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CDF announces his intent

I think it's very important that early in my term as CDF [Chief of the Defence Force] I have a chance to indicate to you my vision for the ADF [Australian Defence Force] and my intent, as described by seven fundamental themes.

Photo by Phil Vavasour

Vision

The ADF needs to be balanced because we have to remain poised for uncertainty in our strategic circumstances. If we look out into the longer-term future, we see the possibility of strategic competition in our region between the big powers and closer to home we see the potential for instability in the immediate neighbourhood. We also face a very lethal asymmetric threat. So I think we have to be balanced and I think we also have to be responsive to what we might have to do in the near term. It means that we have to be a very adaptable defence force and we need to be very flexible in the way we employ it. I think the following Vision summarises what we're all about.

A balanced, networked and deployable force, manned by dedicated and professional people, which excels at joint and coalition operations.

Let me now describe my intent in seven themes.

Theme One - Our People

Our people provide our capability, our people enable our capability and it's imperative that we, as a leadership team, work tirelessly for the welfare of our people. That's something that all commanders do but I just want to reinforce that it is going to be a very high priority for me.

We need to empower our people. Once we have skilled and experienced people we have the opportunity to empower them. When you empower people you form a direct connection to innovation and creativity. We need to let people get on with the job so that they are excited by what they have to do and they produce good results for us. In my experience, micro-management and innovation just don't go together.

I think it's also important that we concentrate on some of the very demanding longer term demographic issues here in Australia. We need to be able to win our share of quality people. We have appointed a one star to head up recruiting and he has an important job in front of him. Alongside him another one star, who will be working busily on strategies to improve our retention. Over the last 18 months we've seen a turn around from a very favourable set of circumstances to one that causes us a little bit of concern. It doesn't surprise me that we are losing some people - our people are very good and they are highly attractive to other employers. However, we are doing an external review for recruiting and retention that will be able to give us some innovative strategies whereby we can compete effectively in a very competitive market.

Theme Two - Our Values

I want to see our people treated with care, consideration and compassion. I want to see us leading by example. Sure we've got to be assertive and decisive, but we've got to balance that with the right approach to looking after our people and taking care of our people. And if you look at the Military Justice Report from the Senate you'll see that there have been some instances where our people have not been treated very well. I expect you to get out there and ensure that your subordinates, right down to the lowest level in your organisation, are treating our people in the right way.

Everybody under your command, and I mean everybody, should be treated with respect and get a fair go. That's the Australian way, that's the ADF way and I expect to see that right across the three Services and right across the whole Defence organisation.

Theme Three - Our Operational Performance and Preparedness

The bar is set very, very high for the new leadership team. The ADF has performed superbly on operations for many years. I want that to continue. The way we ensure that it does continue is to put the same emphasis on individual training, collective training, of the development of doctrine and the maintenance of very high military standards. At the end of the day, we prepare our people very, very well and that must continue. The emphasis needs to be on preparedness to ensure performance. I'm vitally aware that it's the three Service chiefs and their teams who do those vital raise, train and sustain functions - they give us the enabling capability to be successful on operations.

Theme Four - Our Strategic Direction

There's a strategic review running now and out of that will come Strategic Update 2005. What we need to do concurrently and subsequently is produce a full suite of subordinate Departmental level strategic documents that are congruent, coherent and comprehensive in the provision of direction to the Defence organisation. For example, we have to update Australia's Military Strategy, which will come from Defence Planning Guidance and embedded within that I would hope that we have our Vision, our Mission and our Values up there in bright lights. I'm very confident that we will be able to come up with what is required.

Two internal documents in particular will emerge from this effort. One, which will come from the Defence Capability Strategy, is a document that I will call Defence 2015. We need to understand what the ADF will look like in 2015 and we need to understand how we are going to fight in 2015. We also need to understand what the challenges are in the far future and we'll be developing a document, which I will call Defence 2030. We need to be thinking right now about some of the technologies that are going to be available then and we need to start working on those technologies right now. Creating Defence 2015 and Defence 2030 within a comprehensive suite of strategic level documents will be an important part of the work that we need to do in my tenure.

Theme Five - Our Capability

We've got a lot being delivered in the DCP [Defence Capability Plan] and with the much-improved performance of the DMO [Defence Materiel Organisation] as a consequence of the Kinnaird Review, we are working hard to get that equipment delivered on time.

But bear in mind it's just equipment until we do all the coordination of the fundamental inputs to capability. We need to sort out how we're going to use the equipment, we need to write the doctrine, we need to write the training plans, we need to do all of that important work that turns the equipment that arrives from the DMO into a capability that's optimised for the sorts of operations we're likely to conduct.

Theme Six - Our Relationships

I look back on when I first came into the Defence Headquarters, back in the mid-1980's, and I remember a very corrosive environment where in-fighting was rife. Thankfully those days are well and truly in the past but I want to put you all on notice that any sort of competitive behaviour, any sort of tribal behaviour, is something that I will not be sympathetic to. I'm as one with the Secretary. We work very closely together. We'll work very cohesively together and I expect all of you to be doing exactly the same thing. If you all do that, everybody else in the organisation will do the same thing.

It's all really about leadership by example and at the end of the day I never ever saw anything constructive come out of an adversarial relationship or a highly competitive relationship. What we need are relationships with the four 'C's' - good communication, good cooperation, a lot of consultation and a lot of coordination.

Theme Seven - Our Governance, Management and Administration

This is not just a civilian issue. This is a challenge that affects each and every one of us. Military leave records, stocktaking and our financial management are areas where a lot of work has been done. I have the view that if we can sort out all of these housekeeping and administration issues, we will put ourselves on a much better footing.

Conclusion

So there are my seven themes from which I hope you have a much better idea now of where I intend to go in terms of leading the Australian Defence Force. I'm immensely proud of the Australian Defence Force and I think it's an organisation that has done wonderfully well in recent times. The job of the Senior Leadership Group is to make sure that we look after our people to make sure that we continue to kick those very important goals here in Canberra, in the regions and out on operations.

An abridged version of the CDF's address to the Senior Leadership Group at the Recall Day.

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