Long-term recruitment a problem for the army

Since 2012 the ADF has consistently ­failed to meet yearly recruiting targets, and the army, in particular, is struggling. Total numbers are 59,194 – and we need to reach 80,000 by 2040.

Gunners from the 8th/12th Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery fire 155mm rounds from the M777 howitzer as part of Exercise Predator’s Run 2024, in Mt Bundey, NT. Picture: Department of Defence

Since 2012 the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has consistently ­failed to meet yearly recruiting targets, and the army in particular is struggling.

The numbers don’t lie – in 2012 it had 30,270 full-time soldiers and the estimate for the current financial year is a decline to 28,536. Total ADF numbers are now 59,194 – and that figure needs to reach an improbable 80,000 by 2040.

Where the extra soldiers will come from is anyone’s guess – and it’s why the government announced in June that limited numbers of foreign citizens with permanent Australian residency will be allowed to apply. After some initial confusion, this has started with New Zealanders, and then will be expanded to people from the US, Britain and Canada – a comforting embrace of the Anglosphere for military talent.

This tendency to recruit only people who look and speak like the majority of current ADF members will undoubtedly be reinforced by the embarrassing case of alleged Russian spy, private Kira Korolev, who was arrested on July 12 along with her husband Igor.

After gaining Australian citizenship, she joined the Army and even featured in a promotional video, which has been quickly deleted. Unusually for a spy, she had a very active social media profile and was able to make several undeclared trips back to Russia before finally being collared by the authorities.

Given the paranoia about possible penetration of the AUKUS system to get to the heart of US and British defence technology – and to a lesser extent Australia’s, because we don’t have so much – the security barriers to recruitment look set to increase.

To understand exactly why the ADF is not a particularly attractive career option you would need to speak to those who have decided not to join. Money does not seem to be the issue because salaries are reasonable – and when additional factors such as free medical care and housing are thrown into the mix, along with generous superannuation, it’s clear that something else is acting as a deterrent.

A lot of it seems to come down to issues of organisational culture – a fairly rigid hierarchy and a posting cycle that means young families in particular are frequently uprooted and moved to different parts of the country. Children must go to new schools, leaving their little friends behind, and partners have to regularly change jobs.

The army discovered more than a decade ago that Darwin was not an especially popular place for young couples and decided to move many units to a super base in the bigger and much more cosmopolitan Adelaide.

That was all well and good until the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) reversed all of that and will now shift people back to Darwin and the even less popular ­Townsville.

This sort of frontier fortress mentality seems better suited to the 18th century than the 21st .

The ADF itself doesn’t seem to have much of a vision about how to fix any of this and running a few more ads on Facebook is unlikely to make much of an impact.

All that seems to happen is an endless repeat of the same recruitment messages of the past – at a cumulative cost of many hundreds of millions of dollars.

The only thing that might help is a generational change involving much more workplace flexibility, including part-time jobs. The RAAF has had some success – particularly with pilots – and that could have much broader application. For years people have known of the damage caused by the posting cycle – to be promoted to rank A, someone must spend three years in awful location B – but nothing ever seems to ­improve. Admittedly there is a broader correlation between economic strength and ADF popularity – when unemployment is high the military does well because many people prefer to have jobs than not.

But that’s a sad indictment of the present structure, with recruiters and the companies supporting them presumably salivating at the prospect of a major economic crash.

The ADF might wish to re-­engage with the Australian media rather than treating them as the enemy – though in this regard they take their cues from the government of the day.

They could do with some positive coverage after the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, which might be creating the impression that anyone who joins the military will end up with mental health issues.