19 November 2025
Honoured guests, colleagues, historians, good morning and welcome to the Chief of Army’s History Conference for 2025.
It is a rare honour to stand for the second time this year in the Great Hall of Parliament House, the home of Australian democracy, and to talk today with you about our nation’s Army.
Just over a year ago, I stood in a different hall at the Chief of Army Symposium in Melbourne and spoke about the human face of battle, and the state of the Army profession.
I posited at the time that the history of the Australian Army shows a clearly-defined pattern … a sine-wave of professionalism, if you like … which creates challenges for us as the stewards of our Army, and of the Army profession, today.
The Australian Army has tended to reach the apogees of our profession in times of war. It is in these periods of great need that the weight of the nation … morally, physically and spiritually … have pressed the profession forward, urging it to new heights.
The World Wars were particularly seminal. As the great Jeff Grey records in his history of our Army, ‘World War I was the making of the Australian Army’.
In just four short years, the 1st AIF became a mainstay of the British Empire armies, its initial single division and mounted Brigade in 1914 growing rapidly to seven Divisions fighting in two theatres of war.
The popular image of the Australian soldier was that of the talented amateur, the ‘bush soldier’ … but in reality no army could have endured the horrors of the Western Front without, as Grey puts it, ‘the attributes instilled through discipline, training, leadership, and sound doctrine which together constitute thorough military professionalism’.
This professionalism again reached a peak when the Second World War cast its shadow, just two decades later.
The Pacific War was the gravest test ever faced by the Australian Army, and indeed by Australia as a nation.
The passage of time has faded our sense of its gravity. But, put simply, the situation in 1942 was nothing short of dire.
The Imperial Japanese bombing campaign against Australia was a ruthless design of attrition and pressure. In just the first raid on 19 February 1942, Japanese aircraft dropped 115,000 kilograms of explosives on Australian soil … two and half times the number of bombs and 83% of the tonnage released on Pearl Harbour.
The Allied position in South-East Asia collapsed in a matter of months. The Japanese advance drove back the combined weight of the British, Indian, Australian, Dutch, and American forces.
The loss of Malaya, the fall of Singapore, and the surrender of the 8th Australian Division were national catastrophes. The damage done to Australian trust and confidence in their Army was significant.
The danger of an invasion of Australia, as Blamey himself assessed it, was ‘very serious’.
In the face of the greatest threat in Australia’s history so far, the Army profession rose to the occasion.
Fighting on our own doorstep, and mostly from our own resources, we had no choice but to evolve a comprehensive profession with Australian characteristics.
From March 1942 onwards, we developed our own doctrine, expanded our schooling and training enterprise, designed a flexible command and control system, and discarded social barriers to female and indigenous service.
We proved remarkably able to acquire and bring into service new and innovative equipment, including the no-less-than 1,900 watercraft operated by the Royal Australian Engineers, and the decisive deployment – against all conventional wisdom, I would add – of Matilda tanks into the jungle.
This ability of the Army profession to adapt and harden the force for the crucible of littoral warfare – intellectually, technically and spiritually – proved decisive in the victories in the Pacific theatre.
The same can be said for Korea, and for Vietnam. The Army profession has been at its best when the nation has needed it most.
The same cannot be said, however, for the inter-war periods. Here sits the other aspect of the pattern of the Army profession, the troughs that form the sine-wave of challenges.
The inter-war periods have routinely seen the Army profession contract, and at times even come close to collapse, in the face of irrepressible human optimism, under-investment, and the demands of competing national priorities.
This pattern was first seen in the aftermath of World War I. This had of course been ‘the war to end all wars’, and a war-weary and indebted Australian nation came to believe that military affairs would no longer be consequential.
While both permanent and militia soldiers felt the impact of this perspective, it was the permanent cadre – most often the custodians of the profession – who felt the brunt the most.
By 1931, the headcount of the permanent Army was just 1515 officers and enlisted ranks. The RMC class of 1930 had only twelve subalterns: indeed the College was temporarily closed and its functions moved to Victoria Barracks in Sydney.
Compulsory training for the militia ground to a halt, and equipment and doctrine atrophied in the face of the rapid industrialisation and mechanisation of wars occurring elsewhere around the globe.
The final result was that the Australian Army of 1939 was less militarily capable than it had been just two decades earlier in 1919, despite the unmistakable signs of a second impending war.
This same pattern struck in the aftermath of the Second World War. The ‘Army Post-War Plan’, submitted in September of 1946, predicted that an approach wholly reliant on militias and mobilisation would not keep pace with world affairs, nor the changing character of warfare.
It recommended a significant standing Army that was by nature both relevant and credible, consisting of a permanent Division, two part-time Divisions capable of deployment within three months, and a further two Divisions that could be ready within a year.
But again a nation sick of war, understandably optimistic for peace, and perhaps ignorant of history was averse to bearing the cost of such a force.
Financial constraints turned a Division into a Brigade, and by 1950 the regular Army was less than 15,000 strong. This was despite the ongoing demands of both the occupation of Japan, and in short order in the fierce fighting of the Korean War.
From Gallipoli to Kokoda, Kapyong to Long Tan, and to the modern battlefields in Afghanistan, the sinusoidal pattern has repeated. Inter-war contraction, and at times atrophy, followed by the rush to expand in the presence of a threat to our nation’s prospects and security.
Why does this matter so much to our Army today? Because the inter-war contraction has always incurred two debts: firstly a debt of time, and secondly a debt of lives. Soldiers’ lives.
Contraction has meant that it has always taken time for the Army profession to rise in the face of the next foreseeable and indeed inevitable crisis.
In the First World War, this debt was found in the two years it took for the I and II Anzac Corps to be ready to contribute to the decisive theatre of the war: the fight against the German Army on the Western Front.
In the Second World War this debt of time was two fold: found firstly in the hasty raising of the 2nd AIF for the initial campaigns in Europe and North Africa, but then again in the wholesale transformation of the Army for the defence of Australia and the brutal jungle fighting of the war in the Pacific.
The debt of time is inevitably accompanied by the debt of lives. It is to the nations’ enduring credit that in 1914 44,000 citizens volunteered to join the AIF in just a matter of months.
But when they deployed to Egypt they did so almost entirely untrained. There was only so much that could be done to address this before the beaches of Gallipoli called, and over 600 young Australians paid with their lives on the first day alone.
In the Pacific, the debt of lives was paid by those tasked to hold the line against the Japanese while the Army and the nation were preparing for Australia’s territorial defence.
The debt was paid by the remnants of the 8th Division, by the isolated soldiers of the ‘Bird Forces’, by the Independent Commando Companies, and by the militia battalions who fought and fell in the initial battles of the Kokoda Track.
Their courage and gallantry was unmistakable, and just last week we stood together … as we do every year … to remember their sacrifice. But as soldiers, and as the stewards of the Army profession today, it is our moral and professional obligation to do all we can to prevent such loss in the future.
Both the Defence Strategic Review of 2023, and the National Defence Strategy of 2024 that emanated from it, are very clear that we no longer enjoy the luxury of warning time. As I noted in Melbourne a year ago, ‘a conflict in our region would constitute an immediate threat to Australia and its interests’.
It would demand an Army profession already prepared for a comprehensive response: one that is relevant and credible against the threat, hardwired for continual adaptation and able to match the emerging character of any regional war.
If we are not ready, the debt of time will almost certainly incur the debt of lives. This is not acceptable. To once again paraphrase my 1950s predecessor, Sir Henry Wells, we must never again be in the situation where soldiers ‘have to be killed to learn’.
So, we must strengthen the Army profession – our profession – now. We must do all we can today to reduce the amplitude of that sine-wave that is evident in the inter-war period. In short, we must be ready for the prospect of war today.
Today’s gathering is important in this regard. In 1993 Professor Sir Michael Howard advised military professionals to study history ‘in width, in depth, and in context’.
In the program today, Tim and the team at our esteemed Australian Army History Unit has drawn together a remarkable host of historians, academics and thinkers to help us study the Army profession in just this way.
The Deputy Chief of Army – Major General Chris Smith – will lead us off by considering the role of history in our understanding of the realities of war and warfare, and the professional dangers of neglecting the study of the past.
We then shift into one of the most important pillars of our profession: that of self-regulation. Major Sam White and Sergeant Norman Daymirringu will take us firmly beyond the day-to-day, examining the traditions of indigenous conflict resolution through the long arc of our history.
Colonel Jim Waddell and Dr Bob Hall will then lead us on a trek through military discipline in the Army profession, both in the history of the military justice system, and then in the applied experiences of the 1st Australian Task Force in Vietnam.
We will then be treated to an exploration by Professor Craig Stockings of our professional body of knowledge. Professor Stockings will not only examine the history of the role of education in the Army profession, importantly he will also propose (and is actively involved) in where we ought to go next.
He will be well-supported in this by Dr Jordan Beavis, who will examine the history of the Australian Army Journal (often a litmus test for the health of the profession), and Dr Darren Moore, who will take us out of our comfort zone in an examination of ‘bastardisation’ at the Royal Military College – Duntroon.
Lieutenant Colonel Luke Carroll, Dr Justin Chadwick and Colonel Rich Bushby will collaborate to help us understand how well we have adapted in the past, and indeed where we have failed to do so. The 1976 Regular Officer Development Committee and Project OPERA in 1998 provide valuable case studies for adaptation, as does the post-World War II ‘pentropic’ experiment.
Dr Jason Seaton, Dr Janette Bomford and Dr Kate Ariotti will take a deep-dive into the integration of women into the Army profession, starting with the Second World War and ending with a call to action for a better scholarly history of the experiences of women in our profession.
The day then ends with a broad arc across professional ethics, the relationship between the Army and the society we exist to serve, and the changing strategic role of the Army in the post-Vietnam period. I am very grateful to the stellar line up of Professor Bob Breen, Dr Nicole Townsend, Dr Tristan Moss, Professor John Blaxland, and Professor Mike Evans, all of whom will help us in this endeavour.
So, today we study our history. I ask that you do so focused not on the past, but with a very keen eye to the future. As Winston Churchill said in March 1944, ‘the further backwards you can look, the further forward you are likely to see’.
Professor Mike Evans’ abstract for today is correct that at times in our nation’s history we have risked becoming ‘an Army without a strategy, and a strategy without an Army’.
This cannot be the case today, as our nation faces the most challenging strategic circumstances in generations.
We must be clear-eyed about our strategy, and sharply focused in its execution. We are obliged to buck the trend of the sine-wave of our history. The strength of the Army profession will be central to our success the next time we are called upon to defend our nation. The time is now, and it is on us – the current stewards of our profession – to lead the way.
Thank you.