The Australian historian Peter Brune is highly critical of MacArthur. Brune has mentioned in a number of his books that MacArthur, at least in the beginning stages of the Pacific War, was not that great of a general.

Brune is critical of MacArthur's command after he arrived in Australia. MacArthur had been ordered by FDR to include Australian officers in his command staff. This made sense for a couple of reasons. One was that the Australian officers were more experienced than MacArthur's and second the Australian forces under MacArthur's command outnumbered the Americans. However, MacArthur instead appointed only Americans to his command staff, men who according to Brune were a bunch of Yes Men who were unwilling, or unable, to tell MacArthur when he was wrong. Brune has stated that this lead to a number of blunders.

During the Kokoda Track Campaign MacArthur believed that the Australian militia outnumbered the Japanese. The reason behind this was because his intelligence stated this. Australian intel stated that the Japanese outnumbered the Australians. MacArthur for some reason chose to consistently ignore Australian intel when it conflicted with American intel even though Australian intel kept turning out to be more accurate (PNG at the time was an Australian territory). Because of this he was quite disparaging of the Australian soldiers as they were, at first, pushed back across the Kokoda Track by the Japanese.

During the campaign MacArthur also chose to believe the maps he had of the region even though the troops on the ground and others had pointed out that they were hideously inaccurate. This was another issue, MacArthur chose time and time again to ignore direct intel coming from the Australian soldiers on the ground, whether it was about the terrain or the number of Japanese that they were facing. Brune discusses an account of MacArthur demanding to know why the Australians were making such so progress crossing the Track and disbelieved the Australians when they reported back that they were in a battle. MacArthur's intel told him that there were no Japanese in the area.

After falling back across the track and then pushing back across the track towards the Japanese beachhead the Australians were ordered by MacArthur to launch a frontal attack against Gona without recon. The frontal assault took place through a swamp against prepared Japanese positions. The Australian commander on the spot, Ralph Honner, requested permission to conduct recon on the Japanese flanks but was denied. After a number of failed assaults on the position Honner disobeyed his orders, conducted recon on the Japanese flanks, found a better route through and took Gona. MacArthur then reported to the media that it was his, MacArthur's, insistence on recon that won the day.

This is another complain by Brune, that MacArthur made sure to surround himself with hand picked media who ate up his every word. Every Australian defeat was reported as an Australian defeat while American defeats were reported as Allied. Australian victories were reported as Allied victories and American victories as American. The American General Eichelberger said after the war that Americans were unaware because of this that New Guinea was mostly an Australian affair.

So where was MacArthur during these battles and campaigns? At first he was in Melbourne and then in Brisbane. These were thousands upon thousands of miles from the front line in New Guinea. MacArthur at times visited New Guinea where he would announce to the media that he was leading the troops from the front. Australian commanders after the war made the claim that MacArthur's definition of the front must have been 30 minutes from the front by air. They kept hearing that he was with them but they never saw him.

Bibliography

A Bastard of a Place

Those Ragged Bloody Heroes

We Band of Brothers

The Spell Broken

Edit - I put Buna instead of Gona.

May as well say something about Buna then. Buna was the US objective at the beachheads. MacArthur basically bragged that the US was now here and they would show the Australians how to fight. After taking Gona the Australians then went and "helped" the US take Buna. MacArthur was not very pleased. Australian General Blamey, commander of Land Forces in the South West Pacific Area, went and rubbed salt into MacArthur's wounds after Gona-Buna as MacArthur had spent many months telling Blamey how bad Australian troops were. It was probably the only time Blamey stood up to MacArthur (Brune is also highly critical of Blamey but that's another story).