Volume 10, Number 3, Culture Edition

When I assumed command of the Australian Army in June 2011, I set myself three broad areas that I wanted focus on during my tenure. That was not to limit the host of issues that come across my desk in the course of a working week, but I wanted to have my command team know that, above all else, these matters would demand my attention and, as a consequence, their focus.

The first area was, is, and always will be, support to our soldiers on operations. The preparation prior to deployment, the training that underscores it and the rapid introduction into service of equipment to support our people is world class. It has been achieved through great commitment and dedication by soldiers, public servants and industry. There is much we can be proud of in what has been achieved and I can assure you that I will continue to seek improvement because it is our most essential task.

The second area of focus was on developing an Army with a viable and affordable force structure, with all of its essential capabilities. The aim is to ensure that Army is a robust and relevant force, capable of defending Australia and its interests well into the third decade of this Century. That is what Plan Beersheba is all about. It makes the case as to what is required to maintain essential capability within Army, and how that will be achieved with real and enduring resource efficiency. It is not a panacea for all of our force structure challenges, but it is a foundation for our future and I am very proud of the great work that has been done by many people at all rank levels to get us to this point.

The third area was focussed on our workforce and, back in July 2011, I framed my thinking around the care of our wounded and ill, and on how we lived to our Army ethos.

While we still have a way to go, especially in treating and supporting those with the mental scars of military service, I feel that we have made tangible headway in the care of our wounded and ill. However, I will be frank in saying that I did not expect to spend as much time as I have in examining and evaluating the culture and values of our Army.

Reasonably, I saw that as a well established feature of our organisation and, while I knew that there would be behavioural matters to address, I did not expect that what I said in this regard would arouse so much interest and comment, both inside and outside the Army. Subsequent events have proved that I was mistaken in this.

I don’t want any misunderstanding here. Our performance on operations since 1999 has been in the finest traditions of the Australian soldier. We have produced tough, resilient and innovative soldiers who have displayed courage in battle, while being able to treat the vulnerable with compassion. This record confirms that our individual training systems and our values work.

However, there is also undeniable evidence that the same warrior culture that has built our small teams, and equipped them to withstand the shock of combat, has been distorted by some people and used to justify bullying, harassment and intimidation.

Furthermore, the arguments that such behaviour are the preserve of a ‘few bad apples’ just doesn’t stack up. There have been too many scandals, and too many disappointed families who have felt betrayed that their sons and daughters had enlisted in the Australian Defence Force only to be treated badly.

The ‘bad apple’ concept has been the comforting cliché that we have relied on for too long to justify manifest failures of Army to provide a decent environment for all of its people to achieve their potential and make a contribution to this Country.

In no way am I arguing for a lowering of our rigorous standards. My number one area of focus is on providing the best Army for operations. However, over my 35 years of service, no one has looked me in the eye and explained how our great core value of ‘mateship’ justifies bullying a fellow soldier on account of his or her gender, sexuality, religion or ethnicity. After 13 separate inquiries into various aspects of our treatment of our people within the last 15 years, I am committed to facing up to this issue in the most open and honest way we can.

One of the best ways to achieve this is to facilitate analysis and discussion on matters of Army’s culture. That is the purpose of this edition of the Army Journal. Take the time to read it, and to discuss these issues with one another and your leaders at every level. This is how healthy organisations prosper.

I am most certainly not asking that you agree with all that is expressed in this edition. That is not the point. What I am looking for is an open and respectful exchange of views that goes to the heart of what makes us the great national institution I know we are.

I commend the Journal to you. Good luck and good soldiering.

One may ask why a professional military journal has devoted an entire edition to the issue of culture. If we have learnt anything about conducting operations in far-flung locations in the past decade and the public focus on issues such as gender and harassment in the military more recently, it is that our understanding of culture is central to being both professional and effective soldiers operationally and a professional and effective Army domestically. The Australian public expects and deserves no less.

The need to understand foreign cultures is explicitly acknowledged through the cultural awareness training that we impose on our troops deploying overseas. Cultural issues inherent to the Army and that impact on the organisation and its personnel at home however, need to be even better understood if we as an organisation are to address the changing nature and expectations of the society from which we draw our members. This special edition of the Journal is a small acknowledgement that Army understands that it is part of society at large and that open debate and diversity are the hallmarks of a healthy organisation.

Culture can be such an esoteric subject, and this edition has attempted to address its inherent diversity. With the degree of media interest in the issue, it is easy to simply conflate the subject of culture in the military with gender. But, as this edition of the Journal demonstrates, there is much more to the issue of culture. While gender issues are certainly covered, so are many more of the elements that define our culture. Organisational culture — or how Army policy and structure address contemporary concerns — is a case in point. Career management and the way in which it deals with personnel needs, whether Army culture is changing, the degree to which Army has a culture of learning (and what that means) and the challenges that uniformed personnel with children face are four issues that fall into this category and are covered in this edition. There is also an element of historical analysis, with a description of the way indigenous soldiers have served their country and an examination of the service of homosexual soldiers during the Second World War. The issue of homosexuality in the Army has also been examined with a more contemporary focus in an opinion piece written by a currently serving junior officer.

Gender and sexuality are further explored and placed in some context by two quite diverse articles from a Reservist lance corporal and an ex-British and Australian Regular, now Reserve officer, which provide two very different treatments of the subject. And, in a country as secular as Australia, the fact that religion is raised as a cultural issue is certainly laudable. Of particular interest, however, is the fact that, for a country which proclaims itself multicultural, there are no articles on the issue of ethnicity and the Army. Some articles touch on this issue, but if security forces should ideally reflect the societies from which they are drawn, the degree to which the Army does or does not reflect broader Australian society in terms of ethnicity has yet to be discussed.

There is a range of other articles that also merit the reader’s attention. A Swedish officer responded to our call for authors and has written on cultural awareness training based on his own operational experience. Cultural adaptation by ex-serving soldiers who discharge is also addressed, as is the degree to which ‘hazing’ has been a feature of Army culture. We also received a poem from a RAAF member who served on operations in an Army unit. Full marks to the author for both surviving a tour out of service and then committing it to poem. I am very happy to publish this unusual response.

The opinion pieces in this edition are particularly interesting. Alongside the aforementioned piece on contemporary treatment of gays in the military, the diversity of subjects addressed was quite extraordinary and something that I am keen to replicate in the future. Well-argued opinion pieces are a powerful way to generate debate and often less rigorous to compile. Not everyone can write them, but for those who can I would encourage you to do so. One piece comes from the pen of the RSM of the Army who shares some insights on the Army’s spirit. Given that his role is to provide the Chief of Army with frank and fearless advice and to gauge the feelings and concerns of the wider Army, his perspective is based on a broad and current view that few if any other can replicate. Somewhat juxtaposed to the RSM’s opinion are those of two officers who examine the strengths and weaknesses of elements of Army culture based on their recent experiences.

On a more personal level, I am very pleased with the response that the Journal has received to the call for submissions for this edition. I am heartened not only by the number and the quality of submissions that we received, but by the diversity of the authors. From Army Reserve lance corporals to Regular Army major generals, from academics to RAAF amateur poets and a Swedish military officer, the fact that people felt strongly enough about subjects to write is a reflection of how widespread interest in the topic has been. With the large number of submissions we also had to call on an extensive body of reviewers, and the team utilised the expertise of reviewers from both the Regular and Reserve components, the Army History Unit, DSTO, ASPI, DFAT, ANU, UNSW and the universities of Melbourne and Southern Queensland. Our grateful thanks go to them all.

Because of the number of submissions we received, we have held some articles over to later editions of the Journal. This will ensure that the subject continues to feature in the current debate, which can only be a good thing. And finally, for a small organisation such as the Land Warfare Studies Centre, a special edition such as this takes a great deal of effort, not only to seek out authors and reviewers, but to collate submissions for the Board’s review and then to ensure that, where required, the recommended changes are incorporated and the appropriate editing is completed. My thanks on this occasion to LTCOL Nerolie McDonald, Chloe Diggins and Cathy McCullagh for their efforts in this regard.

On a more sombre note, this Journal has once again to honour the service of another brave soldier killed on operations in Afghanistan since we last went to print. On 22 June 2013 CPL Cameron Stewart Baird, MG, of the 2nd Commando Regiment was on his fifth tour of Afghanistan when he was killed by small arms fire during a contact with the enemy. Our thoughts go to his family, friends and comrades.