Bruce Kafer: At the moment, James, obviously there are allegations out there, but allegations of serious offences occurring. If these allegations are proven, then yes, it is extremely frustrating.

James Woodford: The commandant of the Australian Defence Force Academy, Commodore Bruce Kafer, carries the bruises from being the officer in charge at one of the nation's most scandal-plagued institutions

Bruce Kafer: We have to learn collectively that any event that occurs, whether it be within ADFA or outside ADFA, is affecting us all. It's affecting recruiting, it's affecting the reputation that we have amongst the people of Australia and it's affecting their support for us. The senior military officers can talk all they like about how wonderful the Academy is and what a great place it is, and then we have an incident such as we had just recently and the average person in the street who reads the newspapers or sees the television will go, look, that's a nonsense.

James Woodford: There's been no shortage of bad publicity about ADFA over the years, and that has put doubt in the public's mind; bastardisation, sexual harassment and allegations of assaults. And in 2011, the most shocking story, the infamous ADFA Skype sex scandal.

Journalist: Police are investigating allegations that a cadet at the Australian Defence Force Academy streamed live secret video of himself having sex with a female cadet. The 10 network aired allegations last night by the woman who claimed the video was transmitted without her knowledge to six other male cadets in another room.

Bruce Kafer: I was required to take leave during the period immediately after the Skype incident, and an inquiry was undertaken, and on completion of that I was permitted to return to ADFA. For me personally it was a great wrench to have to leave my staff and the trainee officers here at the Academy. But what it did highlight and what I keep saying to my people is that we are accountable for our actions here.

James Woodford: Two former ADFA cadets are due to stand trial later this month over the Skype scandal. In the meantime, Commodore Kafer is dealing with another incident.

Bruce Kafer: I'm sure your listeners will be aware that in recent times I suspended ten male officer cadets and midshipmen from ADFA based upon allegations and based upon the evidence that I suspected that they had committed serious or criminal offences.

Journalist: The Australian Defence Force says it's dealing with another incident of inappropriate behaviour by some of its members. Seven cadets and midshipmen from the Australian Defence Force Academy have been suspended. The ADF won't give many details of the incident but says up to 20 men from all three services and across all three student years are being investigated.

James Woodford: The Department of Defence and the Australian Defence Force Academy have refused to comment publicly about the details of the allegations. But Background Briefing understands they involve junior officer cadets licking the testicles and penises of senior cadets as part of an initiation. This is very uncomfortable territory for the military. Background Briefing also understands one of the recently suspended officer cadets in this case was also a participant in the Skype scandal but he was not charged.

Commissioner, it's very, very hard to understand how it is that somebody who could have been involved in one of these previous scandals such as the Skype sex scandal could turn up in another scandal like this one.

Elizabeth Broderick: Very hard to understand but very depressing as well. I suppose when we…

James Woodford: That's Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick who was brought in by the Commonwealth government after the Skype scandal broke to investigate the plight of women at ADFA and in the military more generally.

One of the greatest challenges at ADFA is breaking the code of silence, says Bruce Kafer.

Bruce Kafer: The key thing we are trying to do with our young folk these days is encourage them to speak out, to call people if they are saying things that are inappropriate, if they are doing things that are inappropriate or unacceptable or, worst case, criminal, so that we can do something about it.

Certainly the number of reports we've had of unacceptable behaviour have increased in the last 12 to 18 months. Now, we would like to think that that is not a function of the fact that there are more incidents occurring but rather than our reporting culture is improving.

James Woodford: Hello, and welcome to Background Briefing. I'm James Woodford.

Opening of ADFA [archival]: It's with pride and with pleasure that I now officially declare open the Australian Defence Force Academy.

James Woodford: And for me, going back to ADFA is a personal journey. I was in the first intake there in 1986 and stayed for two years. In the wake of these recent scandals I've returned to answer a question that has often nagged at me; would I send my daughters to ADFA?

I'm still friends with many of the people I joined with, some of whom are women. At the time I saw what young females experienced as a minority surrounded by men in a place where the culture was completely male dominated.

There was a lot of alcohol, and a blind eye was turned to bullying and fraternisation. It was fertile ground for young people of both sexes to make poor decisions. There is no doubt that things are very different now to what they were like 27 years ago. But in my mind, as a father with two daughters I had always held the view that it is an environment I wouldn't encourage my children to be part of. But what about now?

One of my classmates in 1986 was Paul Moggach who has had a distinguished career as a navy helicopter pilot, culminating in the award of a conspicuous service medal this year. He's faced the same question as me.

Paul Moggach: The events of the last few years which have certainly raised questions in my mind…Sandy and I have two daughters, and the question I get asked quite regularly is would you send your daughters to ADFA? I've had to think about that quite carefully. I have friends who have said, 'There is no way I would send my daughters to ADFA.' But then I have other friends who say, 'Well, now is there a safer place in Australia than ADFA?'

James Woodford: In the weeks after the latest scandal I returned to ADFA to talk to the organisation's hierarchy and to cadets.

Sebastian Green: My name's Sebastian Green, I just come to ADFA straight out of high school, I'm from a little town called Bunyip in country Victoria, one of eight kids down there. I've actually found coming here that the interaction between males and females is really quite normal.

James Woodford: Had you heard of any initiation things that were going on prior to that story breaking?

Sebastian Green: I had heard of something similar a few weeks prior, but my knowledge was very limited and it was only that one thing that I had heard of. I think it was well known, among certain groups of people anyway, I can't speak for everyone. I think that the majority of people here would look on these actions with quite a dim view. But even though people shouldn't be asked to do them, they weren't forced, is my understanding.

James Woodford: What kind of things are we talking about?

ADFA public affairs officer: Sorry, I'm just going to have to stop you there for a second, because the matter…

James Woodford: The ADFA public affairs officer objected to my line of questioning and stopped the interview. Highlighting the sensitivity of this issue, she was present at all but one of the interviews I conducted, and all interviewees were given detailed talking points.

When I continued the interview with Sebastian, he told me how ADFA staff had dealt with the scandal.

Sebastian Green: The way the hierarchy went about dealing with it was they went straight to the root of it all, and cadets like myself who weren't involved were not approached but people who were involved or believed to be involved, they were the ones who were approached by the hierarchy.

James Woodford: You guys have been told that those kinds of initiation practices, voluntary or involuntary, are off the table?

Sebastian Green: Yes, and another thing that's been stressed to us is this idea of moral courage. So if something bad is going on and you have a great deal of awareness of it, that you should stand up to it and say no. So not just 'don't be involved', but if you are in a position to do so, to take a stand against it.

James Woodford: Moral courage is a term I have heard a lot in the last couple of months, from the cadets right through to the chief of army. Sebastian is a first-year cadet. Luke Hines is not far off graduating.

Luke Hines: G'day, my name's Luke Hines. I'm a third-year air force officer cadet at the Australian Defence Force Academy. I joined as an air combat officer, so at the end of the year I'll be posting off to East Sale to continue my training there.

We do undertake very thorough unacceptable behaviour training at the beginning of every year, and that's across the entire ADF. We cover off on unacceptable behaviour, mental health, physical health, alcohol awareness, all that kind of stuff. So we are aware of what counts as unacceptable behaviour.

James Woodford: What was the feeling here like in the division the day after this most recent story broke? What did you guys feel about that?

Luke Hines: I think for us it was a feeling of disappointment in that we had been making such good progress and we still are continuing to, and the fact we were now going to have to deal with our friends asking us what is going on in this newest situation when realistically we would just like to just progress along with our officer training and our academic degree.

James Woodford: After something like that, would your parents, would your mother or father get in touch with you say, 'My God, is everything okay with you? Are you being treated properly?'

Luke Hines: Absolutely. They did ring me as soon as there was the interview with the VCDF on the television. I had made them aware previously when we first found out about it, but as soon as the interview was on air they rang me as well just to make sure.

James Woodford: This is what the Vice Chief of the Defence Force, Air Marshal Mark Binskin, said on the day the story broke:

Mark Binskin: The investigation is ongoing, but currently implicates in the order of 20 cadets and midshipmen from all three services and across all three years. I will not tolerate this sort of conduct going on out there and I will not tolerate it in the future leaders of the Australian Defence Force.

James Woodford: The timing of the latest incident could not be worse. Military leaders are bracing themselves for the Supreme Court trial of two former ADFA cadets. They are on trial in relation to the 2011 Skype scandal, which broke when a young air force cadet revealed to Channel 10 what had happened to her.

Air force cadet: I engaged in sexual intercourse with another first-year at ADFA. I then found out that he had in fact had a webcam set up via Skype during the…it occurred in his room. And the webcam had been set up and it was being broadcast live to what I have been made aware of six guys in a different room.

James Woodford: Following the Skype scandal the Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick wrote a report with a series of recommendations to overhaul ADFA's culture. You can find a link to that report at the Background Briefing website. Just over a week ago, and in the wake of the latest incident, Commissioner Broderick released a progress report. She identified some of the hurdles still facing the institution.

Elizabeth Broderick: I suppose when we went back into ADFA to have a good look, one of the observations we made and wrote quite a deal about in our report was it is very difficult for the commanding officer of ADFA to either get rid of underperforming staff and similarly underperforming cadets. You've got their individual rights, their natural justice, but also you've got the right of others to be safe, so it is competing, and I think so far the balance is a bit wrong.

It's important that individuals have the right to natural justice, to due process, but also it's important for others, and particularly women, that they can feel safe in the environment. And I think actually that in the past the balance has been too much to the individual. It's important that the commandant has the right to remove cadets who may be putting others at risk and also to remove underperforming staff.

James Woodford: One of the people who was involved in the 2011 Skype scandal but not charged is also at the centre of this latest case. This fact has shocked Commissioner Broderick.

Elizabeth Broderick: I was deeply distressed to hear that, to be honest, because maybe if that had been handled differently and if it had been easier to remove underperforming cadets we might have seen a different outcome.

James Woodford: The other thing is that what has happened in these initiation problems is almost so embarrassing that it's hard for defence to talk about, but the reality is we are talking about allegations of homoerotic things that took place in public. What is going on when there's stuff like that happening?

Elizabeth Broderick: It's an extreme, perverted form of male bonding. You're right in terms of having the conversations about it is difficult. And one of the things we've been critical of ADFA is that the sexual ethics training hasn't actually targeted a lot of the new forms, I think, of potential sexual abuse, some of those initiation rituals, and also, very much for us, the inappropriate use of technology. I think, and we made recommendations, that ADFA really needs to do more in that space. It was one of the key findings of our looking at how they had implemented our recommendations was they just hadn't gone far enough around sexual ethics.

James Woodford: Commissioner Broderick has described the most recent allegations as the dark side of mateship.

Elizabeth Broderick: It's highly sexualised behaviour. It happens in environments where there is sexualised conduct in any event or what I call a sexualised workplace, and the reality is that an organisation where sexual assault of women happens will also be an organisation where sexual assault of men happens. This is a weird or perverted form of what I call mateship. Now, I have seen so much that's great about mateship but this is really the dark side of mateship, and it has some elements in common with rituals to get into gangs, for example in the US or here in Australia no doubt, and that is that I perform a humiliating ritual to get me into the club and then I daren't speak out about the club because everyone's got something on me if I do.

Journalist [archival]: The Australian Defence Force Academy or ADFA was born of controversy. The traditionalists were horrified at an institution where all three services would train together and—horrors—women would train alongside men. The drill sergeants wondered whether spit and polish might not fall prey to academic studies. Today's graduates belied all the fears.

James Woodford: One of my friends in the first intake at ADFA was Elise Burnside. Elise is still in the military, she's an officer in the naval reserves. She says that while she personally thrived at ADFA in the mid-'80s, there were plenty of challenges.

Elise Burnside: There were some funny things. We were all marched off to the uniforms store to get our uniforms to start with and they didn't have women's uniforms for some of the uniform requirements. So, we were trying to squeeze ourselves into men-shaped clothing. So, there were things like that that were a bit of a shock to us that that, well, did they really know we were coming or not!

James Woodford: Another of our colleagues from that time is Sandy Moggach who went on to marry classmate Paul Moggach. Sandy was an air force cadet who graduated from ADFA and went on to have a 13-year career. She also remembers how unprepared ADFA was for its first female cadets

Sandy Moggach: They knew that girls were coming but hadn't really prepared for all of the little bits and pieces that that meant. And a lot of the time…some people didn't want us there as well, so whilst other people were trying to help us fit in, there were others that were trying not to.

James Woodford: And in what way did that manifest itself, that you had that feeling that some people didn't want you there?

Sandy Moggach: Little things. Looks, the occasional comment, programs or activities that weren't designed with us in mind, and then when we got there, had to be tailored to help us fit in, PE exercises that we couldn't complete because they weren't designed with us in mind.

James Woodford: Sandy Moggach also remembers the name-calling that the female cadets endured.

Sandy Moggach: Yes, I think 'squid' was probably one of them.

James Woodford: So, the RAAF officer cadets got called 'squid' as well?

Sandy Moggach: We were all given the same name. It probably started with midshipmen, but we were all tarred with the same brush because there wasn't very many of us. So, as we circled our ranks, I guess, the girls, we all got tarred with the same name. That was probably the biggest one, yes.

James Woodford: So how did that make you feel to be called that? You've come out of school, and that's suddenly a label that's given to you. What was that like?

Sandy Moggach: It was a little discomforting. I didn't understand it to begin with. I guess I didn't understand the connotations of what that meant. I didn't particularly like it, but I chose to let it wash over me rather than to take it personally. That was the way I sort of hopefully ignored it for most of the time.

James Woodford: The term 'squid' was used widely in the 1980s in both a familiar and derogatory way. When I returned this year, 'squid' was a word that ADFA cadets didn't recognise.

Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick says such labels are insidious and unacceptable.

Elizabeth Broderick: I think they are destructive. And not only that, I think they undermine women's position in the military, and whenever I see them, I call them out. And actually, sometimes the reaction I get is very defensive; oh, why are you saying that? I say, look, the language we use is very, very important. So I think derogatory language about women is an absolute no-go in the military, and people who care about the military should call it out wherever they see it.

James Woodford: Back in the mid-'80s women were considered unsuitable for many of the jobs in the military. But not anymore. Paul Moggach:

Paul Moggach: Defence has changed an awful lot in my 27 and a half years. I joined the Navy and we were in the Cold War. I went to sea in ships. We fought Soviet era tactics. We were after Soviet submarine threats. That was what our defence was all about. At the same time, there were no females at sea in any of our ships. There were no female aviators around. So it was a time of change that was coming through. And I have seen now females being integrated into ships, females into submarines, I have seen females come in to the air crew world. The first navy pilot was a student of mine at the Helo School, she was my training officer at the 817 Squadron when I was a CO there, a fantastically talented lady and a highly competent pilot, also an ADFA graduate. No one blinks an eyelid.

James Woodford: Another of the changes Paul Moggach has seen is a big shift in the concept of leadership.

Paul Moggach: The navy used to focus leadership very much as very much a power of command thing. So on sailors promotion courses the leadership module will be about how well you ordered a group of sailors to march around a square. Nowadays we've changed…

James Woodford: It sounds like a sheepdog trial.

Paul Moggach: Very much so. It was simple, basic. Leadership was about being and firm and direct with people and that's really it. The focus on leadership now includes understanding of what resilience means, emotional intelligence, communication, both talking and listening.

James Woodford: One of the new breed of leaders in the Australian military is Commodore Bruce Kafer. The latest initiation scandal was a final straw for him and he has asked Defence Recruiting if they can do more to weed out trouble makers before they arrive at the Academy.

Bruce Kafer: We have asked both recruiting and also the folk in defence who look at our psychology more broadly, to see whether they can adjust or tinker with the psychometric testing, to see once again whether we are able to recruit people that have a greater focus on respect and respect for each other, and equally that are not so prone to undertaking acts which we think on the face of it are unacceptable.

James Woodford: And do the psychologists think that the psychometrics can actually be tinkered to perhaps try and deal with some of those social issues that have been problematic here at ADFA?

Bruce Kafer: We are still waiting on the advice from the psychologist.

Elizabeth Broderick: I think that's a really important step because people are screened, mainly around academic screening and I suppose some suitability for the military, but there has never been an examination of whether or not that individual candidate fundamentally believes in gender equality.

James Woodford: Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick.

Elizabeth Broderick: And one of the things we know is that those people who don't think that men and women, boys and girls are equal, those people are much more likely to commit violence against women. There have been national studies in this country that shows that men who do not believe in gender equality have a greater propensity to commit violence against women than any other men. So I think it is important to build that into recruitment because where they are working is a mixed environment. Increasingly women are coming in more and more, and they are an absolutely vital part of Australia's military.

James Woodford: How do you stop somebody from just faking it to get through, saying that they believe in gender equality when fundamentally they don't?

Elizabeth Broderick: Yes, most of the psychometric testing that happens now has a whole lot of different questions spread throughout. So there are good ways of ensuring that someone just isn't faking it. But I do think the selection process needs to be very rigorous. It is, it has improved I think over time, I think this would just make it one step better and it would hopefully lead to a situation where we were seeing less and less of these issues.

James Woodford: Commissioner Broderick says if male military staff, including cadets, are not prepared to accept women as their equals, there is no option but to get rid of them.

Elizabeth Broderick: Let me give you an example, it's those people, and I met quite a number of them, who believe that women have no place in the military and they will do whatever they can to undermine good, talented women who are there. I don't think there is a place for people who have that belief. I don't think there's a place for people who sexually assault. And I have seen a number of examples of that. And yes, we can try to work with sexual harassers, but I think once you have been convicted of a sexual crime you have no place in the military and you should be exited.

James Woodford: As well as being a strict military environment, ADFA is also home to 1,000 young people, mostly just out of school. They live, work and socialise together. They come from very different backgrounds, some of them from broken homes. Major Luke Hodda is one of officers responsible for the cadets' welfare.

Luke Hodda: Luke Hodda, and I am currently a squadron commander with Alpha Squadron at the Australian Defence Air Force Academy. And my career with ADFA started back in 2000 when I joined here as an army officer cadet myself.

James Woodford: What kind of issues do you have to manage in your role overseeing officer cadets and midshipmen?

Luke Hodda: I am responsible for the morale, welfare, administration and discipline for the 175 officer cadets and midshipmen that are under my command. They can be anything from a minor administrative issue such as a leave application, or it can go up to some other quite sensitive matters as well, usually involving relationship breakdowns between members of the Academy, and it's just the fallout from that as the officer cadets and midshipmen trying to mature through that process.

James Woodford: In your experience, do females face sexism at the Australian Defence Force Academy?

Luke Hodda: My experience is that it has not occurred. Like I said, I have spent almost half my career at the Academy now and I am very confident in saying that I have not seen instances of sexism or assault or bullying or harassment.

James Woodford: Absolutely, you have never seen something that makes you feel uncomfortable, that makes you think that that's an inappropriate behaviour?

Luke Hodda: Honestly, I have not seen anything myself.

James Woodford: There is an element of the officer cadet and midshipman corps who have come from difficult family situations, and this is the first place that they regard as home.

Luke Hodda: Yes, I would totally agree with that, there are, and that's unfortunate, but the vast majority of people who start here are over 18 and they are adults and we have a robust selection process to make sure that the people who do come here are mentally robust enough to be able to handle the training. A lot of the individuals that come through don't necessarily come from a broken family, they've experienced some other issues in their childhood that have also contributed to some issues that they've had when they've come here. And unfortunately there are just things that can't necessarily be caught in the recruitment process and it's our responsibility as military staff to manage those individuals and make sure they're okay and either work them through the problem and get them to continue on with their career, or if it's not the right time for them to be doing this training then we help them move on from that.

James Woodford: That's Major Luke Hodda.

In many ways the problems that are experienced at ADFA are similar to those in other institutions where young people live together. This has been shown to be the case at a number of university colleges in recent years. Commissioner Broderick:

Elizabeth Broderick: I think there's no question that the type of things I see at ADFA I would see at other colleges, if I had a detailed examination. Having said that, I don't want to trivialise in any sense some of the really aberrant and bad behaviour that I have seen and that's been reported in the media because no residential college, no university, no work environment should permit some of the things that we see there. But I do think that that heightened scrutiny that is on ADFA and the Defence Force generally is one of the reasons we hear more about that organisation than others.

James Woodford: At the centre of nearly every one of ADFA's public relations disasters is alcohol.

Commodore Kafer has brought in a range of new policies including bans on leave, restrictions on ADFA's bar hours and increases in the cost of alcoholic drinks. There is also a random breath testing program that saw 5,000 tests conducted last year.

I asked first-year officer cadet Sebastian Green about alcohol use.

Sebastian Green: There are individuals who have issues with alcohol. I would say though that on the whole most officer cadets and most midshipmen do use it responsibly. Being young people obviously we will have a good night out every now and then, but I think that for the most part it's been encouraged by the hierarchy that we use it responsibly, and there's certainly been quite a large push by the hierarchy to encourage responsible use. Like tonight there's a party down in the mess that's alcohol-free. And so I think we are probably seeing a little bit more in the cadet body where people are having fun without alcohol and where it won't be a problem.

James Woodford: And does this happen often, that there's an alcohol-free party?

Sebastian Green: There have been a few, yes.

James Woodford: What's the occasion for the party, what kind of a party is it?

Sebastian Green: Tonight is pyjamarama, so rock up in your best pyjamas or onesie. The occasion I think is just to promote good morale in the Academy.

James Woodford: That's one thing that is very different now, we never had any onesies. Do you have a onesie?

Sebastian Green: No, I don't at this stage, although I have been encouraged by a lot of my div mates to invest in one, yes.

James Woodford: Another thing I didn't have when I was at ADFA was a smart phone, nor access to social media. These new technologies have enabled a number of recent scandals. But Paul Moggach says social media is not the problem.

Paul Moggach: Social media is just a media, that's all it is, it just transports information, nothing more, nothing less. The heart of the issues that have been exposed through social media are behavioural problems that come back to individual behaviour. So I don't believe social media is in fact a problem at all. Yes, it means things are now exposed faster and in a far more visible way than perhaps they were in the past. But that's a good thing in some degree. Things are getting out there, they are not hidden anymore. The key is not to address the social media, it is to address the actual core behaviour.

James Woodford: From social media to alcohol-free onesie animal pyjama parties, the ground is shifting under the feet of military traditionalists. Today, sexual relations in the military are not just about how men see women, they are also about how women are allowed to see themselves, says Commissioner Broderick.

Elizabeth Broderick: Women talk to me about walking the femininity tight-rope. If I go too much one way and try to be one of the blokes, then I'll never really fit in because I am not a bloke. If go too much the other way and be too feminine, I'm going to be totally disregarded as weak and vulnerable. But I have to say I have seen some really positive progress in that regard, and it was only a couple of months ago that the Chief of Army, just to give you one example, actually said that, provided women are not in combat, that they could wear their hair in a ponytail as well as a bun, that they could wear some flesh-coloured nail polish and stud earrings. Now, it doesn't sound like much to a civilian woman, but the fact is, he was saying there that you can be a woman and a soldier. You don't have to lose your femininity to be a soldier.

James Woodford: One of the third-year cadets at ADFA, Midshipman Jackie Clements, has her eyes on a career as a submariner. She believes she can walk the femininity tightrope.

Jackie Clements: In no sense do I feel that I have to be a man. Obviously I still like to keep that feminine side of me. I choose to wear a skirt with my uniform instead of wearing the pants, some girls choose to wear pants. I really think it's a personal preference. They give us that option, which is great, if you want to wear a skirt or if you want to wear nail polish, but I've never felt that I had to be a man or had to be feminine, I just do what I want, you know?

James Woodford: Jackie and her fellow cadets are frustrated by the ongoing scandals.

Jackie Clements: It's really upsetting for us to see such a good name spoiled in the media. And that's one of the things I know frustrates people the most at the Academy, is that we all seem to be tainted in the same light, however that's definitely not how it is at ADFA. And I think that's one of the most important things that I want to get out and other people want to get out, that this is a really good place where we are treated equally, and it's such a great institution for learning that I would hate for it to be portrayed in a negative light.

James Woodford: Like Jackie, ADFA's commandant Bruce Kafer says that scandal is not what should define the public's view of ADFA. Commodore Kafer says the Academy already has a track record of producing quality leaders.

Bruce Kafer: Our alumni now reaching the most senior ranks in the Australian Defence Force. We now have a rear admiral who is a graduate of ADFA. We now have the brigadiers, air commodores and commodores who are ADFA graduates. And so we have well over 6,000 people who have graduated from this place, the majority of whom have had a positive experience. Some have had bad experiences, and the DLA Piper review has highlighted those and that's extremely regrettable.

But what we are making our best efforts to do throughout is provide a supportive environment, one where our people can thrive. But we have to remember too, it is not for everybody. A life or a career in the Defence Force is not for everybody, and what we hope during this time that our young folk are here is that they either come to realise that this is the career for them, this is the life for them, or they make a decision that it's not. And if they don't, then that's fine, they'll move on to another life and another career.

James Woodford: Commodore Bruce Kafer.

An unavoidable reality of a military career is that ultimately it may involve fighting. Some old hands have criticised the new culture at ADFA as soft. But my former classmate, now Commander Paul Moggach, disagrees. Again, he emphasises the notion of moral courage.

Paul Moggach: The biggest element of courage that you can display as a leader is moral courage and that comes from a foundation of values and of a culture that is core to our society. So, these programs are not about making us soft. They are not about creating a rounded, balanced leader, they are about creating leaders who have respect and dignity and take on the values of the service as their own. So the events of the last few years, which have certainly raised questions in my mind…Sandy and I have two daughters, and the question I get asked quite regularly is would you send your daughters to ADFA? I've had to think about that quite carefully. I have friends who have said, 'There is no way I would send my daughters to ADFA.' But then I have other friends who say, 'Well, now is there a safer place in Australia than ADFA?' And that's the conclusion I've come to, is that I think it's a fantastic place because there is so much work being done there and it's constantly adjusting and constantly learning.

James Woodford: And, says Paul Moggach, at ADFA the cultural change can't stop.

Paul Moggach: You can never stop, because every year another group of young teenagers will join up at ADFA, bringing with them their own experiences, prejudices, education, everything that comes with them, and you do have to start again and reinforce those values and culture that we expect.

James Woodford: As I walked out of my old division late on a cold Canberra afternoon the current cadets were heading out for physical training. I reflected on how much more relaxed the environment is today compared to when I was there in the 1980s. There seemed to be no senior cadets harassing juniors, as happened to us. There was no sense that the females were treated in any way other than as equals. Would I encourage my daughters to enlist? I could imagine being less worried about them here than in a lot of other places they might end up.

Background Briefing's coordinating producer is Linda McGinness, research by Anna Whitfeld, technical production by Mark Don, the executive producer is Chris Bullock, and I'm James Woodford.