Australians love the army. That’s a problem for new Australian Defence Force Chief Mark Hammond
AARON PATRICK: A survey finds most people believe the army should be the top priority even though funding is pouring into the navy for the AUKUS submarines.
Australians love their army. That’s a big problem for the government and the Australian Defence Force.
At a time when the Royal Australian Navy is receiving more money than any service in peacetime under the nuclear submarine program, a survey by military-associated academics has found Australians consider the army and Royal Australian Air Force higher priorities than the navy.
With the AUKUS project under regular criticism over a bill that could top $360 billion, Defence Minister Richard Marles and new Defence Force Chief Mark Hammond face the challenge of arguing for the navy’s superior needs to Australians, who are more impressed by the storming of the beaches of Gallipoli than the Battle of Cape Spada.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.“Clearly the line between policy and public attitudes needs to be bridged to build public support for these initiatives,” said Nicole Townsend, a military historian who teaches at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra and co-instigated the survey.
“The Australian public is still very army focused. They hear about the ADF from a historical sense from Anzac Day.”
Only a third of those surveyed said they wanted defence expenditure to go up, and there was a small increase in support for a cut from last year. Thirty-seven per cent of the 1529 people surveyed ranked the army the top priority for funding, followed by the air force on 33 per cent and the navy on 30 per cent.
Australia spends $182 million on defence a day, a huge sum that politicians and military leaders know relies upon the support of voters.
Confidence in the Defence Forces remains high overall. Sixty-nine per cent of people stated that they trust the ADF as an institution and only 9 per cent said they do not trust it to act ethically, a finding the authors single out as significant given the arrest in April of Victoria Cross awardee Ben Roberts-Smith on war crimes charges. He has said he plans to plead not guilty.
Why the army?
The army has the most support because military history is mainly taught through land battles, the army is twice as big as the other services and the navy does not operate a general reserve system, said former Navy commander Jen Parker, who was not involved in the survey.
“We think about our significant land battles,” Ms Parker said. “We don’t think about the loss of the HMAS Sydney or the HMAS Canberra.”
Ms Parker also cites the low visibility of naval and air force personnel, who tend to work far away from cities and are often required to wear army-style camouflage uniforms in public.
The navy is the biggest beneficiary of the decision by Coalition and Labor governments to buy and build nuclear-powered submarines. Still contested by some military experts, the AUKUS program is designed to help US forces resist Chinese expansion in the Pacific Ocean.
At the same time, the war in Ukraine has called into question the effectiveness of conventional army tactics and weapons, including rifles and tanks, while increasing the importance of missiles and long-range drones, which can be launched from ships as easily as from land.
Experts say Australians need to be convinced of the importance of a strong maritime defence to maintain support for the AUKUS program. The top concerns identified in the survey were terrorism and cyber attacks.
The Defence Force’s public affairs unit, which has day-to-day responsibility for promoting all three services, did not respond when asked if it had a plan to convince Australians that defending the oceans should be a national priority.
Another challenge identified by the research was a big drop in support for military cooperation with the US and other allies, possibly triggered by the trade tariffs placed on Australia by the Trump Administration and other aggressive decisions.
All three armed services work closely with their American counterparts, and training with the US Navy on nuclear submarines has already begun ahead of the planned arrival in 2032 of Australia’s first US-manufactured Virginia-class submarine.
The survey was conducted by the War Studies Research Group at the Canberra campus of the University of New South Wales.
