I hope this isn't really a dramatically new me; I like the old me. But you're quite right: when you are in the bureaucracy, you're part of that team. If you disagree internally, once the decisions are made, that's what you reflect as part of the citizen, and I don't think you'd want it any other way.
I have a few points. In terms of money, this isn't a $20-billion problem; this is a $100-billion problem. If you figure on expenditures of $4 billion to $5 billion a year to buy and maintain equipment for 20 years, you're talking $80 billion to $100 billion. That's the amount of oversight, the dollar value you should be looking at. I agree totally with you: I think there is too much secrecy, there isn't enough valued input by this committee overseeing the strategic kinds of discussions and decisions that have to be made. Absolutely. I would agree with Doug.
I'm not sure that you need the fine print in order to decide on some major strategic decisions. Having said that, I think you should be able to have your cake and eat it too. I think you should be able to review a draft of the defence capability plan. I think the defence capability plan should be out. It should be there to debate and discuss as a critical document supporting the government's policy paper, and the linkage between the two is where I think you could have tremendously valuable discussion.
Once you get to that decision, then I think you can have very strategic, timely decisions about how you go about getting those capabilities filled. As Doug Bland said, part of the problem is that delaying the decisions can force you into suboptimal acquisition options, so the earlier you can look at the policy, the earlier you can link the capabilities to those policies, the faster you can get to discussing how you go about doing it and doing it right, which are, of course, the substantive issues my book deals with.