Albanese Labor’s defence system test just got harder

Dear Editor,

Pat Conroy has now put more shape around “the system”.

Earlier, he said Defence workers were let down by it. At the National Press Club, he named more of the machinery: impossible requirements, weak costing, committee drag, consultant dependence and blurred accountability before contracts were even signed.

Good.

That is a better diagnosis than another slogan.

But it also raises the harder question. Previous Labor governments had already seen much of this through Mortimer, Black, Rizzo, Coles, Projects of Concern and the old Defence Materiel Organisation years.

The problem was not hidden. It was reviewed, patched, managed, renamed and still left behind.

Conroy deserves credit for being blunt about requirements that breached the laws of physics and committees that consumed senior time without enough decisions.

Now Albanese Labor has to prove the new Defence Delivery Group can break the behaviour, not just rename the structure.

Sailors, soldiers and aviators need capability delivered, not another reform loop.

I expand on this argument at markcroxford.net/read

Regards,

Mark Croxford
20-year Navy veteran and former media and
political adviser to a Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and Minister for Defence Personnel

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