Australian Broadcasting Corporation
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
LOCATION:
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2006/s1562146.htm
Broadcast: 03/02/2006
Military struggling to meet recruitment targets
Reporter: Mark Bannerman
KERRY O'BRIEN: For such a vast continent, Australia has a small defence force. The combined personnel of the Army, Navy and Air Force would barely fill a medium-sized sport stadium. Even at such modest levels, the military cannot meet its own recruitment targets - and an ageing population means the pool of potential recruits is shrinking. One former defence chief has publicly called for the re-introduction of conscription to solve this future dilemma. But no politician is going to rush to that solution, and do the problems in Defence run much deeper anyway? Mark Bannerman reports.
FEMALE VOICE: You don't have to be an iron man or iron woman to join the Army Reserve.
VOICE: I wasn't just looking for any old job. That's why I became an office for the navy.
MARK BANNERMAN: They are the kind of ads intended to a-attract the best and brighter. Yet despite a $500 million recruitment campaign, it's now clear that fewer and fewer young people want a career in the Defence Force.
AIR VICE MARSHAL PETER CRISS (RET), FORMER AIR COMMANDER, AUSTRALIA: There are two problems - one is too many walking out the door and the second problem is there's not enough walking in the door.
ROBERT McCLELLAND, OPPOSITION DEFENCE SPOKESMAN: I think it is the sleeping giant facing our Defence Forces, the issue of recruitment and retention.
MARK BANNERMAN: If anyone doubted just how big this problem is, former defence chief Admiral Chris Barrie confirmed it. Warning that with fewer young people entering the work force each year, in the future national service would be the only way we could defend this country. How serious is that problem?
ADMIRAL CHRIS BARRIE (RET), CHIEF OF DEFENCE 1998-2002: Well, I guess I can illustrate it this way; a few years ago the Australian Institute of management put out a little bit in their magazine that said, between the year 2020 and 2030, 40,000 people would enter the Australian work force. Well even by today's standard we need 60,000 of the 40,000 so you can see that we have got a potential looming crisis.
MARK BANNERMAN: The reaction to his claim was immediate.
NEIL JAMES, AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE ASSOCIATION: Well the big problem with the universal scheme is you'd flood the Defence Force with more people they could possibly use and we'd have the same problem we had in the 1950s where so much of the Defence Force was tied up with training conscripts, it wasn't able to do all the things we need a defence force to do.
MARK BANNERMAN: Admiral Barrie's projections are persuasive, but they are, of course, only projections and he has his critics too. They say using these kinds of figures simply camouflages a greater problem inside the Defence Force, in terms of its structure and the way it treats its people.
NEIL JAMES: There are two key reasons why we have a retention problem. The first one is operational tempo. People are busier than they've ever been and the families are putting pressure on them to say, "Well why do you have to go again, why isn't it someone else's turn? And secondly they're not paid enough. And they're too easily poached boy outside organisations. The solution, quite frankly, is to have more of them and pay them more.
MARK BANNERMAN: Claims of a personnel crisis in defence are nothing new. In 1998 on this program, Lieutenant General John Grey warned the army had been cut so much it might struggle to do its job.
LIEUTENANT GENERAL JOHN GREY (RET), FORMER CHIEF OF GENERAL STAFF: My view is that in terms of critical mass we may well have crossed that threshold. I thought when I was retiring as chief that we were pretty close to the the threshold then and the numbers have gone down significantly since.
MARK BANNERMAN: Ironically one of the key people behind that downsizing was Admiral Chris Barrie, exactly the same man who now says we need compulsory national service. Lieutenant General Grey says when you were the head of Defence Forces you were cutting the heart out of the Defence Forces by reducing the numbers and he warned then that there would be a crisis in the military. He seems to have been right.
ADMIRAL CHRIS BARRIE (RET): Well, cutting numbers, and yet we've failed to attract even what we require now.
MARK BANNERMAN: But why were you cutting numbers if you now say we need more people?
ADMIRAL CHRIS BARRIE (RET): Well I don't say we need more people. What I'm saying is the available pool of people from which to get the people we want is slowing drying up.
MARK BANNERMAN: But you are saying that we can't even now get the people we need.
ADMIRAL CHRIS BARRIE (RET): I'm saying it's a struggle and it is a struggle. If you ask any of the service chiefs about it, it's a struggle and it's something that keeps them awake at night.
MARK BANNERMAN: If some continue to talk about pay rates and operational tempos, others believe there are even more concerning reasons why people won't sign up.
JUANITA PHILLIPS, ABC NEWSREADER: To other news now and an inquiry into claims of abuse, violence and suicide in the defence forces has condemned Australia's military justice system.
FELICITY DAVEY, ABC NEWSREADER: The changes come after a damning Senate report on the military's handling of bullying and abuse claims.
AIR VICE MARSHAL PETER CRISS (RET): was failed by the leadership both civilian and military of the bureaucracy of the Defence Department.
MARK BANNERMAN: Peter Criss does not make this criticism lightly. He joined the Air Force in 1968 and learnt to fly and became a top gun. By 1999 he was in charge of Australia's operational air force, overseeing the deployment to East Timor. Then, without warning, he was sacked from his job. The reason? His superior officer claimed he was a control freak.
AIR VICE MARSHAL PETER CRISS (RET): Yes. Called a control freak and I'm going to remove you from command. Why? No reason. Now, that was from a service chief. The defence force chief then spoke to me a week later and said, well, that service chief is staying, the two of you can't stay in the same organisation, you've got to go.
MARK BANNERMAN: So, were you given a chance to rebut these?
AIR VICE MARSHAL PETER CRISS (RET): No, because I didn't know what I had to rebut.
MARK BANNERMAN: The chief of the Defence Force at that time was Admiral Chris Barrie.
ADMIRAL CHRIS BARRIE (RET): Peter Criss was in a very difficult situation and I agree with that - that was a very difficult situation. And as best we could we tried to deal with Peter's situation.
MARK BANNERMAN: On reflection though, was it done properly?
ADMIRAL CHRIS BARRIE (RET): I think it was, yes.
MARK BANNERMAN: But, if Admiral Barrie thinks Peter Criss's dismissal was fair, others do not. A series of inquiries backed Criss finding he'd been denied natural justice and suggested an apology was in order. Forced into early retirement, he's had a lot of time to think about the lessons from his experience, and, right now, Peter Criss's message is clear: the unfair treatment of personnel is destroying the Defence Force from within.
AIR VICE MARSHAL PETER CRISS (RET): I have a lot of friends who looked at the way I was personally treated and say, "My goodness, if they do that to you, they could do it to me, I am not going to stay in this organisation." And leave. Then, on the other hand though, you've got people looking to join the service, or parents, more particularly, looking on behalf of their children to join the service look at what's going on and say, "I don't want my child to be a part of. that. I don't want my child to suicide on a training camp." And I don't blame them.
MARK BANNERMAN: So where does this leave our defence forces? Clearly there are deep-seated problems that may involve demographics, but they may also go deeper. Whoever is right, one thing is clear - if we don't do something we may not have an effective defence force in the future.
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