Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the previous speaker's points in relation to the procurement of equipment. What I want to talk about today is something far more important. It's the people behind the equipment. It's the personnel that I'm worried about. When you start looking at the ADF's mission and purpose, which is 'to defend Australia and its national interests in order to advance Australia's security and prosperity', it is a very clear, concise, succinct and direct statement. That's what mission statements are like. If we compare that to the paradox, conundrum and inconsistency behind what has been released, talked about lately and mooted by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Defence, they obviously find that defence and security in this country is uppermost, and yet the Deputy Prime Minister happens to be the Minister for Defence. It's a part-time role. I find that a conundrum. I can't get my head around it. Even Beazley devoted himself when he was the Minister for Defence. He was a good minister, but that was his whole and sole role. That's the conundrum I face.

He talked about procurement, including precision guided missiles, LAND 400, LAND 8116, LAND 129 and a number of other projects. He's certainly across his subject. But I've been raising this point for several years: if we are not careful as a Defence Force—as a country—then we are going to have insufficient personnel trained to operate that equipment. It takes a long time, particularly given the specialist roles that we're seeing in Defence. Defence is becoming a multifaceted technical game. I spent two decades of my life training electronic warfare operators at 7th Combat Signal Regiment. It used to take me four to five years to train an operator. Look at the exit rates from Defence that we've seen recently. It has been revealed that in the year ending 30 June 2023 there was an outflow of 1,373 people from Defence and an inflow of 1,252. Those numbers don't add up. Defence also confirmed that in that year they were some 800 people below their recruitment target. They'd achieved only 41.7 per cent of the target. Defence is bleeding personnel in the well-trained scientific and specialist roles that we need to put behind these pieces of equipment.

The other question I continually raise is: who is controlling this? Where is what we call the C4—the command, control, communications and computer systems—to target this equipment and pick up targets? Where is that? Where are the surveillance and reconnaissance behind all that, and where are the trained operators who put a weapons system on a target? Numbers like this are disgraceful. It breaks my heart to see numbers like this out of our Defence recruiting statistics. My job was to stand in front of diggers to train them and make sure they did their job. My job, as the interface between the enlisted soldiers and the officers, was one that I took very seriously. I stood up for them, and, when the wrong thing was being done to them, I was the one who stood in front of them. You build a very close bond with those diggers. At the moment, they're doing the right thing, but at strategic and government levels they're not seeing a focus back on personnel. No-one's mentioned it today! No-one's mentioned diggers. The member for Herbert did—probably because he was one and has felt like them. We need to bring the focus back onto personnel.

You can carry on all you like and interject, but the subject of personnel is very serious to me. It's a subject that I think needs to be at the forefront—

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