Generation Z Australians are not joining the Australian Defence Force. Much has been said of why a career in the military isn't connecting with the younger generation.
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"Do we need to talk up humanitarian missions?" or "Perhaps we should mention you can be paid to learn a trade?" are often quickfire responses given to the conundrum.
Yet there is a much more fundamental reason that our Defence community fails to grapple with. After 65 cumulative years of military operations over our 123 years as a federated nation, has defence finally drawn down all the social licence it is going to get?
As a person in Gen Z, I think of Defence service and know that our nation's forces undertake humanitarian work. I know that the ADF plays a core role in major national emergencies. I know that there are decent humans trying to do decent work in service of our nation.
Yet when I didn't join the ADF it wasn't bushfire relief on my mind. It wasn't that Defence's recruiters used the wrong lingo with me or that the prospect of paid university wasn't attractive.
It was the decades long engagement in Afghanistan. It was my Dad's broken neck from the RAAF, my grandad's exposure to chemicals cleaning fuel tanks in Malaysia, and my great-grandad's nightmares from driving his ambulance in Africa and Greece.
It was the fact that when the parades are done, the speeches are given, and the Last Post has been played, it is the Defence families of this country who get up and go about their day carrying the marks passed down through the generations of service.
After five generations of take from Australia's modern military, why should the ADF expect to without question receive a sixth?
Fighting for what?
There is waning national pride in young Australians, as well as a waning sense of willingness to fight for their country. This unwillingness is not created overnight, it is endemic of a decline in the treatment of our Defence Force by Australia's political and defence community.
The compounding of the Tampa affair, our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, the allegations of war crimes, and the endless attempts at Khaki elections means the ADF has been debased to what almost feels like a prop. Seen only as a photo op and a chance for a flashy spending headline in the news cycle.
These affairs, this treatment, steadily bruises over the years. The reckoning of which is not the bad headlines or adverse inquiry findings. There is no sudden arrival, nor quick solution to these issues.
The cost comes with a steady erosion of the ADF's status in our community.
The cost comes when the next generation is asked to look at their Defence Force, and to believe that this is an organisation that is in service of something greater.
Looking back at my family, at the Middle East operations, and the political treatment of Defence, what the something greater is remains unclear to me.
Why would I serve a force that rips billions of dollars from the Commonwealth's budget, fights decade long conflicts, and treats its veterans as an afterthought?
Tomorrow's Defence
For all the calamity over the ADF's recruitment crisis, there is a lot of hurt to come. The National Defence Strategy was right in saying that we need a fundamental transformation of the recruitment and retention system.
It doesn't go far enough however in spelling out that recruitment and retention is fundamentally about purpose.
In democratic societies, volunteer professional forces must fundamentally reflect their population. They require a link, even if it is tested at times, to the people which they call for service from. The ADF has gone past testing the link to our community.
To start rebuilding this link, to begin to articulate a purpose, our ADF needs to first get its house in order. Young Australians aren't stupid.
We aren't looking for a flashy recruitment ad or a free uni degree. We expect our military to act in a way that reflects our nation's values. The conduct in Afghanistan was abhorrent, and yet the most pressing public rebuke so far was the stripping, then reinstating of unit medals.
When Canada's Airborne Regiment engaged in the killing of non-combatants and displayed a serious breakdown in culture the unit was disbanded.
An unequivocable statement to the public that their military is a serious organisation. One that can regulate itself and its members in a way that shows commitment to a fundamental purpose. A commitment to reflecting its nation's values.
When the ADF fails, it must show it can grapple with the consequences.
From there the true test begins for our ADF. Show the next generation that ours is a force with purpose, don't talk up humanitarian remits; live them. Be a force of the pacific and of the nation, not a force of expeditionary wars in far-off places with far-off allies.
Show tomorrow's Australia, in a time where our diplomatic priority is Pacific relations, that tomorrow's Defence is there.
The ADF must enter a period of serious reflection of what its purpose is.
Reflection that goes deeper than a new recruiting ad and grabbing at quick policy fixes only to join another far-off endless war.
- Daniel Griffin, 25, from Lyneham, has had six family members over three generations serve in the ADF across the RAAF and army.
