Justice for all is IG’s aim

By Paul Cross

Inspector-General ADF Geoff Earley

THE role of Inspector General ADF has been established with the aim of monitoring the fairness of the military justice system.

The IGADF’s role is twofold – first, to provide the CDF with an independent means of monitoring the military justice system and, second, to provide an avenue for failures in the justice system to be examined and fixed.

The IGADF concept was arrived at from the recommendations of former Federal Court Justice James Burchett and his 2001 inquiry into military justice, sparked by allegations of rough justice in the ADF.

First appointee to the post is Geoff Earley, a veteran of the ADF and the legal profession, who said the position represented a new concept not only for Australia but, with its exclusive focus on military justice, elsewhere as well.

“What we are doing here is ground breaking and we have spent most of our time so far developing the way ahead for this new office because we needed to start almost from scratch,” Mr Earley said.

“One of the important points about this position is that it is independent of the normal chains of command so that it is not seen as belonging to one tribe or another and therefore not unduly influenced by those sorts of connections.

“It does not displace any of the existing mechanisms. It is there to assist the chain of command by providing independent review so that any individual or systemic problems can be fixed; it is not there instead of it.

“With the wide definition of military justice there is a great deal of data being reported, discipline statistics, outcomes of inquiries, grievance data, and so on. “What we have not done particularly well before is to try and make some sense of all that information in a coordinated way that might be useful to management by, say, identifying trends.”

He said IGADF investigators would conduct periodic focus groups not only with those people that used the system – the discipline administrators such as COs – but those people who were subject to it, to identify areas that could be improved.

“There is an important cultural aspect to this work as well and people in this office need to have a good appreciation of the cultural context in which the justice system works in the ADF,” Mr Earley said.

“While the strictly legal aspects of the system can probably be grasped by many people who are otherwise unfamiliar with the military, I think the way that the system underpins what the ADF does in peace and war, in Australia and overseas, is a very important part of understanding how it works.

“Being in the service breeds a sort of stoicism and resilience in people. By the nature of their service they learn to put up with hardships, discomfort and, sometimes, danger.

They accept that by joining up some of their personal liberties may be limited as well – it is part and parcel of the cultural context. But what people don’t have to put with is being treated unfairly and unjustly. “The term military justice also covers the conduct of administrative inquiries and the right to make a complaint.

There is a distinction between a complaint and the right to make a complaint. “That right continues to be an important feature of the military justice system and it is the denial of that right which is of interest to this office.

“It is necessary that any modern defence force be a disciplined service otherwise it would just be a mob. But you can have very tight discipline in an organisation with very little justice.

“On the other hand, an over emphasis on individual rights can also undermine discipline – we need a balance between the two. What we want to help achieve is not only a disciplined ADF but a just ADF as well.”

Anyone can make a submission about military justice to the IGADF. Further details can be obtained by contacting the offi ce on 1800 688 042 or igadf@defence.gov.au.

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