Australia's defence: A review of the 'reviews'

Abstract

The Australian Defence Force is held in high regard; the Department of Defence is not. Longstanding concerns about inefficiency, compounded by a succession of fiascos and bungles, have entrenched the perception that Defence is poorly managed. Earlier attempts at reform have yielded mixed, often disappointing, results (see Ergas and Thomson 2011), and the years since 2009 have seen a series of reviews aimed at improving performance, culminating in 22 defence-related reviews in 2011-12 alone.