Yet another Defence report has been commissioned.

And yet another Defence report now recommends the further destruction of Defence capability.



The front cover of Defence’s latest report, ‘Battling with words’.

This one carries the title ‘Battling with Words’. It prides itself as a study of language use in Defence using social and linguistic theoretical frameworks to understand culture and cultural change. If we translate that into English, it simply means using the organisation charged with Australia’s security as a guinea pig in which to experiment with the latest radical social theory to emerge from Hippyville.

Hippyville, of course, has another name: elite academia. And it is located on the other side of the world from the ho-hum place known as Common Sense, where most people live and do useful but less trendy things than destroying societal norms.

This report states that the challenge facing Defence ‘is to build a more diverse workforce that is more representative of the Australian population.’ It’s written right there, at the start of the second paragraph of the summary on page XI.

That’s quite a bold and breathtaking assumption.

I would have thought that the challenge facing Defence was something quite different. Like protecting Australia in a world that is increasingly unsafe.

But no.

Forget the rise of the Islamic State.

Don’t worry about failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ignore the growth of China and the revolution in global power that goes with it.

And laugh off the increasing likelihood that we are staring down the barrel of the largest gunfight since 1945 with the increase in tension over events in Ukraine.

We must focus instead on the big problem. Simply put, this report identifies this as the fact that the Anglo-Australian male is the dominant demographic in the Australian Defence Force. And it goes on to single out Anglo-Australian male domination as a problem 36 times.

It does so while finding that 86 per cent of soldiers in the military are male with an Anglo-Australian background. But instead of thanking males with an Anglo-Australian background for defending our nation, this report instead states triumphantly that this has gotta change.

It all sounds rather racist really. Except that in the logical world of diversity and tolerance it is a foregone conclusion that it is impossible to do or say anything negative about male Anglo-Australians that could possibly be considered racist. Or anti-male. Or logical.

This report even states that the male-dominated, Anglo-Australian demographic in the military ‘is no longer desirable’. And it claims that it is not sustainable either. I can absolutely guarantee that an Australian Defence Force that no longer desires Anglo-Australian males is unsustainable. But that’s what the academics want. And Defence leadership is commissioning them to write these reports.

The report even recommends that blokes must be taught to be less blokey when they talk about their job destroying the opposition, so that others feel more welcome. Apparently, this is because Defence will be better at closing with the enemy, capturing or killing him, by day or night, regardless of season, weather or terrain if there are less Anglo-Australian males in it. That means a military with more women, more homosexuals and more people with diverse language and cultural backgrounds (or Muslims in less fancy language).

The Royal Australian Navy now offers an Islamic uniform.

I didn’t read anywhere in this ‘study’ about the evidence to support this reasoning. Maybe I just missed that part. However, I’m sure it was not overlooked.

Anyway, this report, like the others before it, puts diversity on a pedestal.

It leads to the logical conclusion that Defence would be better off if it had more Islamic State sympathisers in the ranks and made them feel welcome. That’s about as diverse as you can get.

Lest you laugh this off as some hysterical ranting, remember that the Australian Defence Force leadership has stated publicly that our military needs more Muslims and now both the Navy and Air Force have even allowed them to have their own uniform.

This is why it should come as no surprise that the Australian Defence Force also has the dubious honour of being the first Western military to train a soldier for the Islamic State.

Caner Temel was his name and he did us all a favour when he died in Syria earlier this year. But I do admit that his decision to go AWOL and travel to Syria to fight with the Islamic State is right up there in the diversity rankings. If it didn’t hit ‘hipster cool’, it can’t have been far off the mark.

Unfortunately, there’s likely to be more Caner Temels while Defence leadership commissions flawed studies that use mumbo-jumbo to confuse everyone about Defence’s role. This report states that ‘Defence does not represent the community it services’ because it has different demographics than the Australian population.

It implies that Defence’s role is to reflect accurately everybody in our society, including the growing demographic of Muslims with Australian passports signing up to fight in black ninja suits in Iraq.

But Defence’s role has absolutely nothing to do with reflecting society’s demographics. Every part of its role is about schwacking bad guys and keeping us safe. And the best way of doing that is by training lots of young men to fight and win wars. Defence is not a game. Yet in every game of strength, males dominate completely. And in team games, it is no surprise that the teams where everyone is on the same side do better. It is no different in the brutal life and death contest on the battlefield.

Reflecting Australia’s demographics does not even enter into the equation when it comes to warfighting. If it did, every deployed unit would have its quota of infants, octogenarians and paraplegics. Breast-feeding mothers would be in demand. And so would dole-bludging drug addicts.

For a whole bunch of very good reasons, these people and many others do not form part of military units. Mostly, it is for reasons of their own volition. But even if they did want to sign up and ship off overseas, they would be told no anyway, notwithstanding their national pride. In the real world, we can’t all do whatever we please. Sometimes the best way to help is to accept that others can do a better job.

Of course, this report pretends that Defence would be better off if it reflected Australia’s demographics and then immediately goes on to decide that it should not reflect Australia’s demographics at all. Just the chosen categories for promotion get a mention: women, homosexuals, Indigenous Australians and recent arrivals (although it did have a bit of a swing at the fact that Defence’s soldiers are primarily hetero-normative, able-bodied males, so limbless lesbians should just bide their time).

But these chosen groups are just used as a smokescreen for the report’s real purpose: reducing the number of Anglo-Australian males in the military.

Perhaps the most astounding thing about this report is that it states Defence directives and doctrine need to ‘counter the ideal identity of the Anglo-Australian male soldier renowned for acts of courage’.

And you did read that right. This report recommends that Defence spend less time promoting battlefield courage because it leads minority groups to feel less welcome. It even states that the focus on the courageous battlefield hero is unnecessarily exclusive.

Welcome to the Australian Defence Force of the 21st Century: a military where the attribute of courage is now disparaged and males are the enemy. It’s a direct result of the denigration of the courageous role that the Anglo-Australian male has made to our nation’s defences for the last 100 years.