I move amendment No. 14:
Before Section 14 to insert a new section as follows :—
14. (1) The Minister shall appoint an officer of the Permanent Defence Force to be the military secretary to the Minister.
(2) The military secretary to the Minister shall be charged with the performance of such duties as the Minister from time to time shall assign to him.
It will be seen that in a subsequent amendment I have made provision for certain particular functions for a military secretary in relation to grievances of military personnel. I must say that this idea of a military secretary is a personal idea which I have held for a long period of years. In the ordinary way of discipline a person in the Army, whether he is officer or soldier, is subject to his commanding officer and through him to the higher organisation such as the brigade, the division or the command as the case may be, but there are matters such as pay, deductions from pay, location and allowances which are strictly not very much the concern of the superior authorities but are very important from the point of view of the individual concerned and I have always felt that if the individual member of the Army had the right to bring his grievance directly to the Minister's notice through a person such as a military secretary it would go a long way towards the elimination of grievances that cause a good lot of trouble from time to time in the Army. The military secretary would be in a position to make inquiries from the different military branches or civilian sections right off the reel and could prepare data for the Minister on which the Minister could give an immediate decision and grievances of that kind are always best dealt with quickly.
I felt also that, in addition to having those functions, the military secretary should also be secretary of the Council of Defence. The Council of Defence consists of the Minister, his Parliamentary Secretary and the three Army principals, the Chief of Staff, the Adjutant-General and the Quartermaster-General, and the secretary of the Department who is himself a very important person, being in charge of the administrative end of the secretariat and also the financial end. I felt that he, as a member of the Council and a very important member, should not also be its secretary. He should have his own standing as secretary of the Department of Defence and advisor to the Council on matters relating to the civil administration of the Department and its finances. For that reason there should be some other person as secretary of the Council.
The Council of Defence does not meet very often. I do not know how often it meets now, but my personal experience was that it did not meet very often. Some other person, therefore, besides the secretary of the Department, should be the secretary of the Council and the proper person would be the military secretary. I must say that my main objective in proposing the establishment of this post was to deal with grievances. I have an amendment further down—I am not sure what section it deals with or whether it is in this list of amendments or not—dealing with grievances. It was mainly for the purpose of dealing urgently with grievances that I propose this appointment.