Media Room: Defence Speech

 

QUESTION AND ANSWERS - RELEASE OF TWO INQUIRY OFFICER REPORTS INTO THE DEATH OF LT MICHAEL FUSSELL

 

Russell Offices, Canberra, ACT, Monday, 2 November 2009

 

 

CHIEF OF DEFENCE FORCE, AIR CHIEF MARSHAL ANGUS HOUSTON:

 

 

QUESTION:       

Air Chief Marshal, can you just explain to us two things. The track discipline you

refer to, that presumably involves soldiers following a clear path in some way and the

second is could you tell us what's happened to the officer against action – against

whom action was taken as a consequence of this and what rank was he? Was he

Major, as it appears from the documentation here, and what position did he hold in the

unit?

 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL ANGUS HOUSTON:

Well, first of all just going to the issue of track discipline, we have a procedure, a

procedure that's worked very well for us over a long period of time. I obviously can't

go into the detail of that for operational security reasons but suffice it to say there was

a breakdown of discipline in following that procedure that night. Now, Admiral

Ritchie's report goes into it in some detail. Pages 26, 27, 28 cover it, I think, very

well. There was a little bit of confusion up there. People weren't sure whether to stick

with the well‑established procedure or follow the person in front of them. That's as

much as I can say in regard to that. In terms of the individual, the worst thing

that can happen to you in the military is to be removed from command. All of us

aspire to command and to be removed is indeed a drastic action and it's a very

difficult set of circumstances for the individual concerned. He is still in the Army and

he is a Major but for legal and privacy reasons I can't go into any more elaboration

than that.

 

QUESTION:                          

Was he on the patrol?

 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL ANGUS HOUSTON: 

Yes, he was. Yes, he was.

 

QUESTION:                          

Latika Bourke from 2UE. You said you'd spoken to the family, do they intend to

pursue this matter further in terms of any legal options?

 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL ANGUS HOUSTON: 

Look, I spent the best part of three hours with the family the other day and I'm not

prepared to take you into confidence about what we discussed. All I will say is I took

them through the reports and everything that we have available to us and I was as

transparent as I could be. Now, other than that I'm not prepared to elaborate further.

 

QUESTION:                          

Was the Major the head of the Special Operations group in Oruzgan?

 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL ANGUS HOUSTON:         

The structure we have in Afghanistan we have the Special Operations Task Group

which is headquartered out of Kandahar and we have a Lieutenant Colonel who is in

command of the Special Operations Task Group. The force element that was deployed

was basically under the command of the Major who we just referred to.

 

 

QUESTION:                          

So all of the Special Operations troops in Oruzgan were under the command of this

Major?

 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL ANGUS HOUSTON:

Yes, that is true. Sorry, perhaps I just ‑ not all of them. This discrete element was,

OK, but there are other parts of the Special Operations Task Group that are

commanded by other people who work direct to the Lieutenant Colonel in Kandahar,

OK.

 

QUESTION:                          

Air Chief Marshal, just co‑incidentally we were contacted last week by the family of a

soldier who's from 1 Commando Regiment which is training, I gather, to be deployed

and the family were very concerned, though I understand that the soldier himself isn't,

about the level of training that reservists in that unit were being given to be deployed.

Do you have any concerns about the level of training they will be given and has

anything happened as a consequence of this investigation to remedy any problems that

might exist in further training there?

 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL ANGUS HOUSTON:                     

Well, again, I would refer you to the Cantwell audit. Major General John Cantwell

has done a very rigorous audit of all training preparation and certification of Special

Forces elements. I would submit on the basis of the audit that he's provided the Chief

of Army and myself, that we've now lifted the level of formality in the training to the

same level as the rest of the non‑Special Forces elements in the Army. So I have no

concerns about the preparation of our Reservists or our permanent people. They will

all go through a very rigorous force preparation process that starts with individual

training, it then runs into a period of collective training, the collective training will

include a full‑blown Mission Rehearsal Exercise and also the conduct of a Full

Mission Profile. Now through all of that the soldiers, the command team will be fully

tested and only when they are fully up to speed from top to bottom will the Special

Operations Commander certify them and obviously that will be endorsed by the Chief

of Army further downstream and I'm very, very certain that the issues that bedevilled

this particular preparation with this force element have been remediated.

 

QUESTION:                          

CDF, one of the reports says that several soldiers raised doubts about this Major's

ability. How often did that happen and could you get into some of the specific doubts

that were raised?

 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL ANGUS HOUSTON:                     

Look, the report speaks for itself. For legal reasons I cannot go into elaboration

around what happened in terms of the leadership issues. However, the report does go

into those issues fairly comprehensively and I think the report speaks for itself.

 

QUESTION:                          

CDF, if I can ask you about another matter. There's a report this morning that a boat

has sunk near the Cocos Islands and a Defence plane is involved in that search, do

you have any further details on that?

 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL ANGUS HOUSTON:                     

Yes, I understand that there was a distress call about halfway through yesterday. The

Rescue Coordination Centre, as they always do, looked at ships that might be close to

the scene. As you can see it's hundreds of kilometres north‑west of Cocos Island and I

understand that there were two ships identified, one was a Taiwanese fishing trawler

that got there some time late last night and also a gas carrier that was also there late

last night. Now I understand when the first ship got there this vessel was still intact.

Somehow or other during the process of the interaction between the ship and the

trawler and also the vessel, the stricken vessel, there's been a capsize and people have

ended up in the water. In terms of our involvement initially we were asked if we had

anything close. The closest ship that we had was 28 hours steaming away from the

location of the stricken vessel and more recently, since people ended up in the water,

we've been asked to provide a P3 to assist with the search and rescue effort.

 

QUESTION:                          

I just wanted to ask the review of officers, I mean the people going ‑ the people being

sent to Afghanistan now are being subjected to much more rigorous assessment?

 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL ANGUS HOUSTON:

Yes, yes. I mean, all of our processes have been looked at in detail by the Special

Operations Command. This was all done some time ago and we've just conducted a

full‑blown audit by Major General John Cantwell to look at all of these aspects and

his report is on the web. I gave you his principal findings and essentially he has

concluded, after a very rigorous audit, that all is OK and I'm completely confident that

we've remediated all of those issues that were identified in the report. One last

question, thanks.

 

QUESTION:                          

It's obviously difficult in the military for junior personnel to make a complaint about a

superior, is this process adequate ‑ is there a process and is it adequate that would

allow people who did have concerns on an occasion like this to raise them with

somebody and have action taken?

 

 

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL ANGUS HOUSTON:                     

Yeah, it's a very good point you raise, Brendan, but there are processes available and

indeed those processes actually worked in these circumstances in Afghanistan. So I might leave it at that.

 

 

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