Australian Army from Whitlam to Howard

THE AUSTRALIAN ARMY FROM WHITLAM TO HOWARD

John Blaxland

Cambridge University Press, 2014, 434pp

ISBN 978-1-107-04365-7

John Blaxland’s book covers the period from late 1972 until late 2007, from the election of the Whitlam government to the defeat of the Howard government.

He focuses on the many and varied operations conducted by the Army in that period. These ranged from disaster relief in Australia and overseas, through security operations and logistic support for major events in Australia, to support for the United Nations (an organisation Blaxland regards, probably correctly, as displaying “corruption and incompetence”; that said, unfortunately, it is all that the world has at the moment) in some “faraway places with strange sounding names”. They also included significant military operations in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan. Except when casualties occurred, many of the more extended operations received little publicity in Australia.

Against this backdrop, Blaxland comments on the development of the Army, as it moved from a focus on divisional operations to operations by battalion groups, which included combat support and combat services support elements from across the Army. Later, the structure evolved further, to unit level combined arms battle groups based on sub-units. There remained, however, a tendency for armoured units in particular to prefer to exercise en masse, even though armour was actually required to deploy for operations in smaller groups.

In his discussions, Blaxland uses Five Reasons for Prowess to benchmark the “Army’s journey of rehabilitation since 1972”. These are: Individual Training; Collective Field Training; Regimental or Corps Identities; Ties with Close Allies and Regional Partners; and Links with Society. In each chapter, he assesses the Army’s actions against these reasons.

A key change in the period was the establishment of an integrated Australian Defence Organisation. However, as one CDF, General John Baker, commented, the early stages of this process left the ADF essentially leaderless. This deficiency was not resolved until the establishment of the CDF as a commander replaced the CDFS position, which had itself replaced the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee.

A major failing during much of the period under discussion was the Army’s lack of a systematic approach to passing lessons learned on operations through the training system to the rest of the Army. Blaxland emphasises frequently that institutional arrangements did not capture lessons learned, and then disseminate them. Force structure and procedural changes were implemented tardily. There was a continuing “lamentable pattern” of not using warning time to prepare forces adequately. Ultimately, however, the Army implemented an Army Learning Environment; while perfection will never be achieved, major improvements have occurred.

Blaxland laments the practice of using Special Forces for operations that once would have been carried out by standard infantry battalions. He blames the concern to minimise casualties that has marked many recent operations for this practice, but suggests that it might be changing, with recognition developing that many current tasks can and must become the norm for all land forces.

While Blaxland makes much of the concern to minimise casualties, he also acknowledges that low casualty rates helped to maintain support for the Army’s activities. An anonymous retired senior officer quoted on a number of occasions criticised this “casualty cringe” as showing a “lack of [government] courage”, but perhaps forgot the importance of continuing community support for deployments.

One of the less well known changes mentioned by Blaxland is the greater use of Reserves, particularly during the last decade, both on overseas deployments and within Australia. Using Reserve elements in places like the Solomon Islands allowed Regular forces to focus on sustained operations in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, albeit Reserves also served in some of these.

This is an interesting book, though perhaps a little less space could have been given to some of the minor activities, in favour of more analysis of the changing Army.

Reviewer:  JOHN DONOVAN