Military Misconduct

1. Military Misconduct Organizational Culture or a Few Bad Apples?

2. Institutional Practice • The Australian Defence Force is Australia's largest government employer. Indeed one of the nation’s largest employers across the board– 102,000 approx. • Around 58,000 military personnel and a significant employer of young people. • Around 90 percent of military personnel are men, and again around 90 per cent are of anglo descent. • The ADF is a highly specific cultural form. An intensely masculinist/racialised/sexualised institution. Diverse but monocultural tendencies. • Study from players on the ground, through organisation to institution, from nation to global politics…

3. Governing Masculinities • 2012 ADFA Review of Treatment ADFA and the in the ADF • 2012 DLA Piper Review in physical and other forms of abuse in the ADF • 2011 Six Inquiries following the Skype sex incident at ADFA: • Treatment of women at ADFA, Skype sex scandal, Judicial inquiry, Management of complaints, Culture within ADFA, Opportunities for women • 2011HMAS Success Commission of Enquiry • 2010 Rufus Black Inquiry into ‘accountability’. It was commissioned directly by the CDF and Defence Secretary Ian Watts. • 2009 Report of the Independent Review on the Health of the Reformed Military Justice System overseen by Laurence Street.   • 2008Reforms to Australia’s Military Justice System: Fourth Progress report • 2008Commonwealth Ombudsman Allegations concerning the HMAS Westralia fire • 2007 Reforms to Australia’s Military Justice System: Third Progress report • 2007Defence Force Ombudsman ADF Management of Complaints about Unacceptable Behaviour • 2007Reforms to Australia’s Military Justice System: Second Progress report • 2006 Inquiry into the Learning Culture in ADF Schools and Training Establishments.

4. 2006 Defence Investigative Capability Audit Report • 2006 Reforms to Australia’s Military Justice System: First Progress report • 2005 Senate Report: Inquiry into the Effectiveness of Australia’s Military Justice System • 2005 Defence Force Ombudsman Own Motion Review on the Management of Service Personnel under 18 Years. • 2004 Defence Force Ombudsman Complaint by a young person of an incident involving unacceptable behaviour at a Navy training establishment in mid-1996 [Anna Hovey] • 2004 Joint Report by Dept. Of Defence and the Commonwealth Ombudsman – Review of ADF Redress of Grievance System. • 2004 Ernst & Young review of the Military Police Battalion Investigation Capability • 2003 Acumen Alliance Review of Board of Inquiry Processes and Procedures – subsequent to 1999 Military Justice Procedures enquiry • 2003 Investigating Officer’s Report into the Death of Pte Jeremy Paul Williams • 2001 Burchett Report of an Inquiry into Military Justice in the Australian Defence Force – initiated from events in a specific military unit between 1997 and 1998. • 2001 Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade report, Rough Justice? An Investigation into Allegations of Brutality in the Army's Parachute Battalion – resulted from allegations arising from an army unit during 1996-99.

5. 1999 Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade report, Military Justice Procedures in the Australian Defence Force – subsequent to death of an ADF member • 1998 Report of the Review into Policies and Practices to Deal With Sexual Harassment and Sexual Offences at the ADFA or The Gray Report • 1998 Commonwealth Ombudsman’s Own Motion Inquiry – Responses to Allegations of Serious Incidents and Offences – ie sexual assault at a defence base. • 1997Abadee Review into ADF judicial system. A study into arrangements for the conduct of military trials, with a view to determining whether these arrangements satisfied current tests of judicial independence and impartiality • 1996 Sexual Harassment in the ADF by Major Kathryn Quinn – a survey recommended in the 1994 Senate Inquiry • 1994 Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Sexual Harassment in the ADF Following allegations of sexual harassment aboard Swan in 1992 • 1987 Sexual Harassment in the ADF by Major Kathryn Quinn – survey • 1970 Fox Report considers the question of military bastardisation of Officer Cadets, spurred on by complaints by RMC academic staff about cultures of initiations and abuse. The Gerry Walsh Affair.

6. Research Program • Studies of militarism and the military • Interviews with anti-war protestors • Studies of war/military art and the war memorial (semiotic regime – camouflage and camoufleurs) • Military Justice reform (until 2005) • 6 in depth case studies of military injustice: • AVM Peter Criss • Lt Col Lance Collins • Pte Jeremy Williams • ADF Policy – culture • Women in the ADF • Cultural diversity • Arms corps culture • Military Criminology

7. Governing Masculinities • Military Justice - Sexual Harassment - Bullying, bastardisation and violence - Management of complaints and procedures – reporting and recording – Governance (accountability) • Masculinities from men and what they do as individuals, in groups, in organisation, institution, cultural formation. • Key elements: • Poor reporting, recording and complaint management; tendency to close ranks, lack of transparency, malfeasance and malversation, threat and intimidation…

8. The Skype Affair “On April 5, 2011, the Australian Defence Forces (ADF) came under significant public scrutiny after an incident of sexual exploitation came to light at the Australian Defence Forces Academy (ADFA). A male ADFA Army cadet broadcast himself having (consensual) sex with a female RAAF cadet to 5 of his peers in an adjacent room. Still shots were taken and distributed among other cadets. A senior male cadet reported the incident and the female cadet became aware of the incident after the fact.”

9. Bad Apple! “Members of the press and other commentators should reconsider their unwarranted insinuation that this is 'defence culture'. The seven individuals involved have been at ADFA for barely two months. You don't learn this sort of culture in that period of time. You bring it with you from your home, your school and the community. Australia as a whole is struggling with actions such as sexting, binge drinking and a general loss of the meaning of privacy, not just ADFA”. (News Ltd,2011)

10. Initiation - 1911 • “Upon emerging from the bathroom, the Fourth Class cadets had to climb a greasy rope, while the senior cadets flicked them with wet knotted towels. They were then frog-marched along the verandah of the block to where some tables had been set up. Here they were tried and found guilty of being ‘newcomers’. A quick haircut by an unskilled cadet barber followed... they then had SC (for Staff Cadet) written on their back in tar before being knocked off the table by a fire hose. Next they were seated on a block of ice and forced to sing a song... the next phase consisted of running a gauntlet of senior cadets armed with belts and knotted towels, following which the Fourth Class had to climb up and over a ladder while being fire hosed. The initiation culminated with the cadets being dunked three times in a bath filled with icy water and numerous other ingredients selected for their pungent aroma. They were then released to go off and clean up”. • (Moore, 2001: 349)

11. Normalisation • “From outside, this appeared to be an abusive ritual by a group of young, tribal men. Indeed over the history of RMC these initiations developed into a series of scandals swooped upon by Australian newspapers through the 1970s to 1990s. The Fox Report of 1970, the Officers and Not So Gentle Man (1983) scandal reported upon by the Melbourne Age in 1983 all respond to practices that have been raised and forgotten until they recently gained voice again through the 2011 cultural reviews. • “From the inside, according to General Bridges, this was merely boys having fun. What’s more ‘it was nothing different from that which occurred at similar institutions such as universities’ “

12. Fraternity The Culture Gap Masculinities

13. The Culture Gap Vital to combat operations and therefore a necessary part of the traditional military professionalism is a set of values which to some even appear contrary to those held by liberal civilian society. Military organization is hierarchical, not egalitarian, and is oriented to the group rather than the individual; it stresses discipline and obedience, not freedom of expression; it depends on confidence and trust, not caveat emptor; it requires immediate decision and direct action, not thorough analysis and extensive debate; it relies on training, simplification and predictable behaviour, not education, sophistication and empiricism. Us Army Officer cited in Wolfendale (2007: 128)

14. Civil Military Divide • The state-military divide generates a culture of militarism that underlies global patriarchy – patriarchy is sustained by fraternity. • Two key aspects of which are the institutional disposition and military subjectivity. • “The military personality is developed not just through training and education but through the very nature of the military’s function and needs… likely to develop a set of values that are at odds with those that govern the wider society” Wolfendale (2007: 128)

15. foundations The objective is to purge the recruit’s civil identity, including any preconceptions he may hold about his rights and personal freedoms, and supplant the civilian value system with that of the military. This is accomplished by various methods, including denigrating those outside the military system and at the same time stressing the virtues of military community; it is in effect a transformational approach where the recruit self-actualises the desire to become part of the military. Other approaches are more individualized, relying on humiliation (including feminization of the male recruits) and brutality to break an individual’s self esteem, lower their resistance to the values and attitudes that the military wants them to adopt, and reinforce the omnipotent nature of military discipline. Moore (2009: 75)

16. monological/monocultural The logic of identity expresses one construction of the meaning and operations of reason: an urge to think things together, to reduce them to unity. To give a rational account is to find the universal, the one principle, the law, covering the phenomena to be accounted for. Reason seeks essence, a single formula that classifies concrete particulars as inside or outside a category, something common that belongs to that category (Young 1990: 98). Militarism creates a definable and consistent subjective state. It is defined in prototypical terms but in reality it exists as a potential. Some units, some establishments and some subjects will embody and practice it differently. But it remains a latent but observable phenomenon that can be mediated by leadership and organisational practice. As long as the military leadership are able to distinguish themselves from the same cultural imperatives.

17. Military Masculinities • Relations of Masculinities – from dominant/dominating through complicit to marginalised… place, class, ethnicity, sexuality, nation… • Men in groups – solidarity/exclusion, identity/difference • Military/Civilian Divide – liberty, equality, fraternity… • Across the rank/service structure – from the soldier to the Command… Air force to Army • Fraternity, brotherhood, fratriarchy

18. Masculinity and Violence …violence is a preponderantly male practice. Men, and groups of men, who predominantly engage in practices of degradation and violent exploitation of others. In Australia most sexual assaults, armed robberies, assaults and domestic violence are perpetrated by men, and around 95% of prison inmates were male. At the same time, it is predominantly men who are the soldiers of the world’s armies… Around 80 per cent of the the world’s sitting parliamentarians are men. Men are almost exclusively in positions of command during wars, and it is primarily men who are the political leaders in decision making positions.

19. Rule by Men • Androcracy, or 'rule by men' has at least two core elements: • patriarchy ('rule of the fathers'), and; • fratriarchy ('rule of the brother - [hoods]s')... • (Remy, 1990:143, see Lee & Daly, 1987; see Connell, 1985). • fratriarchy: • Is a mode of male domination which is concerned with a quite different set of values from those of patriarchy"; • is based simply on the self-interest of the association of men itself": • reflects the demand of a group of lads to have the 'freedom' to do as they please, to have a good time"; • implies primarily the domination of the age set of young men who have not yet taken on family responsibilities." • Loy (1995: 265)

20. fraternity -fratriarchy • fratriarchies are concerned with the interpersonal power of men over that of the corporate body, or the father. • Fratriarchies contain patriarchal values embedded in systems of institutional and interpersonal power, fostered through the close social bonds between men in those contexts devoid of caring for children or being with loved ones.

21. Fratriachy “a quite different set of values from those of patriarchy … “he” is preoccupied with matters other than paternity and parenting … [fratriarchal power] is usually based on gendered force, influence, persuasion, status … rather than the rules of the corporate world … this is generally left to other, older men” (Hearn, 1998: 58). • “fratriarchies foster male domination in at least three ways: they bring men together, they keep men together, and they put women down” • (Loy, 1995:267).

22. The Fratriarchal Space • initiations mark fratriarchies, as rites of passage, and the administration of hierarchy • (Booth: 2002:12) • rituals are often profoundly brutal and humiliating, leading a Colonel M.C. Morgan, who had spent three and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war during WWII to explain: • I don’t bear any resentment against the Japanese because they were the enemy, but after 50 years I still bitterly resent what my fellow Australians did at Duntroon under the guise of fourth-class training • (in Moore, 2001: 363) • As well as brutal othering the severity of the practices can and do further the intensity of group bonding • (Jaggard, 1999:29).

23. What and Where • include such homosocial activities or derivatives thereof, as ‘watching porn moves, attending male only nude parties [and] penis grabbing’ that ‘function to defend male-only work spheres’ • (Flood, 2008: 346) • homophobic and homoerotic • Moganhunts, pig nights, pornos at mornos, male nude parties, sex boards, sharing blow-up dolls, the Eagle Drop, This is my weapon, this is my gun… this is for shooting and this is for fun… sex clubs, group sex folklore – ‘warries’ • Infantry battalions, navy ships, arms corps, training establishments

24. Authoritarianism • rigid adherence to conventionalism; • authoritarian submission; • authoritarian aggression; • anti-intraception (opposition to the subjective, the imaginative, and the tender-minded); • superstition and stereotypy; • power and toughness (dominance/submission, strong/weak, leader/follower); • destructiveness and cynicism (vilification of the human); • projectivity(the belief that world is wild and dangerous, and; • puritanical prurience (an exaggerated preoccupation with sex and sexualisation).

25. Normalisation Normalization (the ADF is representative of broader society and other institutions – the human condition) Minimization (other groups and institutions have the same problems) Glorification (the ADF are hardworking honourable people doing a difficult job) Disaggregation (there are merely pockets of trouble) Maligning (proponents of a military culture thesis are unreasonable critics)