Tony Adams writes:

I was a 17-year-old, 1st year
Officer Cadet (RAAF) at the Australian Defence Force Academy in early
1987. Drinking heavily was obligatory and for scared 17 and 18 year old
Officer Cadets, steering clear was simply not an option. My “favorite”
drinking game was “Space Invaders”: 2nd and 3rd year Cadets sit around
and get smashed. 1st year cadets are forced to line up and run in
single file, backwards and forwards across the front of the room (a la
Space Invaders). 2nd and 3rd year Cadets then throw full cans at the
moving targets. Cadets who didn’t participate in such fun were
subjected to “morals trials” by their peers. I left the Academy in 1987
a physical and emotional wreck, with a chronic drinking problem…18
years old.

Michael Walker writes:
Having left the Navy 9 years ago, I can vouch for the drinking culture
that is widespread throughout the entire Australian Defence Forces.
When you look at the average age of recruits and the number of recruits
(both commissioned and non-commissioned ranks) that are below 20 years
of age upon entry, the “role models” they are presented with pull up
very short of the mark. The recent changes to the rules for drinking at
sea also pulled up short. They should have banned it entirely if they
were fair dinkum. I’m no wowser, but the lives of many people are in
your hands at sea and it can’t be trivialised.

Mike Burke writes:
Really,
you guys will believe anything! That the High Court would accept that
there is evidence that “the Army” requires its personnel to drink and
that this warrants compensation for someone who fell out of a window
drunk makes me finally accept that the Dickensian adage that “the Law
is a Ass” might actually be true. Let me count the ways:

–
None of the Services, not the Army, not the RAN and certainly not the
RAAF of which I have direct experience, has any sort of official or
unofficial policy encouraging its members of any rank to drink alcohol.
On the contrary, there are stringent policies in all three Services against
drinking on duty and against excessive drinking at any time. Problem
drinkers ignore this policy at their peril and many people have found
themselves discharged in adverse terms for failing to comply.

–
The provision of bars at military bases for the use of military
personnel has nothing to do with encouraging them to drink. Such bars,
in the various messes, eg officers, sergeants, cadets and other ranks,
are provided by the Commonwealth because, and only because, military
bases have traditionally been located remote from normal civilian
population centres, and because members and their families tend to live
on or close to the bases at which they work and often do not have
access to public transport, particularly outside working hours.

–
All such bars are broadly subject to the laws of the states in which
they exist, and are generally run as clubs by the members concerned…
Peer group pressure is something else again, of course, but it is no
different for young military personnel than it is for young
journalists, and I defy you to assert with any degree of credibility
that news organisations encourage their journalists to drink because,
like the SMH in Sydney at least, some might provide club facilities for their staff’s recreation.

–
Your former ADFA Cadet does not know what he is talking about. Cadet
behaviour that amounts to the encouragement of drinking occurs, like
bastardisation, despite Army policy, not because of it. But don’t let
that minor detail deter you from yet another dishonest rant.

–
The only duty free alcohol sold in Service messes is that which might
be served, strictly rationed, on board Naval vessels in international
waters, or perhaps on overseas bases outside Australian
territory, eg in Iraq or Malaysia. There is no duty-free alcohol
available in an Australian military establishment on Australian soil.
Repeat after me: NONE!

With regard to your former Army cadet’s
tale about the accidental death from the taxi incident, how does the
military bear any responsibility for accidental deaths that result from
horse-play induced by off-base drinking by off-duty personnel? Your
informant, like the High Court, is seriously ill-informed.