Australia has a military recruitment problem, top brass in the Australian Defence Force acknowledge. The ADF is 7% under strength and its workforce is continuing to shrink, Defence chief Angus Campbell admitted at Senate estimates yesterday. Defence Personnel Minister Matt Keogh has long identified recruitment as a major problem, with a new recruitment partner selected by the Defence Department last October. Back in 2022, Defence launched a six-pronged initiative to improve recruitment and retention in the ranks.
Australia isn’t alone in failing to recruit. The United States armed services have been struggling for a long time to recruit soldiers — in the wake of the Iraq fiasco, the need to retain enough troops for combat operations led to repeated lowering of standards, without great success, eventually leading to “sweeping” changes to recruitment last year, despite US services missing targets by less than in 2022. In the UK, the British haven’t met their recruitment goals since 2010. The Canadians have a major shortfall. The French are struggling. So too are the Germans (insert joke about the war here). Many already allow, or are contemplating allowing, foreigners to serve, as Australia now is.
Australia’s recruitment problem isn’t a recent one. Just before the election, the Morrison government in 2022 announced plans for a massive long-term expansion of the ADF, despite concerns from within Defence that the targets couldn’t be achieved. In 2021, a surge in recruitment sparked by the pandemic turned into a shortfall as unemployment began falling to historic lows — something that has continued under Labor (it’s also a key reason recruitment in the United States is so poor). Shortages of sailors stranded major Royal Australian Navy (RAN) vessels in dry dock for years under the Coalition. The ADF launched a recruitment campaign to address a persistent shortfall in female recruits in 2015. A 2014 auditor-general report found that some important skills categories in the RAN had “experienced sustained workforce shortfalls for over a decade”.
With the problem of military recruitment, especially at a time of shrinking workforces, not merely a persistent one in Australia but among our allies as well, what’s the Coalition’s perspective on the problem that materially damaged Australia’s operational readiness while it was in power?
“This is a weak government and when you signal weakness from the political leadership, diggers, our sailors and our airmen take notice,” according to shadow defence minister Andrew Hastie. “What’s fundamentally missing from this government is a message of service, opportunity and of aspiration. If you go back to 1986, Bob Hawke got in a helicopter and made an ad, which was put on TV, recruiting for Ready Reserve. He highlighted the strategic circumstances, and he made the call to young Australians to step up. We’re not seeing that from Anthony Albanese or Richard Marles.”
That was Hastie on Tuesday, talking to the ABC’s Greg Jennett. When Jennett expressed scepticism that that was the whole story around recruitment, Hastie doubled down. “It’s a tight labour market, no question. But I think people who join the Defence Force don’t just do it for economic reasons, they do it because they love their country and they want to serve their country, and when Defence is being run down, as it is by this government, it sends a signal to a lot of young Australians out there that maybe they should consider service elsewhere, or a job or career elsewhere. So, I think it is on the government.”
So there you have it: recruitment problems are specifically the fault of Labor for not loving Australia enough, for “running Defence down”, and for sending the wrong signal. The fault of Anthony Albanese for not getting into a helicopter. It’s a military version of the argument that Albanese wasn’t being performatively patriotic enough on January 26. It’s now another front in the culture wars.
Indeed, culture wars are never far from the military recruitment issue. Also on Tuesday, Keogh was interviewed by right-wing boofhead Ben Fordham, who repeatedly attacked him for military recruitment addressing “diversity”. “The Defence Force is too woke in 2024,” Fordham, inevitably, claimed.
Except, there’s a familiar ring to these attacks on “diversity” in recruitment. News Corp’s far-right blogger Miranda Devine assailed “gender politics” in army recruitment in, erm, 2017, under the Coalition. Indeed, “wokeness” has been in recruitment for a long time. In 2015, the assistant defence minister, one Stuart Robert, said he was urging Defence to “renew efforts” to attract a “culturally and linguistically diverse workforce”, and said he was urging his department to find an imam to ensure the ADF’s Muslim recruits were properly represented. In what now looks to be a risibly offensive piece in 2009, an Australian Strategic Policy Institute blogger warned the ADF of the risks of “going ethnic”.
But now it’s Labor that’s causing the problem by not being patriotic enough, being too woke, too interested in diversity. Let’s not let the facts get in the way.
What do you think are the real reasons behind low ADF recruitment numbers? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Andrew Hastie can only see things from his own perspective, as a high profile white male officer who fits the mould of the old white male British focussed Army that only values combat soldiers and the Special Forces. Those who fit this mould are not the majority of our population, so there will always be shortages as long as this model is held up as the ideal.
In reality, the ADF needs a wide variety of people, abilities and skills, people with good negotiation and mediation skills, peacekeeping skills, talent in ICT, admin, logistics and people management. In the field as well as at home, they need to be able to deal effectively with all cultures, genders, nationalities and people with very different abilities. To hold up one narrow warrior model as the ideal will deter the many who don’t fit that model and who don’t wish to do so, meaning that to keep the myth intact they’re sacrificing the practical needs of the ADF. It is not just about the Army or about special forces, or just about combat, as ADF responsibilities are much broader than that.
Additionally, if the ADF wants to attract people and keep them, it needs to treat them well, to look after them when they’re injured and need support, rather than to make promises that they do not honour. If you want someone to put their life on the line, you need to guarantee that you will look after them when things go wrong, rather than trying to avoid the cost and responsibility of following through on that.
Absolutely spot on. As usual, the intellectually bereft “woke warriors” of the Coalition like Andrew Hastie spout a load of self-serving garbage while conveniently ignoring that a lot of the problems were caused by and during the LNP’s lazy and incompetent 9 years in power.
Just like he’d rather we all ignore and forget the rather inglorious exploits of the SAS during the time he was a SAS commander in Afghanistan …
100% this, and +1 gt2
A free trade or university qualification, exposure to advanced technology, a defined career path, there’s plenty of selling points for a military career. Perhaps the political and military hierarchies are led by ol mate, Ken Hopeless.
This apparent ‘wokeness’ is straight out of the Universe 25 playbook. We’re on a downward trajectory. Politicians are paralyzed (sic) because they don’t won’t to offend anyone. Having bombs dropped on you is pretty offensive. Having to kill or main someone I don’t know for reasons I don’t fully understand, is also pretty offensive.
Anyway wokeness is a generational thing. It started with participation trophies back in the late 80s and early 90s. Causes include smaller families with less sibling rivalry undermining development of emotional resilience, increasing urbanisation and gentrification of the population influenced by the trend to higher education (thanks for the freebie Gough), and delegation of personal responsibility to the immediate authority (parent, teacher, boss) all contributing to undermining social resilience.
Plus we could break recruitment down into stages. First stage is a civilian defence brigade for responding to natural disasters. Once people get used to naturally coloured uniforms, discipline, and the ol great coats on great costs off routine, it’s a much smaller transition to having personnel step up to carrying a gun. Is it time for a voluntary, non military national service?
Unmitigated bullshit, but whatever.
I spent 26 years in the army, and welcomed what you call wokeness when it started to appear early this century.
It’s almost as if the Coalition just makes stuff up as they go along…
As far as I can make out, it’s not “almost as if the Coalition just makes stuff up as they go along” ……but.should really read “the Coalition just makes stuff up as they go along”. And have been doing so for a long time – especially 1996-2024. The Rudd-Gillard Govt was a brief but very bitter hiatus where policies were passed in spite of the Coalition lies, a minority government and massive media condemnation and misinformation.
As far as I’m aware, we haven’t needed our ‘defence’ force for actual defence in something like seventy years. This point never gets much play in the toxic w4nkersphere…
Seems to me, we should be employing most of the ADF folks in disaster relief and emergency response, while we seek to meet actual defence needs largely with AI and drones or something.
Kimmo
Never point out the bleeding obvious to a politician. It is all about posturing. The latest buzz word in defense. In my day the word was used to describe the ponce (Penishead) trying to impress everybody in the room who were not impressed. Now the Military has Posture Positions.
We do NOT have a defense force but an adjunct attack military force holding on by our teeth to a protruding part of America’s anatomy.
The concept “For Country” is a myth. Why would a young idealistic person proud of their country want to fight in for the US Forever Wars for US economic gain (not ours) and commit themselves to War Crimes by virtue of assassinating civilians which recently appears to be expanding past traditional War Crimes to Genocide.
Foe any young person who care and has ethics the military is on the nose.
As you said – If we were looking after Australian and ITS population’s interest I am sure the numbers would increase.
We never need a defence force until we need a defence force.
Yeah sure, but consider the cubic fcktonnes of money that get vaporised in military procurement, and imagine that firehose pointed at developing our own military industry to make state of the gear based on a whole new paradigm of automation via lots and lots of cheap units like drones and whatever, along with a minimal manpower requirement.
We could totally slash our overheads by eliminating a large majority of the human costs, whether that’s training, accommodation, and payroll, or the vast ongoing cost borne by society at large of the echoing damage inflicted on vets, and institute a value-adding family of industries here to actually take some advantage of our talent, rather only rewarding those in the bullsht finance industry – and pay for it by telling the absolute worst people in the world, the military-industrial international uberspivs, to take a hike.
But of course, that’ll never happen because our defining characteristic is pissing everything we’ve got away in the worst way possible.
The only “threat” in the region is China, aka our major trading partner. Why invade a country that the inhabitants are willing to sell to you a bit at a time?
To save money on the deal? To show off? To avenge a historical grudge? To guarantee supply? There’s no lack of examples of a country being invaded, or at least its government overthrown and replaced with a puppet regime, in order to take its resources on terms that better suit the invading country.
Kind of like how Whitlam was deposed to remind us that Australia isn’t a nation, but rather an appendage.
And we were totally fine with that.
The LNP is certainly full of American flag waving appendages and the Labor also has few too! A Defence force should have clear and concise roles that should at most defend its people and lands from ‘real’ tangible threats determined by a rigorous and ethical Federal Government processes. Unfortunately Australia lacks any constitutional platforms that enables all our elected federal representatives to have a say in a warring decision, outdated concentration of power that has often allowed a few idiots in power with agendas to determine military combat deployments. Unethical combat deployments always inevitably lead to bad outcomes on the ground, for the civilians, for all combat involved military personal and for the future stability of that country. Considering all the uncovered s*&t that our defence forces have been involved in over recent decades, who would want to join such a mercenary apparatus. Even the usual applicant pool of psychopaths are uninterested, their beef solely being that the pay is woefully far too low for the amount of necessary unnecessary killing that comes with the jobs.
I attached a flag to my appendage and went for a walk down the main street to proudly display my patriotism. Guess what? The police bailed me up and told me that it could be seen as ‘offensive’ to other cultures. I’m going on Sky After Dark to tell my story and protest the woke madness of our authorities.
Satire?
Nope. War is several orders of magnitude more expensive than trade, and reduces certainty of supply rather than guaranteeing it.
Whatever the reality, countries still launch invasions.
Sensible ones don’t.
Like when the CIA engineered the Whitlam dismissal because he wanted to regain some level of sovereignty over Pine Gap.
My dream is for the Western Powers to pool their military forces to create a real life ‘International Rescue’ that can mobilise shelter food and medicine anywhere in the world hit by a natural disaster
“We’re struggling to attract enough recruits!”
“Well that’s obviously because you’re being too DIVERSE in the number of people you’re looking to attract.”
“?!??!?!?!?!?!?”
Tut, tut. I blame it all on woke liberals in the 17th Century who decided that pressganging was a Bad Thing. And the propaganda put out from the ABC. What young person wouldn’t want to join the military, and be killed, injured, captured and executed in some overseas conflict? Think of the joys of bastardization, misogyny, killing civilians, amputations, PTSD, and helping to restore Capitalist-approved dictators to their rightful position. Back in the day, men were proud to go out and be shot, starved, or die on the barbed wire while being eaten by rats. It was the ANZAC tradition. That’s the trouble with today’s generation; they’re all too soft, and worried about where to live.
Could it be that it’s all the pseudo-hormone chemicals in the environment these days? There were no squeaky-voiced paratroopers in my day. Admittedly, some wore tights, but that was only to keep warm. Surely?
This comment has a pH of 0. Well brewed, sir.