Flying the big desk of Defence

By MICHELE HEWITSON

When you are the Air Marshal, the chief of the country's Defence Force, you might expect a few perks of office.


Here's one: Bruce Ferguson gets to wear a Navy jacket, which, properly speaking, should not be worn by an Air Marshal.


"Why do I wear it?" he poses. "Because it's there. Because I'm the boss and I like it. And it annoys the Air Force boss. He can't do anything about it, can he?"


The 53-year-old in the top defence job flashes a grin like a cheeky 6-year-old who has just got one over a grown-up.


Ferguson came up through the Air Force ranks - which is why wearing the Navy jacket is calculated to annoy.


Anyway, the Air Marshal thinks it rather smart.


The wearing of it, beyond winding up the Air Force chief, tells you quite a bit about Ferguson's leadership style.


A cartoon on his office wall shows him with broom in hand at the time of his appointment in February last year. The caption reads: "Military old guard swept away."


"Well, yeah basically," Ferguson confirms. Basically means back to basics, military-style.


So, if you stand outside Defence HQ in Stout St just before 8am on a cool Wellington morning, you see the civilians shuffling in, wind-blown and clutching takeaway coffees, and then you note the military, natty in their uniforms, as sharp as new tacks.


Five years ago, says Ferguson, "you would have seen hardly anyone coming in in uniform. We didn't want to be seen to be different from the great Wellington public servant."


Ferguson has "a totally contrary view to that: we are military and we should be absolutely proud of what we do. We should be seen to wear uniform."


This is not an order. But when the Air Marshal strongly encourages you to look the part, you tend to do it.


No one around here - unless he or she harbours some perverse desire to experience a court martial - is going to tell Ferguson: "You're not the boss of me."


Here's what the man in charge of the Defence Force can require of his people: "I can direct them, without their agreement or otherwise, anywhere in the world - and put their lives on the line if so required."


This is serious stuff.


As is this: before you gain admittance to the big office on the sixth floor, you hand over your cellphone. This is to prevent me setting up the thing to transmit secret conversations from the interior - despite my explaining to the Air Marshal's minder that I can't even access voice mail.


Then, when you arrive at the Air Marshal's office - leather couches, cabinets full of the gilded knick-knacks that politicians and Air Marshals are presented with by their overseas counterparts - here's a joker wearing an open-necked, short-sleeved shirt, Navy bomber jacket and a big grin.


He avoids ties "whenever possible", but wears uniform almost always.


"I'm trying to generate a more relaxed business-like military feel to the place."


It is a matter of visibility for defence forces that are "low-key, low-priority, no matter which way you look at it".


"They are not a great vote-catcher. They're not thought of - if they're thought of at all, it's on occasion, rather than, say, in America or Australia or in most Asian countries, where the military has a high profile.


"In New Zealand it's way down low."


The Defence Force has certainly had its low moments.


The attrition rate is 12 per cent - although down from last year's 15.5 per cent. Re-equipment projects in the pipeline, worth more than $2 billion, will place added burdens on military training - and more pressure on the force's ability to retain and attract staff.


Funding is a constant issue, says the man who has to balance the books. Keeping the force running and equipped; convincing the Government to spend money "is always a big challenge".


Then there are the political issues.


When the Government chooses not to send troops to Iraq, it's political. When the Government chooses to send forces to the Solomons, it's political.


Here is another perk, of a sort, of the Air Marshal's job: an old-fashioned suit of armour called chain of command.


Ferguson answers to the PM, the Minister of Defence and the Cabinet.


So, "we're never the target of it [criticism over the decision to send or not send troops]. Those are political decisions taken and the questioning of it happens in Parliament."


He is the man who answers the "Can we?" question.


As for the "Should we?", if politicians ask his views on whether New Zealand should be involved militarily, "I would certainly tender them. But whether a country is involved is primarily, and rightly, a political decision."


YOU can ask away all you like.


"I will sometimes be asked for my views on it - which I studiously refuse to give.


"It certainly isn't my role to offer any personal opinions on whether we should or shouldn't be - publicly, that is."


Perhaps he offers such views at home on, say, a Sunday afternoon?


Another wide grin. Ferguson, who has a direct line to intelligence agencies, is not about to fall for such an obvious ploy.


"The cat and the dog aren't that interested."


With his wife, Rosemary, "it's more 'Get out and do the lawn', or 'Stop watching the TV'. Those are the discussions that happen at the strategic level at home."


Here at work, the big office represents the dream of every boy who grew up reading Biggles and building model planes.


When you get to be Chief of Defence you own all the really good war toys: the model armoured vehicle with which to go "vroom vroom" across your black leather blotter (well, that's what I did, and I bet you would have, too); the model of the Seasprite helicopter; the bronze statuette of Old Paddy, the Northern Irish peacekeeper.


Ferguson tolerates this poking about his office with good grace - but you do keep in the back of your mind his black belt in tae kwon do.


He was the boy who read Biggles and Battle of Britain comics: "I'd look forward with eager anticipation every week to the latest batch."


He had a cousin in the Air Force. The only other family connection with the military was his father, a Post Office signalman (he became Postmaster-General) who enlisted in 1939 - "one of the first" - spent most of the war as a prisoner in Germany, and "never got past the dizzy rank of private".


"Had he been alive now he'd be rather proud, I guess, that his son has got to the top of the Defence Force."


Ferguson saw flying as his future. "I was always making gliders. To me it was just absolutely fascinating that aircraft would fly."


These days he seldom gets to pilot a plane - although he did fly the Prime Minister once.


"I don't know whether it was horror on her face or whatever when ... her head of the Defence Force is standing there quietly saluting, saying, 'I'm your pilot for the day.'


"I think she said, 'Yeah, right. Go away'."


Now he flies a great machine of 13,400 personnel, uniformed and civilian, across the three forces.


Sometimes Ferguson yearns for the "simplicity" of flying.


"The actual task of flying concentrates one's mind to the whole aspect of just flying. It's all concentrated, and to me that is a simple task."


By contrast, being the chief of the Defence Force is "very complex and very challenging and very tiring at times."


Still, think of the perks.