Page 52 - Australian Defence Magazine Feb-Mar 21

52 DEFENCE BUSINESS VIEW FROM CANBERRA
FEBRUARY – MARCH 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
20 YEARS ON FROM A NEW CENTURY
Twenty years ago, Australia (and the rest of the world) awoke on January 1 to realise that civilisation was not about to end, courtesy of the Y2K bug. That was just the beginning
A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT | CANBERRA
FOR those of more tender years, that was the potential com- puter glitch which stemmed from use of a two digit date format from the dawn of the computer age. So what would happen when the computer clicked over from 99 to 00?
No-one really knew but there were dire predictions of the entire banking, finance, social security, defence systems crashing and the world reverting to the age of horse and sail.
As it turned out, nothing much happened, a testament to the vast sums invested in IT remediation and also possibly to the fact that nothing was going to happen anyway.
Cabinet documents for 2000 released by the National Archives of Australia under the 20-year rule – yes it’s that time of the year again – show this wasn’t an enormous year for Defence. That would come in 2001 with 9/11 and the start of the war on terror.
Politically, the mega-event for Australia in 2001 was the escalation of asylum seeker boat arrivals, culminating in the MV Tampa affair, when the government employed special forces to board the Norwegian freighter Tampa to ensure it didn’t deliver a group of rescued asylum seekers to the Aus- tralian mainland.
At the start of 2000, Australian troops had been in East Timor for just over three months and through the year, the security situation steadily improved as active patrolling along
the border with West Timor convinced militia remnants and their Indonesian handlers that ongoing incursions would not end well for them.
In order to maintain its own security, East Timor need- ed a defence force, with the UN Transitional Authority in East Timor (UNTAET) opting for a force of up to 3,000, comprising 1,500 permanent and 1,500 reserves. Austra- lia preferred a force of 1,000-1,500 and said it was at- tempting to steer the force structure to that outcome.
With no-one else stepping up, cabinet documents show Aus- tralia agreed to provide 300 surplus M16A1 rifles plus ammo from ADF inventory to allow the start of basic training in 2001.
Across Defence, there was a realisation that the deploy- ment to nearby East Timor had not come easily, that fun- damental logistics enabling capabilities needed serious work and we really needed better amphibious vessels.
Neither HMA Ships Manoora or Kanimbla were available (both were undergoing refit) and an interim solution was to lease a fast catamaran for the Darwin-Dili run.
ABOVE: Troops from 5/7 RAR watch
the transition ceremony from INTERFET to UNTAET.
DEFENCE