Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the shadow minister for bringing the motion for debate and acknowledge his service and genuine and abiding interest in defence and defence personnel issues. Although I haven't served, we know each other and I trust he'd acknowledge my genuine and longstanding interest, since I was elected, in defence personnel issues and now as chair of the defence subcommittee.

The motion is correct: the former government did indeed announce plans to grow Defence by 18,500 people from 2024 to 2040. I want to be very clear: I do support such significant growth in the ADF. It is necessary given our deteriorating strategic circumstances, and it's essential if we're going to operate new stuff. There's not much point investing hundreds of billions of dollars in new capability and kit and all the money that goes in sustainment if you don't have the skilled people to operate it. You can't just recruit them; it takes years, or in some cases decades, to get senior technicians and senior officers baked, skilled and ready.

But it's important also to understand the context. The previous government grew the ADF by 2,000 people in 10 years. The previous government's announcement of the increase was just that: it was an announcement. None of it was funded. The billions of dollars you need to go and recruit 18,500 people over that time span were not in the budget. Indeed, there was no plan for delivery. It wasn't only a lack of funding; there was no actual plan for delivery. The motion is right: in recent years, the average net gain, instead of the 1,000 we need, has been about 300. It's a serious issue and a big problem, but, sadly, it is another example of the former Prime Minister's penchant for making announcements, with lots of flags behind him in this case, but not actually delivering or taking it seriously. It wasn't just the vaccines. He was making announcements with no delivery plan in the critical realm of national security and defence, in the dying days of a dying government.

The current government didn't create the problem, but we will take responsibility for addressing it, and all ideas are welcome. I appreciate many of the thoughts and contributions of the shadow minister. To be fair, it's a tough recruiting environment, as they say. Over the last year, I've chatted to senior officers and junior officers about exactly this issue. When the economy is going well, Defence struggles. When the economy's not going well, Defence finds it easier to recruit, because it's competing with private sector salaries. In the case of technicians, the people who, frankly, we should have on red alert right now—cyber specialists and grease monkeys, as one of them called themselves—these are people who can, frankly, earn vastly larger sums in the private sector. Defence is competing with mining, oil, gas, resources, construction and so on. But it's not just a now issue. As I said, the pipeline has a 10-year impact.

The motion appeals for the 'values based narrative of service, duty and country in appealing to our next generation of ADF recruits'. These are worthy and noble values—Anzac values, as was said. They sound great, and they'll no doubt play well in the party room. But we need to be far more focused, forensic, deliberate and serious if we're going to actually fix this problem.

The first point is that we need to focus most urgently on retention, not recruitment. I put this to the Chief of the Defence Force directly—I'm not breaking any state secrets—to say it's an in-and-out equation. The quickest, most urgent thing we can do is to slow the rate of people moving, stabilise the situation and focus our efforts on that while we do that work and wait for the economy to change, frankly. That's just a mathematical fact. We need to not get swayed about values and ads on TV; we need to look at the here and now and what we do to persuade, convince, cajole and reward people to stay in the service. That, indeed, is what the Chief of the Defence Force said.

The government is awaiting the recommendations of the Defence Strategic Review announced by the Prime Minister, and the Force Posture Review, because it's not just about numbers of course; it's about where you want people. You can't really shape a recruitment strategy until you have some clue about where you're trying to recruit people and ask them to serve and stay.

The government has a new recruiting services contract, to enable Defence to update its recruitment system. It's a range of marketing, IT systems, medical and psychological testing—all that kind of stuff, as you'd expect. And we should be market testing, frankly. I hate to say it, but we really need evidence, not assertions, as to what the best recruiting methods will be. I wouldn't suggest the former Prime Minister, the marketing guy, be let anywhere near this, but he could do redemption, I suppose, with a bit of free advice. But one of the key aspects of the new contract is to drive down the time it takes to recruit someone—

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