‘Greatest strategic peril’: Defence Minister and Department in ‘disastrous state of affairs’

Shadow Home Affairs Minister James Paterson has hit out at Defence Minister Richard Marles for the “disastrous state of affairs” that have occurred in the Defence Department in Australia’s time of “greatest strategic peril”. According to a report in the Australian Financial Review, the government’s inability to deliver a funding boost to defence is fuelling tensions between Marles and his department. ‘He doesn’t respect them, and they sure as hell don’t respect him,’ one former senior bureaucrat said of Marles’ relationship with the department. “In our time of greatest strategic peril, we need the Minister for Defence, his department and the ADF working together absolutely seamlessly without any conflict, and yet it seems that they are fighting like cats and dogs,” Mr Paterson told Sky News Australia. “On the one hand, you have the department saying that Richard Marles has failed to secure the funding that they need to match the circumstances that we face; you also have them saying that he’s not even bothering to respond to hundreds of briefs which are piling up in his office. “He’s responded by saying they’re incompetent and they can’t deliver what the government has asked them to – this is a disastrous state of affairs that has happened on Richard Marles’ watch as Defence Minister. “The Prime Minister needs to step in and sort this out.”