back about reform which says the usual things but compared to previous governments they have a fetish not always a very effective fetish but at least made a fetish of driving reform of the Defence Organization one now has a sense that the sword has become too hard we'll just keep batting along with the same fury outing old Russell here we've learnt and I want to hate that's not going to work the Australian Defence Organization we have today love it as I do cannot deliver to Australia even the forces that the government is now planning without really radical reform and the government has no conception of that and finally of course and I won't be the first one to make this point it makes a heroic assumption that the budget that they're planning will pay for the capabilities they've proposed that just defies the laws of arithmetic and we needn't say much more about it but there is one point which I don't think has achieved received enough attention and that is that the government has quite explicitly walked away from a core change in the way defence budgeting was undertaken introduced by the Howard government in the 2000 white paper and that is the shift to a quite formal and robust commitment to defence funding over 10 years that was not something the Howard government did lightly it was done because it was seen by them I think quite correctly to be essential for a long term effective defence planning because you simply can't make serious plans on the basis of the budget year and the four year forward estimates period we had a big debate with the government at the time and we won that debate it seemed to me to be a very significant step forward and for the government to step back from it on the basis of the arguments they provide in the white paper is I think the clearest possible indication that they have no serious intention of funding the capabilities in this document so there's seven assumptions turned out to be true, this policy will be fine and there is always something rather beguiling about about hope, something inspiring about hope it's always nice to see someone being optimistic but not defence policy makers hope is not a policy it's certainly not a defence policy, thank you Hope is a poet once associated with this university of course I stand here this evening as an old defence of Australia hand and I'm going to give you a big dose of defence of Australia I have five points that I will make the fifth point is where I draw overall conclusions and the preceding four points are where I take the policy principles and support if you like that provide a prism for looking at the defence of Australia that were developed in the 70s and the 80s and which in their day were quite contested and controversial the first prism is defence of Australia and self-reliance has anything much changed here rather than a couple of classic paragraphs 35 and 36 the highest priority ADF task is to deter and defeat armed attacks on Australia without having to rely on the combat or combat support forces of another country the next paragraph Australia's defence policy is founded on the principle of self-reliance in deterring or defeating armed attacks on Australia and then it goes on in a phrase very reminiscent of the 1987 white paper within the context of our alliance with the United States and our co-operation with regional partners so that's classic stuff although there is another reference at paragraph 221 where it tells the reader the United States alliances and partnerships in North and South East Asia and the United States guarantees of extended deterrence the commitment that it would come to the defence of any of its allies that were attacked has provided a stable security environment underpinning regional prosperity I don't recall a guaranteed commitment to command assist us so there might be a drafting issue there or perhaps I've just misunderstood so that was the first point second point limits limits to Australia's military capability and influence this is a bit diffuse in the 2013 white paper and you have to do a bit of inferring I looked for statements as clear as those that were in to use some short hand Paul's white paper of 1987 where it says there are limits to our defence capacity and influence as a nation of only 16 million people Australia's ability to influence the state of world security is limited similarly in Hughes white paper of 2000 equally clear at the same time we must be realistic about the scope of our power and influence and the limits of our resources we need to allocate our effort carefully okay well what do we find in the latest white paper paragraph point two in this broad context national security policies seek options to respond to security threats and opportunities wherever they occur well that's a bit bland perhaps while acknowledging the limits of our capabilities and reach and that is a very important point which occurs, recurs throughout the document choices must therefore be made to guide the allocation of finite resources to deal with the challenges that are most likely or most dangerous and where our response can be most effective this too is a recurring theme in the document as if it is a piece of expectation management which in many ways it is it occurs as I say in many different places there is another aspect of our of the limits to our capabilities and that is the increased level of competition for want of a better word paragraph two fifty one over the next three decades Australia's relative strategic weight will be challenged as the major Asian states continue to grow their economies and modernize their military forces paper then goes on to reassure us that we will maintain the capacity for effective self-defense but clearly it will be more difficult paragraph two forty six says much the same regional military modernization is raising the level of capability required by the ADF to maintain the edge that has historically underpinned the defense of our continent with a comparatively small population and at other places in the document and I note that even in the South Pacific Australia's contribution to this region may well be balanced in the future by the support and assistance provided by other powers another way of reading that is by competition from other powers paragraph six point four seizing opportunities to build deeper partnerships will be important because competition for access and influence will be greater and consideration of Australia's interests and views less assured de fat please note not that de fat needs to be reminded of this and perhaps on a more positive note there is the rise of Indonesia as a global player which I personally welcome gives me no problems but it might call for some adjustment in Australia's approaches to Indonesia no more flying off the handle if they kill our cows in ways that we don't like so overall limits to Australia's military capacity and influence and indeed our general influence is consistent with what we've seen before the next point the next prism to look through is predisposition for nearer as opposed to distant operations this is the complementary point to the first point I made of course by the second point that resources are finite choices have to be made this point ought not to need to be explained and spelled out but experience tells me that often it does it's a point that's made throughout the white paper you see this in the language that it uses for example in the first part of paragraph 4.5 where it uses the language of priorities we will deter or defeat attacks on our territory but we will merely contribute to the stability and security of our immediate region and defence this is will help meet our international obligations a very useful grading, graduation of relative importance and much the same points I made at some key paragraphs at 3.30 where it makes it clear that the tasks are set out in priority order the Australian defence force will be structured for the first two tasks deter or defeat armed attack on Australia and to contribute to stability and security in the South Pacific and Timor-Leste and the resulting force will meet our other needs to contribute to military contributions in the vast Indo-Pacific region with a priority on South East Asia and to contribute to military contingencies in support of global security that is classic defence of Australia stuff for us for all Australia hands I will allow myself the thought that the text takes us back to the days of concentric circles that some of us you will remember and have great affection for the fourth prism is a bit more complicated several complex issues come into play here force expansion preparedness, warning time the level and nature of contingencies contingencies of obligation that is those that are non-discretionary and those that are discretionary and the classic defence of Australia formulation was along the following lines minor contingencies were credible in the shorter term but major contingencies would be credible generally after the period of extended warning during which defence would expand as Hugh has reminded us the question is have times changed and if so how and there is a classic statement at 5.13 I think Hugh might have paraphrased this already classic words but they pose the question without actually answering it defence will continue to balance its finite capability capacity and resources to meet current and short term requirements while retaining a baseline of skills, knowledge and capability as the foundation for force expansion and mobilisation should strategic circumstances deteriorate it does go further however at paragraph 39 and thereabouts where it reassures us that in the event that a direct threat to Australia materialised in the form of a concerted attempt to encroach on our sovereignty or annex our territory rather than an isolated or limited strike we would require an even stronger defence force than is currently planned and the next paragraph talks about the centrality of an intelligence function that sees this coming and waves the red flag in front of the government classic stuff some other paragraphs say that in spite of regional military modernisation we would still expect substantial warning time and so on although there is an intriguing little vignette at paragraph 712 which is the paragraph the chapter that deals very briefly with resources we get more or less the same one and a half pages on resources in this white paper as we did in the preceding white paper where it says planning for defence investment also involves recognising that strategic circumstances can change with little warning I'm quite sure that I know what that means if they're strategic they don't change that quickly and I was conjecturing how amusing it might be to see Dennis Witteson try to argue that with a straight face but Dennis I don't think is here this evening so I can't ask him okay well is there any force expansion are we in a period of strategic deterioration well if we look at what's in the white paper on force expansion not a lot the 12 submarines are still in there for better or for worse and importantly I believe we have this pretty strong commitment to 12 very high capability electronic warfare aircraft and for various reasons I applaud that and we have enhanced cyber security and the defence signals directorate comes the Australian signals directorate but some capabilities seem to go backwards my reading of the text is the government is backing off from land attack missiles launched from ships and submarines and the text also implies that the heavy rollers will be brought over the capabilities that might be proposed for major surface combatants okay well that's the contingencies that might arise in the longer term and as Hugh asks where's the analysis for this might well be true I wrote a paper on this recently and I persuaded myself that yes it probably is true but is a critical assumption that actually does need to be analysed what about contingencies in the shorter term and I have to say this is not clear not clear in the text preparedness is a recurring theme the white paper tells us it is a key management tool and it talks also about improvements to the preparedness management system not before time I have to say and it talks about the balance of cost and risk and that's good and preparedness of course is very expensive there is a straw in the wind maybe a whole haystack at paragraph 5.3 adjustments to preparedness levels in particular can take effect relatively quickly compared to longer term basing and forced structure decisions so I foresee I'm afraid lots of battles within defence on just how far preparedness can be wound back to three up resources for other purposes what I find unsatisfactory in the paper is that I read it all carefully and did not end up with a clear picture as to what and why the ADF needs to be prepared for I make the point also that the more that contingencies go offshore the more important it will be to know what the views are department of foreign affairs and trade are because they are the experts within the machinery of government for foreign policy matters not the department of defence so overall on preparedness there's an awful lot of unfinished business this brings me then to my final fifth point what do white papers do what are they for they tell people voters, taxpayers, citizens how the government how governments see the world at least in part they tell tell us what decisions they've taken and they tell people the decisions that governments want people to think that governments have taken lots of submarines which are parked up what we used to call the funny money end of the defence programme the white papers are also milestones on a never-ending journey and because this is a university I'm going to paraphrase Thucydides for you white papers are an armistice in the never-ending war for resources white papers set the rules of engagement for the next few rounds of combat between spending departments and the gatekeeper departments treasury, finance prime minister and cabinet and foreign affairs and trade sometimes white papers do tell you the answers but perhaps more importantly they tell you how to ask the questions they give you a conceptual framework hopefully agreed by the other players for going to the next level of analysis and for dealing with the unfinished business of which there is usually quite a lot and certainly a lot in this white paper I'll give you some examples one I mentioned already the need to choose the balance between preparedness force posture and modernization and for choice for choosing read adjustment and rebalancing as my colleagues this evening have all said no one seriously believes that they will be seriously more money for defence for many years yet there seems to be this quite firm emerging belief that defence cannot afford to modernize what it's already got so something has got to give and by the way even if the government does stick to its undertaking of maintaining an active defence force of about 50,000 people that doesn't address the issue of rebalancing the allocation of that 59,000 between the navy the army and the air force other unfinished business clearly as the white paper itself says its early days in the evolution of this India Indo-Pacific strategic arc the relationship between China and the United States has a long way to evolve so mind what precisely do we mean about the protection of sea lines of communication how far out and against what or whom has anybody really looked at the effectiveness of anti-submarine warfare in modern conditions if anti-submarine warfare were easy why is it that we want to spend so much money on 12 submarines there are tensions to my mind to be resolved over planning for the amphibious capability the document is I think quite ambiguous ambiguous on that part and defences regional diplomacy has to be part of the wider efforts of DFAT and not vice versa it would not be a good signal to our democratic friends in our region if our if Australia's attempts to engage more closely with the region were led by defence and not foreign affairs and trade finally as usual industry and innovation policy are work in progress hard decisions don't usually make themselves so the question is what mechanisms within defence for recognising and making these hard decisions I have to say that it's not entirely clear that the mechanisms are as yet strong enough I will try and end however on a more positive note those who want answers and certainty in white papers are going to be disappointed by this latest document but those who want a workable conceptual framework for the next steps of decision making and for progressing hard decisions should be quite pleased with what's on offer in any event it was the best available under the circumstances thank you