Retired Rear Admiral Rowan Moffit served 40 years in the Royal Australian Navy before retiring in 2013.
Speaking at the Australian Naval Institute’s annual Goldrick Seminar, he called the higher Defence bureaucracy “that same leaden deadweight, inflicting a ruinous, gelatinous drag on the Navy.”
He said that “the bureaucracy has become the purpose.” Since the turn of the century, he said, the headcount in each rank from captain to vice admiral has tripled, and the number of senior civilians has “ballooned similarly.”
He argued that “consensus has become compulsory.”
Moffit graded the Department a “fail” on meritocracy and on chain of command, pointing to a matrix structure in which no one can be held accountable.
He said much of the shrinking surface combatant fleet is older than the Second World War Scrap Iron Flotilla’s ships, and relatively less capable.
Under current plans, he said, the fleet will get back the overall firepower it had in the late twentieth century only by 2045, while regional navies grow considerably. The report records no Defence response.
Sources
- Max Blenkin, “Calling for a stronger Navy,” Australian Defence Magazine, 5 November 2026. https://www.australiandefence.com.au/news/news/calling-for-a-stronger-navy