Shadow defence minister Andrew Hastie has criticised Australia's multimillion-dollar Defence Force recruitment campaign as not potent or clear enough and challenged Anthony Albanese or Richard Marles get personally involved Bob Hawke or even Narendra Modi-style.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
In an interview with The Canberra Times, Mr Hastie said Defence and the Australian defence industry are seeking greater leadership from the Albanese government in areas such as recruitment and procurement and are struggling under the weight of the current number of reviews.
The former SAS captain said defence industry, in particular, is seeking a "demand signal" from government for sovereign capacity work but is dealing with what he regards as a "deferral of decisions".
Mr Hastie said it is a matter of political leadership, particularly as Defence is asked, in the recent landmark Defence Strategic Review, to be "bold and innovative" as it struggles to recruit and retain enough of the right people.
"The speed of the boss is the speed of the team," he said.
"It comes down to the Deputy Prime Minister making the case to young Australians and then sending the signal through Defence that we have a message of service and we're calling on people to join up to protect Australians the future."
"Bob Hawke did a great ad as the prime minister back in the '80s. You can look it up on YouTube where he's in a helicopter talking about the uncertainty of his period.
"It was an ad for the Ready Reserve and you compare it to what we see today. And the one thing I will say about Bob Hawke is he had a strong message for young Australians. And I think we can learn from that."
In a more modern take, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently suited up and took to the skies in a home-grown Tejas fighter jet.
READ MORE:
The former Labor Prime Minister appeared in the 1986 one-minute ad stating that apathy "was the enemy" then explaining further that apathy over Australia's defence was the "assumption that things may not change in the future."
The ad has Mr Hawke, with uniformed reservists running in the background with haste, talking about the men and women in the reserves giving up time and effort simply because they "believe in Australia". The ad's ending tagline is "Army Reserve, they are doing something for Australia."
Asked by this masthead if he was interested, Mr Marles said he would take advice from the experts on how to sell the message of a career. "I don't think it's necessarily about our faces," he replied.
This year's Defence Strategic Review outlined "acute" workforce challenges in the ADF and asked that new strategies be "bold and innovative", recruitment targets are improved by next year and recruitment times are reduced to days not months.
The current ADF ad campaign represents the biggest recruitment drives since the Vietnam war one and is of the highest government spends on advertising.
Mr Hastie welcomes the effort, but said it could be so much better.
"Make it stronger and articulate it more clearly," he said. "We've got this amazing tradition of ANZAC which we celebrate on Remembrance Day and on Anzac Day, but somehow it's off limits for for recruiting.
READ MORE DEFENCE REVIEW:
- Ukraine experience exposes old mindset in new conflict
- The government's choices as it considers a new surface ship plan
- I don't want ADF repeatedly called on to clean up climate mess
- Tensions must be managed, not ignored. Time to bring funding forward
- No time to drop guard, but full-on cyber war has been a non-event
- There will be some pain, but Defence must change, Marles says
"If people can get out of bed at the crack of dawn on ANZAC Day because they commemorate the service given surely that's going to be a potent and powerful message to recruit people into the ADF."
Mr Hastie said he hoped that current conflict around the world could help young Australians think about a potential career in Defence, but he said concerns over remuneration also need to be addressed.
There is concern from industrial bodies that defence specialists are getting nowhere near market value.
"We've got to be prepared to pay people to join the Defence Force, particularly in specialist areas, recruiting Submariners of the future, cyber warriors of the future, people in key capabilities they need to be remunerated in a way that says to the Australian people 'we value what you do'", Mr Hastie said.
"Yes, it's about service but we also recognise that it's a unique form of service, and therefore, we want to incentivise it and recognise it."
Mr Hastie suggests the role of the reserves needs to be recast as "the Swiss Army knife of the ADF", particularly as the character of warfare has changed and special skills need to be drawn from in times of crisis.
"We've seen that in Ukraine. We've seen that in Israel, with the use of drones with the UN's use of different technologies," he said.
"And so with the reserves we want to grow the link between the Australian people and the Defence Force.
"I think that's a really important link that ADF needs and also for social licence. I want capital cities being proud of their reservists and actively supportive and that means we've got to broaden our reserves beyond what they do now."
But he claimed that Defence was weighed down by review after review.
"We've got this deferral of decisions from the government," Mr Hastie said. "The service fleet review is going to take longer than the strategic review itself. And that's a problem."
"There's a lot of uncertainty in South Australia about the Hunter program. And again, the government has the report, but we're not going to hear from them until at least Q2 next year.
"The government has to lead. They have to drive the department. They have to drive the Defence Force. If the situation is as urgent as they claim it to be then they've got a lead."