The only surprise that 28 major Defence projects are running cumulatively 97 years late — and at least 18 projects are facing cost overruns of roughly A$6.5 billion — is that it is a surprise to some. But it should not be a surprise to defence minister Richard Marles.
Problems in Defence weapons acquisitions are nothing new — they are by now a near 30-year-old problem that started long ago, under Paul Keating. Every defence minister, or minister for the defence industry since then, has had to deal with the untameable beast that is defence weapons acquisitions.
When I first started working with Defence in 2010 after working at one of the world’s premier innovation and product development organisations, I was astounded at how far behind Defence was. When the Rail Advocate invited me to work with the rail industry, I was warned that rail was 20 years behind world’s best. My somewhat cheeky response was that Defence is 20 years behind rail, such is the level of absolute dysfunction I had found.
Marles’ latest Defence review is the 51st of such in 49 years. Not a single one of those previous 50 reviews has ever come close to ‘fixing’ the ‘problems’ in Defence. Even another 50 Defence reviews still will not ever ‘fix’ the problems.
That’s because the root-cause problem is not a Defence-specific problem at all. It is a systems problem.
Therefore, applying Defence ‘fixes’ to a systems problem will never, ever, ‘fix’ the underlying problems.
In fact, Defence’s underlying problem is exactly the same underlying problem behind why Australia ranks stone-cold last in the OECD for commercialisation of innovation outcomes. And it’s the exact same underlying systems problem behind why the NDIS is such a ‘basket-case’ and out-of-control program.
It should not be any surprise to Marles, minister for defence industry Pat Conroy, department secretary Chris Moriarty, or 20 other MPs or senators who all received a copy of my 2020 book: Drain the Defence swamp: How to fix every product development to be more affordable, producible and problem-free — which I wrote after retiring from all defence work.
That book is written in two halves. The first half analyses precisely why current defence methods and practices can only ever perfectly deliver ongoing ‘basket-case’ outcomes. The second part outlines a high-performance system that would fix all of the underlying Defence programs. This second part is not some pie-in-the-sky theory. It is based on the same methods that the world’s most competent organisations use to prevent all such errors that defence programs suffer from. (ie., it already works very well in the real world, but is not used by Defence).
For example, before I retired, I put in a new development system for a Defence supplier that reduced the cost of their Defence export product by 53% and reduced the cost of failure to zero (ie., zero errors, half the cost, way ahead of schedule). For a non-Defence supplier, I put in a new development system that saw them go from two troublesome projects in 2015 to 46 in 2016, 68 in 2017, and 80 in 2018. (Note: I did not design their products, I simply put in place a more competent development system – and suddenly they were able to completely eliminate all of their previous long-term basket-case product outcomes). So, the correct solution is already known and available to Marles and the Defence hierarchy.
They have just decided to ignore it, while continuing to listen to those same people who don’t know how to fix the underlying problems that result in 28 projects running 97 years late and way over budget.
Instead of implementing a competent systems-reform solution, Marles has chosen to ‘actively manage’ the problem.
However, ‘actively managing’ an already defective system just means that we will now be absolutely certain the system is defective and delivering the same old basket-case results into perpetuity.
Because if 50 reviews couldn’t fix the problem, why would the 51st?
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