Minister for Defence - Transcript - Interview with Andrew Moore, Radio 2GB

Topics: Border security, budget, Afghanistan, South Sudan.

ANDREW MOORE:

Look, certainly an interesting time to be working in Defence. Australia's obligations in Afghanistan have almost ended, with just 400 Australian Defence Force personnel remaining on non-combat roles.

Thousands of troops have returned home to their families and loved ones, no doubt baring the scars of Australia's longest war, and the Navy is being used in Operation Sovereign Borders to intercept vessels heading to our shores, yet the budget was slashed under the previous governments to the lowest levels since 1938.

So trying to turn everything around is the Federal Minister for Defence, David Johnston. Minister, good morning to you. Thanks for your time.

MINISTER:

Good morning, Andrew. A great pleasure.

ANDREW MOORE:

Nice to talk to you, because there is so much happening, and it's hard to know, again, where to start. I guess we start with your dealings as Minister for Defence with the Indonesians. How's that been?

MINISTER:

Well, I get on very well with the Indonesian Defence Minister. He's a really decent chap and we've formed a good, strong relationship, and what we sought to do is allow, you know, Sovereign Borders and the Immigration Department to run this problem, and may I say Minister Morrison is doing a very, very good job in extremely difficult circumstances.

So Defence provides the assets, but all of the hard yards, the management and all of that sort of stuff is done by the civil agency; that is the Immigration Department.

ANDREW MOORE:

Well, you must laugh at some of the things you read, because some publications and organisations are saying the Indonesians are filthy, that anyone would have the hide(*) to turn boats back and bring them back here, yet then you hear from their military saying no, we've got an agreement in place, we're honouring it, no problem.

MINISTER:

Yes, look, that's right, but of course I don't comment on any of those sorts of matters. These are matters for the Minister and his advisors, many of whom are Defence personnel, and we just simply provide the assets.

Our Navy people up there on the frontier are doing an absolutely fantastic job in the most difficult of circumstances. You know, it's a nine-day turnaround to Christmas Island from Darwin and our people have just consistently, for several years now - we've had more than 50,000 people come in - they've been doing an absolutely sensational job in difficult circumstances.

ANDREW MOORE:

And what about the Chief, David Hurley? I was happy to see him go on the front foot about a few issues yesterday, including defending Australian Defence Forces and the Navy about their treatment of, you know, people looking for asylum here.

MINISTER:

Well, Andrew, we are very lucky to have in Defence the calibre of people like our CDF, General David Hurley. He is a simply outstanding person. He's formed relationships with Indonesian high command that are very enduring and strong, and the sort of things that most Australians would be very proud of, such that we have, you know, no capacity for misunderstandings, miscalculations. We've got strong relationships defence-to-defence to Indonesia, and David Hurley is on the frontline of doing that.

ANDREW MOORE:

How big an issue, how big a part of this is border protection, asylum seekers, as part of your portfolio as Federal Minister for Defence? How much - you know, I don't know whether you can put it in percentage terms, but is this a major part of your role?

MINISTER:

We've got seven Armidale Class patrol boats on full-time operations. We've got two major fleet units, we've got P-3 Orions. Now, the major fleet units run on several hundred thousand dollars a week, you know, not to mention all of our personnel, and you know, fishing bodies out of the water is a most unhappy task and yet our people, day-in-day-out, do this.

So we provide all of the logistics, the hardware, all of the sort of equipment and the knowledge and skill, but the strategy comes from Immigration and Minister Morrison is the one who's running that show, and may I say doing an absolutely outstanding job.

ANDREW MOORE:

Before you were elected, Minister, you said we need real-time surveillance in the vast seas to our north to help find asylum seeker vessels on their way to Australia. In particular, you were talking about maritime surveillance drones. Are they being used yet or is that something you're still looking at?

MINISTER:

Well, we're still - the system called broad area maritime surveillance which combines with the new P8 which is going to replace our P-3 Orions, and may I say our P-3 Orions have an absolutely world class capacity, with the FLIR pod and radar and all of that sort of stuff, to surveil these very, very vast areas we have particular to the north-west of Australia, out to Sri Lanka.

Now, assisting the new aircraft, with is a P-8 Poseidon 737 aircraft, is the potential to have unmanned aerial vehicles up at about 55,000 feet with a footprint of every second of about 150 kilometres with radar, FLIR pod and all this sort of thing, very cost-effective, able to go from Darwin to Sri Lanka, do a couple of laps of Sri Lanka and then come home, you know, about a 40 hour endurance flown out of Edinburgh in South Australia.

So that's the sort of system that we're very keen to look at because we see it as cost effective. Now, you can't have 11 to 15 crew flying out, you know, thousands of miles away from home every second day of the week, so we have to manage our broad area maritime environment, and this Global Hawk from Northrop Grumman is one of the better opportunities. We're looking at it, we're looking to put it in place. It's very expensive, of course, but we have a massive responsibility, particularly with the oil and gas and our trade and lines of communication for shipping and what have you. Now, we need to put a handle on this, and this is one of the ways we see best of doing it.

ANDREW MOORE:

How significantly impacted was Australian Defence when you consider the, what, $16 billion that was cut out of it by the previous Government?

MINISTER:

Well, Andrew, that's a really important question that not a lot of people understand. We are planning things in terms of ships, submarines, aircraft and just force structure 15 and 20 years out from now, so our capital account has to be funded over the long term. When you take $16 billion out, you put everything completely in disarray. Now, you know, getting some stability back into this portfolio is my principal task, and may I say it is not easy. The Prime Minister and I are in difficult circumstances where we are finding black holes, money gone, every second day of the week.

So getting national security on a stable footing has taken all of our last four months. We're looking to do a White Paper within 18 months of the election, and what we're seeking to do is to stabilise the funding envelope, which is a really difficult task given that, you know, Mathias Cormann and Joe Hockey, Finance Minister and Treasurer, are grappling with some of the most significant problems we've seen since WWII in terms of finance. And Defence, with its long-term lead time on capital acquisitions, is the principal probably victim of this absolutely incompetent policy we saw from the last Government.

ANDREW MOORE:

Onto Edward Snowden, this whistleblower over in - where is he? - Moscow, where he's already had those revelations of a broadcast by The Guardian and the ABC about the spying activities in Indonesia a few years ago. Are you worried that there's worse to come?

MINISTER:

Look, you have to assume that there'll be further problems. I just don't know exactly the full length and breadth and extent of what this fellow has, but may I say that this particular area is so important to Australia. It's actually saved lives in Afghanistan. Intelligence gathering, signals intelligence, is crucial to the wellbeing of the way we secure the day to day operations of the ADF and the day to day activities of many Australians. So, you know, we usually say, and I want to be saying, we don't comment about this, but this is a really important national security asset for Australia and, you know, it has saved lives. People need to keep that in context.

ANDREW MOORE:

Yeah. Alright. Afghanistan, we've withdrawn all but what, 400 Australian Defence personnel from Afghanistan who remain there in non-combat roles this year. What have you been hearing from returning soldiers about their time over there? I remember speaking to a mother a few years ago who was petitioning Julia Gillard, and she had lost her son, he was a casualty over there, but petitioning Julia Gillard not to bring them home. This is four or five years ago.

MINISTER:

Sure.

ANDREW MOORE:

Saying that the troops really believed in the work they were doing. What have you been hearing from the troops as they make their way back?

MINISTER:

Well, the first thing I should say is it has cost a great deal in lives for us. Forty of our very best service personnel have not come home, 261 are wounded, but we let the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police Force fight the last fighting season because the winter's very harsh in Afghanistan. So they - last summer, the Afghan Security Forces virtually on their own secured their own country and were very successful in doing that. So we're confident they have the capacity to provide the level of security for their country that they should and they need.

Now, we've had 26,000 people rotate through Afghanistan, Australian Defence Force personnel. We've just successfully completed the removal of 11 years worth of gear, ordinance, pharmaceuticals, you know, some 1300 20 foot containers have come out pretty seamlessly, 2700 pieces of infrastructure, 4.7 million items of general material all come out either in C-17s, C-130s, or through Pakistan down to Karachi and on to boats.

It's been a major logistical exercise for us after 11 years. May I say the Defence Force has done an absolutely seamless and outstanding job in bringing all this gear out. Now, we've gifted some of it to the Afghans, we had to destroy other bits of it, but most of it has come out and it's come out in a way that I am just so impressed with given that even the Americans are now looking over our shoulder saying how did you do that so well? And I'm very proud of our people having done that.

ANDREW MOORE:

For sure and certain. So what do the majority of those who have spent considerable time over there do now? Do they get a well earned breather or straight back into other duties?

MINISTER:

Well, the first task for me is to make sure that those that want to transition out, that I look after them, I make sure that that road to civilian life is done appropriately and well, and that I look after their mental wellbeing, particularly with post traumatic stress disorder.

ANDREW MOORE:

Would that be a significant percentage? I mean, that do want out after that, something like that.

MINISTER:

I think it is, but, you know, organisations like Soldier On, and there's a whole host of other organisations, are looking after our people too because they're very self sufficient, these guys. They don't want Government hand outs. They just want to be able to know that there's some support there if they need it, and that's what I'm seeking to provide for them, understanding and support if they need it. And Veterans' Affairs - Michael Ronaldson, the Minister for the Veterans' Affairs, is doing a fantastic job looking after them when he catches them as they come across.

The other important aspect is we - you know, counter insurgency is a very difficult part of war fighting. Australian Defence Force has acquired unique and specialist skills in that regard. We're very good at it. We need to keep those lessons, keep our corporate knowledge up to the mark, and that's a challenge for us. So we've got to, you know, learn the lessons, retain the corporate knowledge, and have the capacity, should it be required into the future, to go back in terms of readiness and do the job again if we need to in various parts of the world. Of course, we're in South Sudan at the moment.

ANDREW MOORE:

Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, South Sudan. So we've got a C-17 Globemaster…

MINISTER:

That's right.

ANDREW MOORE:

Which is a huge Army plane, and its crew helping out in South Sudan, a very troubled region. How are they going?

MINISTER:

Well, they're doing fantastically and, you know, the crew was coming home from Italy, coming home from Europe, and they got the call on Christmas Eve, had to turn the plane around, go back to Italy, get the water purification kits, tents, and the foodstuffs, and just head off down to South Sudan, which they did as a matter of duty.

You know, my hat goes off to them. The UN, of course, needed this stuff desperately. Lots of people are displaced and, of course, Australia's one of the first ones to put their hand up, turn up, and provide vitally needed equipment and gear so that people can drink the water and have something to eat and have some medical supplies. A C-130 is backing up on that.

We think two weeks should see the job done to a degree. Things have stabilised a little bit. We've got 20 people in South Sudan. We've got two people in Bor, which is where the main problem is, and I've been over the Christmas period, I've been very concerned about them, but, of course, senior Defence management have handled that very well and you would have seen the acting Prime Minister around Christmas Day talking about what we were doing there. Things have stabilised. I'm feeling less concerned, but, you know, the ADF, just first cab off the rank to look after those people in assistance to the UN. I'm very proud of them.

ANDREW MOORE:

Nice to talk to you, Minister. Thanks for your time. It's going to be a very interesting period as things develop with Indonesia, with boat - asylum seekers, and goodness knows what other challenges await. As you say, there's a good man there running the Australian Defence Force in Chief David Hurley and we look forward to keeping in touch. Thanks for your time.

MINISTER:

Thanks, Andrew. Thank you for your interest.