The Brereton Report: what the military can learn from the health system

The Brereton Report makes for uncomfortable reading. Its findings and recommendations principally focus on individuals and their conduct, including unlawful acts, wilful misreporting, falsifying records, failing to exercise proper control over subordinates, giving false evidence and suborning colleagues to give false evidence. There are a handful of recommendations in relation to culture but they tend to focus on operational matters and training.

Several important lessons from the health system can and should be applied to the Australian military. This might seem a strange and implausible connection – health and the military – but not so long ago hospitals and their nursing staff were established and run along military lines….