How nice for you Howabout not to have met any complete A Holes of the sort of which I speak and thank you for pointing out the spelling mistake, I blame auto complete for it.
I agree with you about Australian troops, I was taught the same thing. In infantry we were warned "if your platoon sergeant suggests you ask for a transfer….. do it".
However this does not change the fact that there is a type of military mind that does not make the transition from the services to civvy street very well.
The Two I had the displeasure of working for were both ex RAAF engineering officers. Both freely admitted they had joined to get a free degree. Both left early ( i.e. they didn't retire) and took their training with them. Both were humourless automatons with the personality of a North Korean border guard. Both were highly resistant to any form of innovation or change. Both expected that their orders were to be obeyed to the letter. Mentally they had never left the service. Needless to say, both were incompetent at what they were allegedly hired to do.
Unfortunately I think the problem may be more widespread in the RAAF so do some others, the RAAF F111 reseal/reseal program:
The F111 Deseal Reseal Board of Inquiry - Volume 1
Fuel tank workers worked under the threat of disciplinary action. As one said,
'I recall one of the fellows got his brother who worked in a lab in Melbourne to test it (SR51) and he was told to get out of the Section as quickly as possible. We accepted that opinion rather than the medical opinion, but there was little we could do about it because we were under strict orders. If we asked to be transferred we were told that we had to do our time, which was two years at that stage'2.
……….These perceptions were not unfounded. One worker who refused to re-enter the fuel tanks was charged with an offence, convicted and sentenced to seven days detention at Amberley4.
…..The traditional reaction of military organisations following safety failures is to hold an inquiry with the aim of seeing whether anyone is to blame. According to a Navy witness who gave evidence to the Board,
'This created a culture of punishment, where the essential theme was to identify and then to apportion blame, frequently to the last person in the chain of events. The underlying principle is that the threat of punishment influences Navy and individual behaviour to the extent that safety gains a higher priority'27.
However, a vital aspect of contemporary safety management is to encourage the reporting of near miss events and even violations of regulations which compromise safety, as was stressed in an earlier Chapter. Both Navy and Air Force (the Directorate of Flying Safety) are now giving prominence to the reporting of such incidents to facilitate organisational learning. A culture of blame suppresses reporting and makes such learning impossible. Both Navy and Air Force are therefore stressing the need for a no blame culture if reporting is to be encouraged.
[B]This raises the question of whether a no blame culture is consistent with the military discipline system. The Directorate of Flying Safety (DFS) has wrestled with this question and concluded that within a general no blame reporting culture there is still the possibility, indeed the desirability of taking disciplinary action for certain kinds of violations. Drawing on reason28, DFS advocates a 'substitution test',
'Is it likely that someone with the same training, experience etc would have made the same mistake (or violated procedures in the same way) given similar circumstances? If the answer is yes, the issue is more organisational/systemic, and therefore personal punishment is unlikely to be effective'29.
One implication of this principle is worth drawing out. The question is not simply whether a violation was deliberate or inadvertent. A violation may have been deliberate, but if others would have been likely to violate procedures in the same way, the violation should be regarded as system-induced and therefore not warranting punishment. Thus, if a worker takes a short cut in order to get the job done, and others are doing likewise, the substitution test requires that this be seen as a systemic matter. Again, if a worker fails to wear PPE, despite being instructed to, and others do likewise, the substitution test points to a systemic problem - the uncomfortable nature of the PPE, time constraints and so on.
At this point there is a striking and important convergence in approach with the discipline system. The Discipline Act provides30 that where a charge of negligent performance of duty arises, a service tribunal, in deciding whether the member behaved negligently, has regard to the standard of care of a reasonable person, which is assessed by having regard to the standard of care that would have been exercised by a reasonable person who was a member of the Defence Force with the same training and experience in the conduct which gave rise to the charge and engaging in the same conduct.
The Defence Force in its recently promulgated Prosecution Policy31 is sensitive to these issues and enables a prosecutor to take into account in effect the substitution test. It is also appropriate for the prosecutor to take into account whether disciplinary proceedings will have an adverse effect on the morale of a unit or are not in the interests of the service.
My comment: Now we know where CASA gets its punitive ideas - from former RAAF officers who rejected the current military discipline structures.
If you wish to read more, get a copy of "The rules of the game" by Andrew Gordon which details the management of the Royal Navy from 1870 to the something like the present day.
Also look for a copy of "On The Psychology Of Military Incompetence" by Norman Dixon.
These creatures do exist, hopefully not in great quantities, and if any are in CASA, as some suggest, thier presence is not beneficial.