Richard Marles continues attack against Australian Defence Force’s top brass calling out ‘culture issues’ within senior leadership

Defense Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles has continued his ongoing battle with the Australian Defense Force, saying there are ‘cultural issues within the senior leadership’.

Tensions with the Defense Ministry and ADF leadership first came to light two weeks ago when Mr Marles was forced to address rumors that he was at odds with top officials.

At the end of last year, he is said to have presented the bill to more than twenty military leaders and bureaucrats, including Defense Minister Greg Moriarty and Armed Forces Chief Angus Campbell, during a closed-door meeting.

‘What we need to see in terms of the leadership of the Australian Defense Force and the Department of Defense – and I’m not just talking about the two leaders (Mr Moriarty and General Campbell) – but the broader leadership is that everything we is done with excellence,” Mr Marles told Sky News on Sunday.

“I think there are cultural issues within the senior leadership and the more general leadership of the ADF and the department that need to be challenged.”

He said the advice given to him and the government must be “timely (and) accurate.”

“We expect the same level of excellence from ourselves that we would expect from someone who is in the infantry or someone who maintains an aircraft where there is excellence and complete competency.”

Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said Mr Marles’ comments appeared to be a “public vote of no confidence in his own department and the military leadership of our armed forces”.

“That’s a very disturbing thing,” Paterson told Sky. “If he does have confidence in them, he should not undermine them publicly by saying so.”

But Mr Marles said he had had “full cooperation from both the Defense Minister and the CDF (chief of the armed forces).

“There is an issue about culture and we need to strive for a culture of absolute excellence, and that is the point I made.”

The minister said morale within Defense had been damaged by the previous three-term coalition government, which had seven different ministers in nine years and made many spending announcements that Mr Marles said were not supported by the funds to pay for them.

“If you make all these fantastic announcements, worth $45 billion, and there’s no money behind them, then obviously that’s going to have an impact on morale. And that is true.

“I mean, if you were to leave the country with the oldest surface fleet sailing since the end of World War II, which the previous administration did, that’s going to have an impact on morale,” he said.

Mr Marles said that as the new Defense Minister he “inherited those issues within the ADF and within the department.

“And I can understand how that happened. But in the future we have to tackle that culture.’

Pictured are Defense Department Secretary Greg Moriarty (left) and the Chief of Defense Forces General Angus Campbell (right).

Two weeks ago, when Mr Marles (pictured) was forced to address rumors that he is at odds with top officials

He acknowledged that the government has an important role to play in changing the culture and part of that is “being very clear about where the money comes from.”

The minister said the Albanian government “would not be involved in the appearance that the former government (did) and that we want consistency in the leadership of the government.”

Mr Marles said the ADF must address the issue of “morale” and ensure everything it does is excellent.

He added that he was “surprised that the opposition considers this a controversial proposal.”