Marles’ new Defence agency – rearranging deck chairs on the HMAS Titanic

Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Richard Marles announced a major reform of Defense Procurement. However, this was not a major reform, it was a rearrangement of sun loungers. former senator Rex Patrick reports.

And the needle returns to the beginning of the song…

On 22 June 2000, then Defense Minister John Moore approved the establishment of the Defense Materiel Organization (DMO), a single organization that would be responsible for the procurement and life support of equipment and systems used by the Australian Defense Force.

But DMO did not work.

On 01 April 2015, then Defense Secretary Kevin Andrews announced that he had accepted the recommendations of the Defense First Principles Review and that the DMO would be disbanded (it was not operating) and its functions would be transferred to a new Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG).

But CASG didn’t work.

On 1 December, Defense Minister Richard Marles announced that Defense would merge the Guided Weapons and Explosives Directive Group, CASG. and the consolidation of the Naval Shipbuilding and Sustainment Group into a single organization to be called the Defense Delivery Agency (DDA).

DDA won’t work

Dumb Ways to Buy: Defense ‘mess-ups’ revealed – former submariner and senator Rex Patrick

Rearrangement of sun loungers

Throughout the week, Marles sought to ensure that there would be no job losses as a result of his reforms, and recommended that existing civil servants working for Defense be transferred to the new agency, firmly admitting that all he had done was rearrange the deck chairs.

The biggest problem Defense has, which Marles does not have the ability to solve, is that the very senior uniformed people who run Defense procurement, while undoubtedly good war fighters, do not have the project management experience to understand that risk is what brings projects down.

You don’t take an experienced project manager and give him command responsibility of a warship.You shouldn’t take a warship captain and give him the responsibility of a big project. But the latter is exactly the same thing that happens inside Defense.

Political risk (political change), economic risk (pressure on budgets), management risk (inexperience) and technical risk (novelty, uncertainty and complexity) – these are the things that derail projects.

Changing the sticker on the front door of the equipment purchasing office will do nothing to get better value for money for our defense force or to get equipment with reliable capability.

EG AUKUS

AUKUS is the classic Defense risk-taking method.

It is no hidden fact that the United States has not built enough Virginia-class submarines to meet the needs of the US Navy, let alone supply them to the Royal Australian Navy. The US Government’s AUKUS review report is now in the hands of the Australian Government. The minister explains the content, even if it is very general.

If the US were honest, they would tell us to do something different.

But that temptation will be difficult, given the $1.6 billion already paid to the U.S. War Department and the $1 billion that will be gifted to the United States in the next few weeks.

This week’s Senate Estimates were instructive. When Senator David Shoebridge told the UK Parliament that he was unhappy with his team’s progress when he read evidence given by Lord Case, Chairman of ‘Team Barrow’ (the organization tasked with ensuring that the town of Barrow can support the UK and AUKUS submarine building needs), Vice Admiral Jonathon Mead stated that he was unaware of this.

Experienced project managers spend their time looking for bad news, that is, risks that have materialized. This doesn’t seem to happen much. For AUKUS, ‘talking the talk’ is the task of the day, not ‘walking the walk’.

Rudd gives his AUKUS speech in Washington, but is the USA marching?

real change

If Marles knew what he was doing he would look at the culture in Defense procurement.

No more ‘custom’ or ‘expensive monolithic’ projects.

Defense needs to develop a force (and conduct other work in that order of battle) that is optimized firstly for Australian Defense and secondarily for immediate regional security. Defense Forces need to focus on proven designs/capabilities when meeting their needs.

This is something that has been recommended to Defense in the past in the 2003 Kinnaird Review and the 2008 Mortimer Review. These are not new ideas; these are old ideas that have been ignored.

Even those who aren’t currently interested in Defense need some attention. National security imperatives aside, too much public money is spent on defence.

One of the most significant signs that nothing significant will come of the changes announced by Minister Marles is Senator Shoebridge’s question to Minister of Defense Greg Moriarty: “Will the new National Armaments Director come from outside the existing organizations?” He asked the question.

Moriarty had no way of answering that question. He used bureaucratic doublespeak and avoided a direct answer. The secretary is an experienced civil service officer and will want someone he can ‘guide’ in the chair.

Marles doesn’t need to worry too much. He has what he needs; avoiding projects that fail for the remainder of the parliamentary term and possibly the next term as well. “All these problems were caused by the old system.”

Can Australia defend itself?

Rex Patrick is a former South Australian Senator and formerly a submariner in the armed forces. Known as an anti-corruption and transparency warrior, Rex is also known as “Transparency Warrior“