Session 3: Inter-agency Cooperation and the Challenge of Culture
Deputy Commissioner Glenn Dunbier (NZ Police)
Deputy Executive Director, Australian Civil-Military Centre
‘Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Rick Burr; my fellow panel members Brigadier General Gilbert Toropo, Major General Greg Bilton and Mr Richard Sadleir; Distinguished Guests; Ladies and Gentlemen.
‘My name is Glenn Dunbier and I am very honoured to be here speaking with you today. I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today, and pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. I would also like to pay my respects to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women who have contributed to the defence of Australia in times of peace and war.
‘And in my native tongue —Te Reo Maori, or the Maori language —
E Nga Iwi
E Nga Mana E Nga Reo
Rau Rangitira Ma
‘Respects to this gathering, respect to the reputation and gravitas of what we will discuss, and may we all discuss this as equals and chiefs.
Ki te whare e tu nei – tena koe Ki te papa e waho – tena koe
Ki ti tangata whenua – tena kotou
‘Greetings and respect to the house in which we meet, to the land on which we meet, and to the people of this land.
Ki ti Rangitira Lieutenant General Rick Burr, Tena Koe,
Ki ti Rangitira o te Ngati Tumatauenga – Brigadier John Boswell, Tena Koe ehoa
Ki ti whanau eh huihui ne, tena kotou, tena kotou, tena tatou katoa. Kia Ora.
‘Respectful Greetings to our host Chief of Army Lieutenant General Rick Burr, Respectful greetings to my friend from New Zealand, Chief of Army Designate, Brigadier John Boswell, and welcome to the wider Army family who are gathered here to meet and talk today.
‘When the Chief of Army’s office sent me the request to speak here today, along with the brief of talking to partnering across the Indo-Pacific, I thought long and hard about what I could possibly bring to this discussion, and add to this gathering. Whilst I was very honoured to be asked to speak here, I only wanted to do so if I felt I could add something of value.
‘And I realised what I want to add to our discussion here today is a reflection of culture and how it shapes our partnerships: our organisational cultures, police culture, army culture, as well as national cultures. The way we see ourselves and the cultural tendencies we bring to partnerships can be both a significant advantage and multiply our strengths, but if not properly understood, can also be a barrier that keeps us from effective partnerships.
‘I also noted that I was going to speak last… and just before afternoon tea. So, I’ve decided to not do a PowerPoint, not take the full 30 minutes allotted to me, and speak instead from a personal perspective.
‘I decided to speak about personal reflections on internal organizational cultures, within and between organizations working in national security, drawn from my police experience and recently working with the military here in Australia. Then I’m going to take a step back, and reflect on New Zealand and Australia as partners in the Indo-Pacific region, and how culture impacts our partnerships.
‘Whilst I’ve been invited here as a Deputy Commissioner of New Zealand Police—which I am—I also wear another hat. I am halfway through a three- year secondment here in Australia, working for a small part of Defence—the Australian Civil-Military Centre—as the Deputy Executive Director. And so, for the past 18 months I have been here in Australia working with Defence, but also with the whole-of-government partners that the Australian Civil- Military Centre mandate dictates that we do.
‘This has exposed me to a whole different paradigm to what I have spent the past 33 years dealing with. And it caused me to reflect on a lot of things, take stock of what I know and what I thought I knew; what we, as Kiwis, do well and don’t do well; what we, as police, do well and don’t do well.
‘In short, I feel I have this reasonably unique and valuable experience that career police officers, or career soldiers, or career diplomats don’t often get—of being able to step away from a career in that one organization and profession and culture—and look critically at the culture I’ve come from, and the culture I now find myself in.
‘I’ve decided to talk about my own personal comparative reflections I’ve noted in having this experience, and how I have reflected about the importance of culture in partnering. I’ve thought a bit about the differences between the cultures of police and the military, between Australia and New Zealand, between coming from an organisation that has statutory independence from government to dealing with a whole lot that do not, and coming from a rank based, hierarchical ‘cradle to grave’ organisation to one that is not that. And then linking this to the importance of culture in partnering, and in particular partnering in the South West Pacific.
‘A little bit about me first—I have been a member of New Zealand Police for the past 33 years. I joined New Zealand Police 33 years ago this time next week, as a 19-year-old in 1985. Unlike the military, in Police, at least in New Zealand, there is no lateral entry at officer level—every sworn member of Police starts at Constable. Most, if not all Australian police jurisdictions are the same, and this one aspect alone, has a large bearing on a difference in culture between the military and police in my view.
‘Anyway, I did most of the conventional roles within policing: response, investigations, special operations group, as well as a not insignificant period of covert policing, before moving to more leadership mid-rank roles, then onto senior executive roles. Getting to senior executive roles was a bit of a surprise to me—I do not possess any academic qualifications, having left school at 17, and am not naturally ambitious, however, I do have aspirations, particularly around leading people well—and somewhat accidentally arrived at Deputy Commissioner position. Getting there exposed me to how government works, and the necessity to understand politics but, in police at least, not to play politics.
‘Having always had the aspiration to represent NZ overseas, I saw the opportunity at the Australian Civil-Military Centre as maybe my last chance before retirement, so I grabbed the opportunity. And it’s been this experience—stepping away from everything I knew or thought I knew—that has opened my mind and eyes to the importance of culture, something I think we all intuitively know, but don’t always get the opportunity to experience.
‘The Australian Civil-Military Centre is a small agency—about 25 people— housed within Defence but with a whole-of-government mission, mandate and constituency. The mission of the Centre is to support the development of national Civil-Military-Police capabilities to prevent, prepare for, and respond more effectively to conflicts and disasters overseas.
‘We do this in a number of ways:lessons learnt studies, assisting agencies to train and plan together for deployments, research, and advocacy, but if I could get to the essence of what it is we try to do, it is to get each of these agencies—all of which have their own culture—to understand each other better in order to work better together. Working with other cultures, understanding them, accepting the different mandates, different missions, different methods, different language and then cooperating where able, compromising where able – is what we try and make happen.
‘In my view partnerships are about utilising the best weapons in your arsenal to achieve the best result. You might want to say: the best tools in your toolbox… or in policy terms: drawing on the full suite of policy options available to yourgovernment. By taking on partners in any undertaking, you are exponentially increasing your tools or the number of options you have available to you. I see this every day in my work, with examples ranging from humanitarian responders and the military coordinating to respond to humanitarian and natural disasters in our region, police and military working together to provide stabilisation and security in conflict and on operations, civilians and policy professionals participating in military exercises to replicate real-life political and institutional responses and learn to deploy together.
‘It’s a well-recognised reality within the Australian context, that there is no version of a future Australian overseas operation which will be done by the military alone. In modern crises, we need experts and professionals to perform an ever more complex range of tasks. Civilians and police perform an ever-increasing range of functions on overseas operations. We work with experts from across government and the nation and must be ready to work with international partners.
‘When you step above Australia’s domestic response, and add in international partners to this mix, you not only multiply your toolkit, you also gain new dimensions, strengths, understandings and reach that cannot be achieved by Australia alone. As we see, security in our region increasingly relies on alliances and partnerships to achieve the far-reaching and sustainable outcomes we need.
‘In 2015, the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet here in Australia, Dr Martin Parkinson said:
“Very few countries could be said to do ‘joined–up’ government at all well as there is a recurring lack of coordination between the strategic, military and economic institutions across nations. While it may be hard for any country to achieve this outcome . . . history suggests that those which do, can have a disproportionate influence at key times in history.”
‘But to do all this we need to recognise we have different cultures— departmental, national, and professional—and seek better to understand these differences, in order to partner better together.
‘So, some reflections on the differences between organisational cultures, particularly military and police. In police—at least a nationwide police organisation like New Zealand Police that has as its principle mandate, community policing within New Zealand, and with a smaller offshore Policing diplomacy mandate—our day to day business has really only your peripheral vision to offshore threats, geo- political moves and regional politics, but the focus of your view is squarely on what’s going on ‘at home’. And as a member of Police for the past 33 years, the focus of my career has been largely looking onshore at threats and challenges, not so much offshore. Clearly the senior members of the Australian Defence Force would have the reverse of that focus. As would career diplomats, and foreign affairs staff.
‘In police—at least a nationwide police organisation like New Zealand Police, the government’s domestic policy has a lot more impact on your daily life, and therefore takes up your focus, rather than the government’s foreign policy which isn’t invisible, but is more in your peripheral vision.
‘Clearly the senior members of the Australian Defence Force, or any defence force, would have the reverse of that focus, as would career diplomats, and foreign affairs staff. I always knew that, but I’ve been surprised as to the extent of this difference and the extent to which this shapes the way we operate.
‘Police, generally—and I’m being very simplistic and general here—do not plan to the extent the military does. Right throughout my career, from Constable to Deputy Commissioner, I went to work every day trying to remain nimble and available to respond to anything that happened. This needs-based approach to ‘planning-on-the-run’ was preferred because having any sort of daily workplan, for most police, is an exercise in futility. The range and scale of jobs that you can be called to are so diverse, that rather than assumption based planning, they can only really be prepared for by making sure we have good people, providing principles to guide their response and empowering them to exercise their discretion to respond to whatever the need is. Because there is no lateral entry in New Zealand Police, every sworn member of police starts with this as their default setting, and they become quite adept at reacting and remaining available and free to respond even right through to senior levels.
‘My Defence colleagues here, particularly those from Army, have this amazing grounding in, and understanding of, planning. Police either marvel at this ability, or moan about how much time you have to do it—one or the other. But there’s no doubt from my experience [that] it is a principle difference in the way we are brought up, and therefore the way we lead and act and behave and what we expect.
‘A colonel was relaying to me a story about a Defence-Police joint deployment he was on overseas, where something happened out in a nearby village that required a response. Someone came into the camp and said to this colonel [that] there’d been a fight or something at a nearby village. He, and the police commander quickly got their heads together and agreed the Aussies were going to have to go and do something, and both went off to rouse their own staff. At that point the colonel started a quick appreciation, quick planning process, and preparing a quick briefing, turned around to find the police guys had already jumped into their vehicles and were half way to the scene. The colonel felt the police response was dangerous and unprofessional, and I have no doubt that the police commander felt that the Army response was, well unresponsive, and that planning was a waste of time until they knew what they were facing. This little story encapsulates to me a poignant difference between military and police. And these two commanders could well go on to be the Chief of Defence or Commissioner of their respective organisations.
‘Clearly there is a scale aspect to this example—Police frequently do plan operations, and the military can and do just react when required, but my point is more about our default settings being a bit different, and how this difference could either be leveraged for good, or misunderstood.
‘But what both military and police do very well, out of necessity, is to give our people real life ‘on-the-job’ leadership roles, usually in circumstances that are time pressured, public (at least in the case of police, but also sometimes the military), and in situations where mistakes are costly and good leadership really matters. And this is something I took for granted and have learnt since I have been here in Australia dealing with a whole raft of different government and non-government agencies: not everybody has had the benefit of learning leadership so early and in circumstances where it really tests abilities.
‘Not a lot of other agencies have the ability or opportunities to expose their people to these things, like we do. And I feel, as a result, we grow leadership and leaders well. This is in no way a slight on other agencies, but I have found the extent to which the mid-level people leaders in police and military have done leadership for real, have the scars on their backs and learnt from their mistakes, and have a large raft of leadership experience to fall back on is way ahead of most other agencies I have dealt with.
‘We are also people of action—which makes sense given what we exist for. We select, train and reward our people for their ability to make decisions under pressure, lead and take action. However, how this can play out in the higher levels of leadership of our organisations as ‘taking over’ in the whole-of-government, interagency or partnering space. I can’t tell you the number of times, as a senior police official having to work in the whole-of- government space, I had to bite my tongue and not just step in and take charge and ‘actually do something’.
‘New Zealand Police staff qualify for promotion through exams, and then apply for vacant positions that may hold a higher rank. Unlike the military we don’t go through the promotion board process. So, in New Zealand at least and I think in a lot of police organisations, our people are frequently submitting resumes and presenting at interviews, in order to win a position that comes with promotion.
‘When interviewed, our people are required to speak to their strengths and abilities and experience in a range of competencies: leadership, judgement, communication, innovation and partnering. As a result, I have interviewed dozens and dozens — maybe hundreds—of police officers, at all different levels, and listened to them talk to, and present on, how they do partnering.
‘Typically partnering in the police context is with other government departments, sometimes the military, sometimes local councils and local government, sometimes Maori or other ethnic-based organizations. However, when you dig into some of these examples, what I found quite common would be a story that essentially involved police ‘taking over’ in a partnership to drive it forward and get results, or having a power or money imbalance dynamic that makes the other partners meekly compliant, and taking silence and acquiescence as being a willing partnership Or it could be a story of having the primary motivation for getting into a partnership about to be about getting a ‘win’ for police, rather than for the wider partnership.
‘The problem with this approach is that you are not necessarily getting the best result for everyone, and often your ‘partner’ feels hard done by in the process, and therefore they are unlikely to be your supporter in the future. I’ve seen this many times as something of a failure in partnering—by insisting on winning every battle with your partner, you end up losing the war of genuine influence.
‘In my view this could be attributed somewhat to police being action- oriented people, who will always step forward to lead, and are used to ‘getting things done’, and the military is very similar in these attributes. None of these are bad traits, but these do need to be tempered when partnering, in my view.
‘To me, this speaks to the importance of us—military and police—allowing others to lead in the way they have grown up with, and is also critical to effectively partnering in the Pacific, particularly in the South West Pacific.
‘New Zealand’s strategic environment is unequivocally the Pacific—New Zealand considers itself a Pacific nation. You only have to look at a map and reflect on New Zealand’s significant maritime territory, and constitutional responsibility for the realm territories of the Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau.
‘But it’s substantially more than that. New Zealand is linked to the Pacific by history, culture, politics, and demographics. One in five New Zealanders— approximately one million people—now have Maori or Pasifika heritage, and this demographic trend is growing.
‘The interconnectedness between New Zealand and countries of the South West Pacific is extremely strong. This is particularly so in South Auckland— where I policed. Auckland is the largest Polynesian city in the world.
‘I think that, by and large, New Zealanders understand the cultural underpinnings of the region. Here in Australia, and when I have travelled to anywhere in the Pacific, I often hear the sentiment that ‘Kiwis understand the Pacific’. So I have taken time to reflect on why that might be. And I think a lot of this boils down to how much Maori and Pacific culture is part of our national identity and national culture. The basis for identity within Maoridom is ‘we’ not ‘me’, as it is for a number of different cultures, including around the Pacific. And in the Maori context that involves hearing the other perspectives of Te Tangata, Te Iwi, Te hapu and Te whanau—the people, the tribe, the sub-tribe and the family—before your own perspective is important.
‘And I think most New Zealanders absorb that way of being to some extent, regardless of their DNA, given how prevalent and accepted Maoridom and Pacifica culture is within everyday Kiwi life. And one of the good things about taking on this very Kiwi aspect of culture, is we are generally deferential, and culturally understanding, unassuming, and we listen. And this plays out well in the South West Pacific… at least, that’s my theory. Whatever the answer, culture plays a huge part in partnering in the Pacific. For New Zealand, there has been a consistent notion that Pacific security is a shared responsibility. New Zealand government publications consistently emphasise the centrality of regional security issues to the nation, from the Defence White Papers and Capability Plans through to Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade recent ‘Re-Set the Pacific’ strategy.
‘So, while we see regional security and upholding democratic values as a key national priority, New Zealand will also approach our Pacific neighbours with understanding, friendship, mutual benefit, and shared ambition. That is to say, we look for partnerships.
‘Our Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, laid out this balance in the March 2018 speech to the Lowy Institute by saying:
“New Zealand’s view is that we must be respectful of Pacific Island countries’ clear wish to manage their own international relations while at the same time retaining New Zealand’s traditional emphasis on human rights, the rule of law, transparency, good governance, and the promotion of democracy.”
‘And in going back to my earlier point about partnerships, that we must leverage every tool and use every resource in our toolbox to achieve the best outcome, then it becomes clear that New Zealand can play a vital role as partner, conduit and source of advice for better engagement in the South West Pacific.
‘Lastly, I have felt so incredibly fortunate to have been able to experience Australia in general, but Australian Defence in particular, and I have been so very impressed with the character of leadership you have within the three Services within Defence here in Australia. Most of the exposure I have had to this has been within the Australia Army, and I would like you all to know that I think you are incredibly well led.
‘You have leadership at all levels that demonstrate daily the Army values of Courage, Initiative, Respect and Teamwork, and I have been very fortunate to have experienced this first hand. Your senior leaders have been nothing but welcoming and available, and generous with their time, and I have come away from all of these interactions thinking that Defence—and in particular the Australian Army—has great role models leading the organisation. My career is in nobody’s hands here—this is said genuinely and meaningfully. This ethical, professional and collaborative culture that is grown from your leadership will inevitably flow on down through your ranks, and will assist in making you a partner of choice for foreign militaries, other government departments, Non-Government Organisations, and others.
‘No one agency—police, military whatever—will ever able to spend enough money to buy our way completely out of whatever we think the national or regional security risk is. Nor would any one regional partner be able to spend away all of the risk. Therefore, we must collaborate and cooperate and work together and leverage off the difference strengths we all have. This means partnering, and partnering means we need to understand the cultural differences in the way we operate. And a good way to start is by listening.
‘So, in finishing like I began in te reo of te matua, the language of my father—Maori people frequently use proverbs when speaking to make a point, and occasionally here in Australia, when the situation seems apt—I will revert to te reo Maori and make the point using a proverb:
Naku te rourou nau te rourou ka ora ai te iwi,
which means ‘With your basket (of food) and my basket, the people will live’, referring to the co-operation and the combination of resources.
‘And also,
He waka eke noa
‘We are all in this canoe together.’ ‘And lastly,
Haere pai atu, ki ti whanau
My appreciation for your attention and safe journeys back to your families.
‘Thank you.’
Figure 26. A sergeant of New Zealand Police works with ANZAC Joint Task Force 631 in East Timor. This member of the police contribution works in the Vulnerable Persons Unit in Suai on the island’s south coast. (Image: DoD)
Figure 27. A Royal Marine from His Majesty’s Armed Forces of Tonga provides cover to a soldier from 2nd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment and a marine from the US Marine Corps as they clear a room. (Image: DoD)
