Chief of the Defence Force

This was a deliberate decision of the US elite.

Was Australia then simply saying Me Too, as if ANZUS obliges us to do what the Americans want? I noted too the Cabinet records release earlier this year, showed that then-Chief of the Defence Force Angus Houston, warned against sending special forces back to Afghanistan in 2005, but Howard insisted they should return.

The answer is not really about Howard's sympathy with the US after 9-11, that is a given, but it is a question of the part he played in accepting the flawed intelligence and arguments for going to war and being involved in the cover-up.

From then on, the Australian political class was stitched up.

Yep.

Yeah, command responsibility has been left wandering here because whilst there's been significant attacks at the soldier level, there has been very little to none of anyone in the senior echelon has been held accountable, including the former Chief of Defence Force, Angus Campbell.

He's now on a posting as an ambassador to Berlin.

You know, he's never been scrutinised into his involvement or what he knew or anything like that.

Well, Victoria Barracks is the lifeblood of Australia.

I was delighted to see that Sir Peter Cosgrove, former Chief of Defence Force and Governor-General, has come out so strongly and said it's nuts because the argument that the Army isn't responsible for the country's oldest wine cellar and that's why Victoria Barracks has to be sold is just offensive.

It's offensive to veterans.

It's offensive to the defence family.

When it comes to the funding, though, it mentions, and I'm not sure I was necessarily aware of this, but it mentions a 2024 minute that the Chief of Navy prepares.

So now Chief of Defence Force, June 2024, wrote a minute to the Defence Committee setting out a Navy-wide sustainment pressure.

And it said that Navy had consistently identified funding pressures since 2021 and had overspent its sustainment budget for four consecutive years.

So this is long-term sustainment.

Yeah, yeah, I think there's been a lot of, certainly when I came through, I served seven years in the army, but I remember graduating Duntroon and going to the School of Military Engineering.

And, you know, again, turn of events, at the time, the Chief of the Defence Force, I'm pretty sure, or at least the Chief of the Army, became very public.

I think it was Morrison at the time, and was just like, you know, in a lot of the Australian news media and outlets, was just like, we're going to open up combat roles to women and females in the Defence Force, permitted that they have the physical, mental aptitude and capabilities to do so.

I think, I'm not too sure what it looks like in terms of special forces, but...

Well, yeah, but not just anyone from the ADF.

The person who had been designated to become the Chief of the Defence Force, Mark Hammond, Admiral Mark Hammond.

He turned up to Christopher Pine's private event, $5,000 a head event and delivered a keynote address as the chief of the defense, well, the incoming chief of the defense force.

And Christopher Pyne also flew out a kind of well-regarded senior Labor senator to come and sit there and schmooze around as well, all expenses paid.

In the wake of

the Prime Minister's Climate Week speech in the US, Professor Admiral Chris Bowery, a former Chief of the Defence Force turned strategist, says words are not action and Australia is not holding its own in this particular fight.

When I look around now and I see movement in Africa to take a much bigger lead and do much more, I think to myself, what a wasted opportunity we've had here in the Pacific.

So, you know, our disappointment, I think, is palpable that Australia is not doing a lot more to deal with climate change as our number one national security priority.