These are the submissions considered by the prime minister and ministers in the cabinet room and their ensuing decisions. Actual public release is embargoed to January 1 so this gives media outlets a useful stash of material for a traditionally quiet time of year.
Previously, cabinet papers were withheld for 30 years. But under changes by the former Labor government, that was reduced to 20 years, creating a 10-year catchup period. Latterly, NAA has been releasing papers from two years at once, most recently 1986 and 1987.
That’s a stack of material. During those two years, the Hawke government considered 814 submissions and 1,020 memoranda and made 3,595 decisions. Ahead of release, all this needs to be vetted. This is a major and time-consuming job and in practice NAA initially releases only around 600 selected documents. The rest will come in due course.
So who does the selecting? The answer is a group of journalists who choose from a very long list of document titles. That’s clearly imperfect but far better than leaving it in the hands of officials who would inevitably face accusations of withholding stuff.
What is released still shows clear evidence of vetting. So what’s so touchy even after this long period - plenty it seems.
A submission on Project Nulka was withheld in entirety - understandable considering Nulka remains advanced technology in current service. There’s much more. A submission on over-the-horizon radar contains blacked-out passages, as does another on the new submarine project, relating to desired characteristics of speed, range and endurance.
A couple of documents on the infamous Spycatcher case were also withheld in entirety, perhaps because of their discussion of our intelligence relationship with the UK.
Overall there’s a general feeling that the newly released cabinet documents will deliver fresh insights into the big issues of a bygone period. But that’s not your correspondent’s experience, for a couple of reasons. For example, the big issue of the Hawke years was economic reform and that was very comprehensively reported at the time. Further, the main players in these events generally tell all in their biographies.
There’s still stuff of interest and your correspondent’s attention was drawn to a pair of submissions for acquisition of Black Hawk helicopters, presented to cabinet by then defence minister Kim Beazley.
That procurement coincided with the move to take helicopters from the RAAF and hand them to over to the Army, a decision that sparked outrage at the time and still occasionally rankles.
The ADF needed new utility helicopters to replace ageing Iroquois’ of which the first entered service in 1962. After an extended assessment process, it came down to a choice between Black Hawk and Aerospatiale’s Super Puma.
Both were regarded as capable of meeting defence requirements but Black Hawk was clearly better and a bit cheaper. The initial deal was for 14 aircraft at a total project cost of $283.9 million. Cabinet ticked that off in April 1986.
This doesn’t actually seem to have been a very close contest, with Black Hawk deemed superior in every performance requirement. It failed in just one area, for single engine out-of-ground departure in hot and high conditions. Super Puma also failed to meet that requirement but by a greater margin.
There’s really no feeling in the lengthy documents that Defence really wanted anything but Black Hawk. Sikorsky was able to point to the similarities with the Seahawk on order for the navy and the very large number of Black Hawks in US Army service.
Subsequently, Beazley went back to cabinet in May 1987 seeking an additional 25 Black Hawks at a cost of $500 million. Aircraft number one (A25-101) was handed to the RAAF in the US in December 1987 with the rest assembled by Hawker de Havilland in Sydney. Of those 39, five have been lost in accidents and rest remain in service.
Procurement practices have steadily evolved and much attention is now paid to whole of life cost and long term sustainability. On the face of it the submissions considered by the Hawke government indicate greater attention was paid to the substantial offsets benefits to Australian industry.
Insiders have since pointed to the significant shortcomings in ordering of spares and estimation of support costs. We now know that Black Hawk speedily ran into problems which turned into a scandal in the mid-1990s with as few as four aircraft operational at one stage and the rest grounded because of a shortage of spare parts.
Then shadow defence minister Jocelyn Newman, mum of Queensland premier Campbell, blamed Labor for lack of funding. More likely it was really down to this being a new capability which Australia operated differently to the US.
By this stage this was the Army’s problem, begging the question, could the RAAF have done better? Maybe, but specifications for the new aircraft were set down by the RAAF well before Beazley announced in late 1986 that helicopter operations would be transferred to Army over the next five years.
This officially stemmed from the 1986 report by academic Paul Dibb who said combat efficiency could be enhanced if the tactical helicopters and their crews, used by Army, were actually part of Army. Then chief of the general staff General Phillip Bennett agreed.
On one story, Army concerns about helicopter support date back to the afternoon of August 18, 1966 when the RAAF hesitated about flying in a raging thunderstorm to deliver urgent ammunitions supplies to Delta Company 6RAR, then fighting the Battle of Long Tan.
Fly they eventually did and the RAAF’s 9 Squadron went on to provide six years of exemplary service. RAAF historian Alan Stephens acknowledged that 9 Squadron’s first three months, which included Long Tan, was nothing short of an inter-service disaster.
