SYDNEY -- Australia's government came under attack Wednesday for dismissing its top defense department official just as the country is gearing up to join possible military action against Iraq.

Allan Hawke was fired Tuesday after three years as defense secretary and will be replaced by Australia's current Ambassador to Indonesia, Ric Smith.

It was the second time Prime Minister John Howard has sacked the top Defense Department bureaucrat at a controversial moment.

In August 1999 Paul Barratt was dismissed from the post just as Australia prepared to send troops to halt bloodshed in East Timor.

"This is a government that has seen two heads of defense sacked, one when we were just about to go into Timor and the other when we're considering what action (to take) in relation to Iraq," said Simon Crean, head of the main opposition Labor Party, AFP reported.

The government gave no reason for its decision, which was announced when Howard was in Britain discussing moves towards possible military strikes against Iraq with British leaders.

But media reports said the government felt Hawke had not made sufficient progress in reforms designed to reduce defense department bureaucracy and put more resources into front-line fighting forces.

Crean said the dismissals of Barratt then Hawke showed that the government and its Defense Minister, Robert Hill, were using departmental heads as scapegoats for their failure to adequately fund the military.

"The government has to take responsibility, it can't keep passing the buck," Crean said.

A spokesman for the smaller opposition Democrats Party said the dismissal of Hawke would destabilize the military when it is already stretched thin with troops in East Timor and Afghanistan and preparations underway to join a possible U.S.-led strike on Iraq.

"I don't think it will help in terms of stability at all," said the spokesman, Andrew Bartlett.

"Our defense forces are more committed, more stretched now than they have been for many years. And that is before we consider what the government might do with Iraq," he said. Barratt, Hawke's dismissed predecessor, also assailed the government's action as a sign it wants "to pretend that we can have a very high level of defense capability with very inadequate funding."

"I begin to wonder whether it is possible to satisfy this government about the management of the department of defense," Barratt told Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio.

Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson, who announced Hawke's replacement in the absence of Howard, denied there was any instability in the military.

"I don't accept that point at all," he said. "I think Australians would think that the defense forces have served this nation extraordinarily well in recent times."

Howard's government has been one of the staunchest backers of U.S. President George W. Bush's hard line on Iraq and is expected to send Australian troops to join any U.S.-led strikes aimed at ousting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.