House of Representative on Monday 18 November 2024

Adjournment Speech

Check against delivery

Tonight I want to talk about defence recruiting. It's in a really bad state. In fact, reports I hear are that it is in a diabolical state. But tonight I want to start with my own experience, which was 22 years ago, and I thought it was an isolated incident.

I applied for the ADF 22 years ago. My paperwork was lost and I had issues with recruiting. I had some family friends who were serving in the ADF—one was a brigadier, another a major-general. They both had to intervene to get my paperwork going. Once I was in the ADF, there were more issues to do with my basic training. I remember the moment when I was so fed up that I said to the officer in charge, 'I'm going to go to Mr Anthony Albanese,' who was my member of parliament at the time. I'll tell you what, I've never seen any paperwork move so quickly as I did in that instance.

Now, looking back 22 years, I thought we would have fixed all of these problems, but the reports that I've received and the reports that my colleagues have received show our ADF recruiting to be in a terrible state. We're losing good people. We're losing young Australians who are keen to serve their country but can't get through the door because of a whole range of administrative bungles. The system is not working and it needs fixing.

Defence, again, is proving itself to be part of the problem. Back in June, during estimates, questions were put about the personnel requirement for the ADF. The number was at 63,597 and there was a shortfall reported of 5,313. Just this month the 2024 Defence workforce plan was released, and 2½ years after the Albanese government won the election—it's taken 2½ years to get a defence workforce plan—the government has revised down the personnel targets in the ADF to 58,650, which has now reduced the shortfall by 1,624. They've lowered the standards of recruiting to reduce that shortfall, and it's unacceptable. This is while the country has grown in the last 2½ years by 1.4 million people. So the ADF is shrinking as our general population is growing.

But tonight I want to give voice to the young Australians who have had all sorts of trouble with ADF recruiting.

I think of Alan from Wheatbelt in Western Australia who says:

I have seen your posts about ADF recruiting and have had a dismal experience with both of my children trying to enlist for up to 2 years now. The experience has been abysmal.

Alan's son was due to attend his enlistment last Tuesday morning at 7.30 am; however, he was advised at 2.30 pm the afternoon before that he was no longer able to attend because Defence Force recruiting couldn't get hold of the person who processed his security clearance.

Faith from Perth, who was home-schooled and met all the requirements—she completed her OLNA test, her SAT test and her years 11 and 12 at TAFE—attempted to get a position with the ADF Gap Year program, and she was denied. She says: 'My ADF case manager has been struggling to convince her supervisor I qualify for the Gap Year despite my competence.'

Aidan from Victoria says:

My career goal is to become a Defence Helicopter Pilot and I had recently completed testing with ADF recruitment which I had successfully unlocked Naval Helicopter Pilot. However, I disclosed in my medical application that I had used an asthma inhaler once four years ago. Unfortunately, this disclosure meant my application was rejected.

This was despite him appealing the decision and demonstrating that he no longer suffered from asthma. This is a kid who has strong academic results, having achieved dux of systems engineering for 2023 with a predicted ATAR of 90.

I could go on. Tiana from Queensland has had similar issues. She says she is 'starting to consider other employment options' and 'just wants to know whether she has been accepted or not'. And Joshua from New South Wales has been attempting to apply to the ADF since April 2022. He scored a high result in the aptitude test and unlocked almost every job within Defence. He was rejected by medical teams, without review by a doctor, for having a history of anxiety disorder during adolescence, which is more and more common with young Australians these days.

The point in all of this is that we are letting down young Australians who are keen to wear our uniform, to put a flag on their shoulder and defend our country. Because of the quality of ADF recruiting, which has been outsourced—first to Manpower and now to Adecco—we are letting young Australians go on by, and they're finding careers elsewhere. We can't afford to do this, especially when we already have a recruiting and retention crisis in the ADF. We will fix it if we win government next year.