The Department of Defence has scaled up its efforts to hide its ineptitude from the public, but only succeeded in confirming that it is now managing major projects worse than under the previous government.
The latest Major Projects Report (MPR) was released yesterday by the auditor-general, enabling an assessment of the performance of the Defence Department in managing its most significant acquisitions. The last report, in February, showed that, despite Defence Minister Richard Marles explicitly committing to improve performance, things had deteriorated markedly from the previous government. It also showed Defence ramping up its efforts to hide details of its underperformance from the public.
Things have gotten worse over the course of 2024 in that regard. According to the auditor-general:
In the course of preparing the 2023–24 MPR, Defence advised the ANAO [Australian National Audit Office] of its decision that certain information relating to forecast dates, capability delivery information, variance information and risks and issues was not for publication (NFP), and would not be included in the relevant [Project Data Summary Sheets] for 20 of the 21 projects This is an increase from 12 projects reported in the 2022–23 MPR; and four projects reported in the 2021–22 MPR.”
That is, Defence is trying to hide evidence of its underperformance for nearly every single major project assessed by the ANAO.
Fortunately, the ANAO is still able to access some limited data to enable it to determine how projects are faring. And the evidence isn’t good. The total schedule slippage across the projects is now 442 months. That’s down 11 months from the February report — but well above the 405 months slippage when Peter Dutton was defence minister in the last days of the Morrison government.
Average slippage per project remains at 25 months — two months longer than under Dutton.
The cost of projects has also continued to blow out: “The total approved budget for the 21 Major Projects has increased by $40.9 billion (74.4 %) since initial Second Pass Approval by government.” The comparable figure in February was $22.8 billion. Nine of the projects are either unlikely to, or won’t, provide all of the capability requirements originally sought, compared to 11 projects in February and 11 projects under Dutton — the only area of improvement since the Morrison government was kicked out.
“Data from the Australian National Audit Office and advice from Defence shows a series of major Defence projects — with approved budgets totalling more than $69 billion — are facing significant schedule delays and budget variations,” Richard Marles said in October 2022. “This underperformance of Defence projects is due in no small part to the chaotic administration of the Defence portfolio by the former Coalition government … The problem under the former government was that defence ministers failed to provide the leadership needed to effectively manage those risks.”
Indeed. Marles has spectacularly failed by his own standards. The only change at Defence has been it is even more determined to hide its embarrassing performance. When will we be rid of his ineptitude, and that of the department he leads?
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