Just three Kiwis have enlisted after ‘bold’ Labor move to boost ADF

Fewer than a handful of people have joined the Australian Defence Force in the year since the Albanese government allowed citizens from the Five Eyes partners to enlist.

The Australian Defence Force has failed to reach its recruitment target despite broadening its in-take eligibility

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Only three New Zealanders have joined the Australian Defence Force in the year since the Albanese government allowed Kiwi citizens to enlist, in a flat start to a program that Labor once heralded as a “bold” move to help struggling recruitment numbers.

The Albanese government in June last year announced it would allow New Zealand citizens who had been Australian permanent residents for more than a year to join the ADF, and said it would expand this to citizens of Five Eyes partners – the US, UK, and Canada.

“We’re being bold in order to grow the Australian Defence Force,” Defence Personnel Minister Matt Keogh said at the time.

Defence Minister Richard Marles said the government had “chosen to grow the Australian Defence Force because it is essential to meet the nation’s security challenges through the next decade and beyond”.

But the Defence department admitted that by the start of this month, only three New Zealanders had been recruited and none had been recruited from the other Five Eyes partners.

The ADF has for years been plagued by a staffing crisis, facing a shortfall of thousands of troops and not on track to meet the 63,272 target by 2028 set out in the Defence Workforce Plan.

“Defence must look to new markets and make further major changes to risk and policy settings to increase retention and the speed of recruitment,” the 2023 Defence Strategic Review read.

“Pay and service conditions as well as workplace culture for both the APS and ADF should be highly competitive in the labour market.”

The latest revelation raises questions about the viability of Anthony Albanese’s hopes of recruiting Pacific Islanders to serve in the ADF in a bid to address this crisis.

Defence expert Peter Jennings said the recruitment of just three New Zealanders in one year was a “pathetic outcome for a policy that the government announced with great fanfare”.

“I can only conclude that no one in defence is trying to actually recruit from these Five Eyes countries,” he said.

“So something has gone wrong between the minister’s press statement and the reality of only three people being recruited.”

Opposition defence personnel spokeswoman Jacinta Price told The Australian the Albanese government had “failed to adequately address the recruitment and retention crisis facing the ADF”.

“Seeking to address personnel shortages by recruiting non-Australian citizens as the Labor government has done, is not a comprehensive solution,” she said.

“The Albanese Labor government must prioritise addressing the underlying issues that are causing so many of our personnel to leave and preventing young Australians from joining the ADF in the first instance.”

Mr Keogh defended the scheme, saying the government was “pleased with the interest which is being shown” and that the government’s reforms in ADF recruitment were “paying dividends”.

“On coming to government, we took immediate action and made the necessary investments to grow, retain and support our Defence workforce,” he said.

“As part of this, we have expanded the eligibility criteria, including so that permanent residents from Five Eyes partners are able to join the Australian Defence Force and are pleased with the interest which is being shown.

Opposition spokesperson for Defence Jacinta Price Picture: Sky News

“We have seen a high level of interest and a positive rate of applications since these changes came into effect.

“The Albanese government wants to see more people to sign up to the ADF and our reforms in this space are paying dividends, with more and more people putting their hands up to serve, growing the Defence Force for the first time in years.”

Adecco, the recruitment firm hired by the ADF to fix its staffing crisis, has previously been revealed to have been almost 30 per cent behind target. It was meant to hire 10,512 recruits for the ADF but the department earlier this year said Adecco had said it could only deliver 7,461.

The ADF headcount as a share of the country’s labour force has consistently fallen over the last 20 years, from about 0.5 per cent in 2005 to 0.38 per cent in 2024.

Mr Jennings said ADF recruitment was the “biggest problem the government faces right now in defence”.

“It’s a bit of a sleeper problem because we always focus on submarines and frigates and those sorts of things,” he said.

“But actually the failure to recruit and to find new strategies to put some energy into recruitment I think is the biggest defence problem the government faces.”

Papua New Guinea foreign minister Justin Tkatchenko at the end of last year said his country was keen for its people to participate in the Pacific recruitment plan but did not want an Australian citizenship requirement.