Source — AITW Ep064 — A Cabinet Reshuffle, Politician Ambassadors, the Richardson Review and Summer Homework¶

Episode Metadata¶

Field	Value
Episode number	64
Title	A cabinet reshuffle, politician ambassadors, the Richardson Review and summer homework
Publication date	2020-12-23
Recording date	Tuesday, 22 December 2020
Guests	None — Allan and Darren only
Allan present	Yes
Format	News episode — three items plus summer reading segment

Summary¶

End-of-year episode covering three news items: (1) the Morrison Cabinet reshuffle — Dan Tehan replacing Simon Birmingham as Trade Minister, Andrew Hastie becoming Assistant Defence Minister, and the unusual situation of both senior Defence positions now held by former ADF officers; (2) Will Hodgman's appointment as High Commissioner to Singapore — Allan escalates his critique of the government's use of state politicians in senior diplomatic roles, embedded in a direct autobiographical comparison to his own first posting in Burma; (3) the Dennis Richardson Comprehensive Review of the Legal Framework of the National Intelligence Community — Allan offers substantive commentary with evident personal investment and praises the review's unusually direct language.

Closing segment: each host names their summer intellectual preoccupation. Allan's is completing the new chapter for the updated Fear of Abandonment edition, and he makes the most significant self-disclosure on the agency question yet: "I find myself, Darren, coming closer to your IRP position about agency than I feel comfortable doing."

Biographical significance: The Burma/Myanmar posting anecdote is new and specific — Allan names his first diplomatic posting as Burma under Ne Win's military dictatorship. Combined with reading recommendations (Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin novels) and the agency disclosure, this is a rich episode for the biography project.

Key Quotations¶

Birmingham's "control of words and tone"¶

"What I most admired about Simon Birmingham was his control of words and tone. When you were listening to him, you always had the feeling that he knew just what he wanted to say and was pitching his words with precisely the emphasis he desired. And these are really key diplomatic skills."

— [00:02:27.580 --> 00:04:18.580]

Allan's assessment of ministerial quality in the foreign policy domain comes down to this: rhetorical discipline. Not policy knowledge, not relationship skills, not toughness — the capacity to know exactly what you want to say and pitch it precisely. "Control of words and tone" is, characteristically, what Allan himself exhibits across 113 episodes. That he names it first — before subject-matter expertise or departmental relations — reveals the quality he values most. He adds: "these are really key diplomatic skills," normalising the observation as professional standard rather than personal preference.

"My first diplomatic posting was to what's now Myanmar" — the Burma anecdote¶

"My first diplomatic posting was to what's now Myanmar and was then Burma under the military dictatorship of General [Ne Win]. That regime had an ideological approach called the Burmese way to socialism, which was a fruitless attempt to unite both Marxism and Buddhism. This was never likely to end well, but it was manifestly made worse by the decision that only military officers could be trusted to bring this national transformation about. So all the socialised parts of the economy, the electricity generation, for example, were under the control of brigadiers and colonels. And they may have been perfectly good at what they did as military officers, but they knew nothing about running a business. And the result was a disaster, which is still felt, I think, through Myanmar."

— [00:08:27.900 --> 00:11:30.120]

The anecdote is deployed as analogy — the Morrison government's enthusiasm for political appointments to senior diplomatic posts maps, in Allan's framing, onto Ne Win's use of military officers to run industries they knew nothing about. The analogy is deliberately provocative. He then immediately applies it to Australia: "former premiers of Western Australia, [New South Wales] and now Tasmania sent overseas by the current government." The personal detail ("my first diplomatic posting") is dropped into the argument without elaboration, which is characteristic — he does not linger on it or invite comment. It is structural evidence deployed to support the analytical point.

Note on the general's name: The transcript renders it "General Nguyen," which is a medium-model transcription error. The name should be Ne Win (Burmese: နေဝင်း) — the military commander who overthrew the civilian government in a coup on 2 March 1962 and established the Burmese Way to Socialism. "Ne Win" misheard as "Nguyen" is a plausible acoustic error. Ne Win remained head of state until 1981 and dominated Burmese politics until 1988. His rule lasted through Allan's early career and well beyond.

PMs always dominate foreign policy — Gillard/Rudd as the extreme case¶

"The Prime Minister of the day has always been the key player in the foreign policy space, so I don't buy the idea that this is particularly new. You can think right back to Robert Menzies and the way he dominated the policy debate with his External Affairs Minister, Richard Casey... even if you take the most extreme example you can think of, which may be Julia Gillard as Prime Minister, who herself said that this area wasn't her passion, and a Foreign Minister in Kevin Rudd, who knew the portfolio and all the details of it backwards. Even then, it was still Gillard's foreign policy that prevailed."

— [00:04:38.060 --> 00:06:43.460]

Allan resists the idea that PM dominance in foreign policy is a Morrison-era innovation. His chosen extreme case is telling: Gillard with Rudd as FM — about as asymmetric a knowledge gap as is possible between PM and Foreign Minister. Yet even there, it was "Gillard's foreign policy that prevailed." The observation is from someone who was ONA Director-General through most of the Gillard period (June 2010 – June 2013) — he is not analysing from outside but from a position of direct institutional knowledge. He also notes Malcolm Fraser's tendency to "embroil himself in every dimension of foreign policy" as the counterexample of a PM who overdid it.

The Richardson Review's acerbic language¶

"I have to declare a long personal friendship with Dennis Richardson, but the list of positions he's occupied in government and the experience he's accumulated as a result is genuinely unparalleled. He's been Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, Deputy Secretary in the Immigration Department, Director General of ASIO, Ambassador in Washington, Secretary of DFAT and Secretary of Defence."

[and quoting the review:]

"The term administrative burden tends to be thrown around too loosely by NIC agencies." [...] "Too often during the review, proposals to clarify or streamline legislation amounted to no more than a bid to extend powers or functions. Governments should be sceptical of calls for legislative clarity. Very often, such claims do not withstand even modest inquiry."

— [00:16:34.660 --> 00:22:00.900]

Allan takes evident pleasure in the review's non-bureaucratic language — "a dog's breakfast" describing existing legislation; "not to kick a particular can down the road" as advice to the government. He characterises these as qualities Richardson's experience uniquely enabled: "there is no bureaucratic trick that Dennis isn't wise to." The friendship declaration is standard (he makes it whenever he discusses Richardson on air), but the warmth in the list of Richardson's positions is genuine — Allan respects the breadth and depth of that career. His point about media non-attention ("frankly, no one else is and I think that's sort of surprising and disappointing") is a recurring frustration: serious policy work goes uncovered while spy-adjacent material usually attracts attention. He is performing what he believes public commentary should do.

Summer homework — agency re-examined; the Fear of Abandonment update¶

"I'm trying to finish a new edition of my book, Fear of Abandonment, by adding a chapter covering the years from 2016 to the end of 2020. So I'm looking to learn as best I can what the hell just happened. In particular, I want to work out whether we still have agency in the emerging international order, or whether I'm right in suspecting that Australia's capacity to act in the world is now more circumscribed than it has been for half a century, whether, you know, the bands around us are tightening... I find myself, Darren, coming closer to your IRP position about agency than I feel comfortable doing. I just need to sort it out by the end of summer."

— [00:25:42.220 --> 00:26:36.540]

The most candid statement about Allan's ongoing intellectual uncertainty in the corpus. He is not admitting defeat on agency — he says he wants to "sort it out" before conceding — but he is naming that the evidence since 2016 is pushing him toward structural constraint and away from individual agency. "Coming closer to your IRP position than I feel comfortable doing" is precise: IR theory (structural constraints on state behaviour) vs. his practitioner's faith in individual agency (Percy Spender, Gareth Evans). He identifies a political variable: Biden might "open up that space for us a little bit more" than Trump did — which implies that some of the constraint he perceives is conjunctural (Trump-specific) rather than structural. The phrase "what the hell just happened" is characteristic — colloquial but analytically serious. He is framing the 2016–2020 period as requiring explanation, not just description.

Biographical Fragments¶

First diplomatic posting: Burma (Myanmar) under Ne Win's military dictatorship¶

Evidence: Ep064 [00:08:27.900 --> 00:11:30.120]. Directly stated: "My first diplomatic posting was to what's now Myanmar and was then Burma." Confidence: High (directly stated); name of general confirmed as Ne Win based on context (see note below).

A new and specific career data point. Allan's first overseas posting was Burma — now Myanmar — under the military dictatorship that had ruled since General Ne Win's 1962 coup. The "Burmese Way to Socialism" ideology (Ne Win's attempt to combine Marxism and Buddhism into a state programme) is specifically named, which confirms the Ne Win period. This posting almost certainly dates to the early 1970s: Allan entered the Department of External Affairs (now DFAT) approximately 1969 at approximately 21, and a first posting would typically follow a period of training and Canberra-based work — placing Burma in approximately 1971–1974. Ne Win's regime lasted until 1988; given Allan's career arc, the posting overlaps with the early Ne Win period.

The context of the disclosure is important: Allan uses the Burma experience as an analogy for the Morrison government's political ambassador appointments — military officers run state industries they don't understand; state premiers are appointed to diplomatic posts they don't understand. The comparison is pointed and deliberate.

Career sequence now tentatively extends: Entry to External Affairs (~1969) → Burma/Myanmar posting (~early 1970s) → Singapore posting (~1970s, confirmed Ep020) → Washington (early 1980s, confirmed Ep049) → ONA Soviet analyst (mid-1980s, confirmed Ep026) → PM&C Hawke era (1983–1991 window, confirmed Ep020) → Keating PM's office (confirmed by June 1994) → Lowy Institute ED (2003–~2007/8) → ONA DG (~2007/8–~2013/14) → AIIA National President (2018+).

Note on the transcript name error: "General Nguyen" in the transcript is an acoustic misread by the medium-model transcriber. The correct name is Ne Win — the Burmese military leader. "Ne Win" → "Nguyen" is a plausible phonetic confusion between a Burmese name and a Vietnamese one. This should be verified against the raw transcript.

"I find myself coming closer to your IRP position about agency than I feel comfortable doing"¶

Evidence: Ep064 [00:25:42.220 --> 00:26:36.540]. Directly stated, first person. Confidence: High.

The most explicit acknowledgement of intellectual movement on the agency question in the corpus. Allan has consistently maintained across the podcast that individuals (Percy Spender, Gareth Evans, Keating) can demonstrably shape foreign policy outcomes despite structural constraints. Darren's position — more grounded in international relations theory (IRP = International Relations Process/theory, or Darren's IR structural perspective) — holds that structural forces constrain agency more severely. By December 2020 — after Trump, COVID-19, the Australia-China deterioration, and the apparent tightening of Australia's strategic options — Allan names the tectonic shift: he is "coming closer" to Darren's position. But "than I feel comfortable doing" signals that he has not abandoned his own view; the discomfort is genuine. He also points to a possible structural explanation for the change: Trump denied Australia the "space to move" that a friendly superpower can grant, and Biden might restore some of it.

This connects directly to Ep061 ("I'm making some progress with you, Darren") and Ep058 ("I am holding fast") — a sequence across late 2020 in which the agency debate has visibly moved. By December 2020, Allan is closer to concession than he has ever been.

Style and Method Evidence¶

The Burma analogy: Using a personal experience — his first posting — as analytical material is characteristic. He does not announce it as autobiography; he introduces it as evidence for the argument about political appointments. The personal is structural.
Media criticism via action: His commentary on the Richardson Review is partly an act of remediation — he names the lack of coverage ("frankly, no one else is") and then provides what the coverage should have said. He is performing what he believes serious public commentary requires.
"What the hell just happened": The colloquialism is more than wit — it is an honest naming of intellectual uncertainty. Allan usually presents analysis from a position of synthesised knowledge. Naming uncertainty about the shape of the entire 2016–2020 period is a genuine epistemic admission.
Reading as escape into quality: The Patrick O'Brien recommendation — "I wouldn't know a flying jib from a mizzen stay sail" — is Allan acknowledging that he read these novels purely for their literary quality and escapism, not as analytical material. One of the rare instances where the recommendation has no policy overlay.

Reading / Listening Segment¶

Patrick O'Brian — Aubrey-Maturin novels (series, 1969–2004)¶

Allan's comment: "One of the great novels of Patrick O'Brian. For those who don't know them, they were published between 1971 and 2004, I think, and have been described as the greatest series of historical novels ever written and compared to the achievements of writers like Jane Austen. Captain Jack Aubrey is a Royal Naval Officer during the Napoleonic Wars, and his close friend, Dr. Stephen Maturin, is a [naturalist and intelligence agent]. I wouldn't know a flying jib from a mizzen stay sail, but you don't need to be into naval warfare to revel in the quality of O'Brian's writing and the subtlety of his characterisation. So these novels, I'm grateful to, because they've taken me a long way away from 2020."

Note: The transcript renders the captain's name as "Jack Albury" — a transcription error for Jack Aubrey. Also, O'Brian's surname is spelled without the second 'e' (Patrick O'Brian, not O'Brien). The series began with Master and Commander in 1970 (not 1971) and ended with the unfinished Blue at the Mizzen in 1999; a posthumous fragment followed in 2004.

The recommendation is notable for being pure escapism — Allan does not apply a policy lens. He names the literary quality ("revel in the quality of O'Brian's writing and the subtlety of his characterisation") as the entire justification. The comparison to Jane Austen is not Allan's own phrase but one he endorses. This is also the first time he recommends historical fiction set outside the political context (cf. Mantel's Cromwell, Ep043 — which he used as a political manual). Here the escape is the point.

Open Questions¶

Burma posting dates: Allan entered External Affairs ~1969; a first posting might be ~1971–1974. Can the dates of Australia's mission in Rangoon during the early 1970s be established? Were there any significant diplomatic events involving Australia-Burma relations in this period?
The agency resolution: Allan says he needs to "sort it out by the end of summer" — does the new chapter of Fear of Abandonment (eventually published, or not?) reveal where he landed? Did the summer reading/writing clarify his position?
Darren's wife Rebecca: This is the first episode where Darren discusses Rebecca's work as Ambassador to Lebanon at length, including the Beirut blast crisis. She is named (Rebecca); this provides biographical context for Darren that is a recurring reference point from Ep064 onwards.