The Australian Centenary History Of Defence Volume V: The Department of Defence.

• Author: McGibbon, Ian
• Position: Books

THE AUSTRALIAN CENTENARY HISTORY OF DEFENCE Volume V: The Department of Defence Author: Eric Andrews Published by: Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2001, 348pp, $65.95.

One of Australia's premier departments of state, the Department of Defence has come a long way since its formation in 1901. At that time a mere twelve people were available to conduct its business. The needs of Australian defence, especially during the Second World War, led to a considerable expansion in its size and focus. Following the incorporation of the three service departments within it in 1973, it reached its zenith in numerical size with more than 100,000 civilian and service personnel. Since then, however, financial pressures have led to successive trimmings of its staffing levels to below 70,000 in the 1990s.

The evolution of this organisation is traced in this, the fifth in a series of volumes commissioned to mark the centenary of Australian federation. It follows three excellent books on the respective services, reviewed in a previous issue (vol XXVI, no 5). The author, Eric Andrews, was a retired history teacher from University of Newcastle, who sadly died shortly after publication of this volume.

Andrews stresses that he is providing an overview of the development of the department. He notes that there are aspects of defence administration that he has set aside, such as the vexed question of defence procurement. He focuses on the top level of the organisation, noting that `A history of the Department of Defence is ... inevitably a study of the bureaucratic elite who ran it, their aims in doing so, and their relations with politicians and military.' In the wake of the recent exposure of dysfunctional behaviour in their own defence organisation, New Zealanders need no reminder of the scope for controversy within any such framework.

Andrews's purpose is to `show how policy decisions were made (and by whom and for what reasons, chronicling the gradual change as the department progressed from adherence to a given policy (including administration and execution of that policy), to the coordination of various policies, and, finally, to intelligence-gathering and active formulation of policy'. Like the authors of previous volumes in this history, he addresses the development of a self-reliant approach by Australia `free from undue influence by our "great and powerful allies"'.

Two figures stand out in the history of the department -- Sir Frederick Shedden and Sir...