Fixing the broken recruitment pipeline

By Desmond Woods OAM*

The multitude and complexity of the problems with ADF recruitment were highlighted by a recent revelation that on 30 May 2024 the Minister for the Armed Forces, Matt Keogh chastised the Swiss Company Adecco which, a year after taking on a $1.4 billion ADF Recruiting contract, had missed its recruiting targets by 28%. He called Adecco ‘wholly deficient’.

He wrote: “As we approach the completion of a full year of recruiting operations in support of the ADF, I am deeply disappointed with Adecco’s performance

In contracting with Adecco, Defence sought a partnership with an entity who could transform Defence’s recruiting process to deliver a modern and scalable recruiting solution. Adecco’s current performance and actions to remediate deficiencies do not convince me that Adecco understands the seriousness of a failure to deliver against ADF need. I require assurance from the highest level that Adecco are taking all practical measures to rapidly improve recruiting results.”[1]

Adecco is only the most recent of many civilian recruitment companies to have disappointed the Australian Department of Defence by its lacklustre performance since this function ceased to be uniform-led a generation ago.

How to fix that institutional problem requires a paper to itself. Here are some dot point suggestions for addressing the most obvious impediments to success and proposed remedies to examples of self-defeating attitudes and practices.

• Start again the normal process of getting uniformed recruiters in ADF shopfronts across Australia to mentor applicants regularly by phone, email and in person until they go to recruit school. Use qualified uniformed reservists for this traditional and essential role.

• Stop treating every applicant who self-reports that they saw their School

Counsellor as still having a psychological disability. They probably don’t. Most kids see their School Counsellor during their school career.

• Stop discriminating against people with well corrected myopia. Airlines don’t. Japanese WWII pilots almost all wore glasses.  It didn’t stop them being deadly accurate. Corrected myopia is not a disability and can be quickly corrected with simple laser surgery if necessary.

• Stop treating childhood asthma as a lifelong disability.  Most kids grow out of it but it can be well controlled if it persists.

• Stop failing women for ADF entry who can’t do 20 perfect floor press ups to a rapid cadence. Almost no women can do this exercise and not many serving men can either. Basic fitness is all that is required for service.

• Start uniformed teams going to secondary schools again and seeing who wants to come to the nearest ADF base for a visit, a weapons shoot, a high ropes course and adventurous training.

• Start to fund and advertise many more community based ADF cadet units and to view them as the first entry point to the ADF for their members who wish to serve.

• Start appointing uniformed ADF schools liaison officers who as a secondary duty go to schools and colleges working with the Careers Advisers and Defence Transition Mentors who have identified potential ADF candidates.

• Start running and staffing Officer Training Units in Universities and TAFEs again and provide some serious cash to support unit activities during vacations including time spent with ADF units.

• Start to reinvigorate and expand the successful ADF Gap Year program which is not sufficiently publicised in schools.

• Start getting young people excited about an ADF service career instead of believing from the media and the Royal Commission into Veterans Suicide’s findings that all serving members end up with PTSD.

 

If these measures are implemented simultaneously and thoroughly nationwide not only will the numbers enquiring about joining the ADF expand but the candidates who then make application and get selected into basic training will also increase dramatically.

Many who under the present long and discouraging regime never apply, withdraw their application or who are currently rejected due to minor medical or alleged and over-diagnosed psychological ‘problems’ will show themselves to be competent recruits once in training.

If the unrealistic entry standards being applied to ADF entry this century had been in force last century during the two World Wars there would have been no Australian mass citizen expeditionary forces.

The numbers who met the current selection criteria would have been far too low to create the Army’s two AIFs, to man the RAN’s ships or fly the RAAF’s aircraft.  Rigid and often outdated and arbitrary standards need to be relaxed if more Australians are to be given a “fair go” at serving in their ADF.  As the Minister pointed out to the contractor last year the stakes are very high for getting this broken recruitment pipeline fixed and flowing recruits into the ADF.

I turn now to a related recruitment matter, which is capable of being fixed with great rapidity.  This is the entry of non-Australian citizens into the ADF to supplement Australian born recruits.

 New Zealand – the Land of Opportunity – for ADF Recruiters

As a matter of priority, the Minister of Defence needs to seek permission to operate ADF recruiting teams across the Tasman and, with the permission of the New Zealand Government, start recruiting from the pool of talent to be found there. There are now 5.3 million New Zealanders across the ditch. That is more than ten times the size of the population of Tasmania where the ADF traditionally recruits well.  One third of New Zealanders at any time are in the age range for military recruitment. In addition to school leavers many are skilled professional graduates and others are tradesmen and women.

Since the Covid pandemic this younger cohort of the population is moving to Australia in record numbers seeking higher wages and secure careers.

The primary targets for recruiters would be school leavers and university students.  But the already skilled men and women in the New Zealand workforce, looking for a new career, would also be a logical pond in which to fish.  This recruiting activity would be not ‘poaching’ future uniformed from the New Zealand Defence Force because those who would apply to join the ADF were never going to join the very small, career limited and much less well paid NZDF.

Australian Citizenship – The insurmountable high hurdle

But there is a major hurdle on our side of the Tasman with recruiting New Zealand civilians. They are currently ineligible to apply to join the ADF.

The Australian Government’s Department of Immigration is still operating under the decades old entry restriction which require that all entrants to the ADF must be Australian citizens at the time of application.

This is true unless they are already in the armed forces of a Commonwealth country and apply to transfer into ours. Serving members of these Commonwealth countries armed forces are exempt from having to be Australian citizens.  These mid-career transferees, from the UK Armed Forces in particular, have for generations provided a most useful and welcome addition to our ADF’s trained strength.  This pipeline should be increased and speeded up as an entry pathway. But the citizenship requirement distinction between civilian and in service applications has no logical rationale and makes it impossible for an otherwise entirely suitable New Zealand, or British, civilian candidate to have an ADF application processed. They are rejected automatically.

This mandated Australian citizenship requirement for civilians is a serious ADF recruitment ‘own goal’. If New Zealanders were permitted to do so many would say to the ADF recruiter ‘show me how to apply.’ NZDF recruiters would be at liberty to recruit in Australia under this shared manpower bilateral arrangement.

Not a Fast Track to Australian Citizenship

Joining the ADF would not be a fast track to Australian citizenship for New Zealanders. They would serve as New Zealand citizens in the ADF with permanent residence.  They would become entitled to apply for Australian citizenship after five years like every other migrant. They would also be subject to the normal ADF Return of Service Obligation (ROSO) period, or Initial Mandatory Period of Service (IMPS).  Consequently, only those New Zealanders who were genuinely keen to have a long-term career in an Australian uniform would apply to join the ADF.

ADF training assistance to the NZDF

In exchange for permission to recruit New Zealanders directly, and to overcome anticipated concern about ‘poaching talent’ from the NZDF, the NZ Department of Defence should be given an entitlement to many more ab initio and advanced training places for RNZN, NZ Army and RNZAF personnel in ADF institutions and on operations.  That MOU could also include more places reserved for NZDF recruits at ADFA.  It makes great good sense to essentially integrate our trans-Tasman education and training and operational inter-operability anyway, but this opening up of opportunities would also provide incentives to remain in uniform to many more New Zealand serving members.

Loan Service to Country of Origin

The most significant bonus for the NZDF would be that under these proposed  arrangements New Zealand citizens, recruited directly into the ADF, could expect, as part of their enlistment conditions, to serve on loan with New Zealand’s Navy, Army and Air Force. This return to their country of origin would normally occur twice during an ADF member’s career with the postings being at different rank levels.  Such sensible and practical arrangements would provide both defence forces with real benefits. It would provide to the NZDF a steady flow of mid-career ADF trained specialists, and it would give the ADF a new target market, with a population the size of Sydney or Melbourne, to recruit from each year.

Clearing away the Department of Immigration hurdles to New Zealand entry

Before this practical recruitment plan can be implemented the Australian Government needs to repeal the restriction on New Zealanders being barred from joining the ADF because they only hold NZ citizenship. It is counterproductive and unnecessary for national security purposes and has no logical justification. Security clearances required for all non-Australian applicants to the ADF are already identical to those for Australian recruits.

Currently this citizenship barrier to civilian entry is impossibly high. New Zealand applicants have to wait, as a civilian resident in Australia, for five years then apply for and be granted Australian citizenship and a passport, before they can even apply to join the ADF, with no guarantee of success.  Almost no one leaps this excessively high bar. The few New Zealanders by birth who are serving in the ADF either transferred in from the NZDF mid-career or grew up in Australia and became citizens while children.

Low Hanging Legislative Fruit

That change to the citizenship regulations for the ADF, which will enable and empower recruiting is ‘low hanging legislative fruit’ that needs attending to as a priority at the next meeting between our Prime Ministers and Ministers of Defence.

Abolishing the Australian Citizenship requirement for the ADF would regularise the existing arrangements between Australia and New Zealand.  Legally, for employment purposes, New Zealanders are not foreigners in Australia and are not treated as such under the New Zealand Australia Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It is illegal to discriminate against kiwi job applicants on the grounds of their nationality – except when they are asking to serve in the ADF.  Why would Australia legislate against the obvious advantages of building the manpower of our both our severely overstretched Defence Forces?  What happened to the Spirit of ANZAC which we jointly commemorate each April on both sides of the Tasman Sea?

Papua New Guinea and the Island States of the Pacific

The same waiver of citizenship provisions for New Zealand entry to the ADF should also apply to Papua New Guinea and Pacific Island applicants seeking to join the ADF.  Those citizens are currently treated as foreigners and are also ineligible to apply without also already having acquired Australian citizenship through residency.

More ADF training places and postings are being made available to PNGDF junior officers on loan to the Australian Army. The next step would be to allow PNG citizens to apply for selection and to be directly recruited.  This would not only provide a useful source of recruits, it would also be a welcome step in boosting PNG’s attachment to the ADF.

Fijian Soldiers  

Since 1998 the British Army has recruited Fijian civilians directly into its regular infantry battalions, the Parachute Regiment, the SAS, the Armoured Corps, the Brigade of Guards and the Royal Marines.  Since 1998 thousands of Fijians have served in the British Army and currently there are 1300 serving members.  Some have won bravery awards in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The ADF doesn’t recruit in Fiji at all, because of the citizenship restrictions which bar the entry for these willing and very able Pacific neighbours to join up. That clear example of a wasted recruiting opportunity would be easily fixed with an MOU between Australian and Pacific governments. This could be done at the next Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) as a multi-lateral MOU initiated by Australia.

The Royal Australian Regiment of Gurkhas

While we are considering non-Australian citizens joining the ADF, our Government could talk to the Government of Nepal and get permission to allow Chief of Army to bring into existence an Australian Gurkha Regiment 2000 strong.  Prior to Covid Gurkhas came to Australia on a bi – annual six week training exercise to Queensland and regularly demonstrated their utility and professionalism.

There are always young Nepali men who are keen to join the British Army’s Gurkhas, and who apply in Kathmandu to do so each year. Some succeed at the rigorous selection stage, but many more do not get offered service, not because they are not suitable but because there are not enough vacant places for them in the UK’s 4000 strong Brigade of Gurkhas.[2] These unsuccessful candidates often join the Indian Army’s Gurkha regiments as a second choice, despite the much lower pay and more spartan living conditions.  If the ADF had a recruitment centre in Nepal there would be a surplus of young men wanting to become an Australian Gurkha soldier.

Attractive Australian Pay and Conditions

Once enlisted ADF Gurkhas would be treated equitably and receive normal, and therefore very attractive pay rates. They would pay into the ADF’s superannuation scheme and earn a pension and an end of service gratuity. Australian citizenship in the normal way could follow after five years continuous service in the ADF.

Most of these Nepali recruits would belong to the same tough Gurkha military families whose men have been, and still are, some of the most respected and courageous troops in the history of soldiering. [3]

These Nepali soldiers and their families would be excellent Australian migrants when their soldiering days are over if they chose to remain in Australia. As there is a never-ending supply of applicants in Nepal, a regularly reinforced regiment of Australian Gurkhas would permanently plug one of the holes in the Australian army’s chronically understrength infantry’s order of battle. Young Australians show no sign of signing up for the infantry, and remaining for a full career, in sufficient numbers to do this. Young Nepali men would do so willingly in the necessary numbers, and remain for a full career of 20 years, if given the chance to enlist in the Australian Gurkha Regiment.

Australia prides itself on being a successful multi-cultural society. It would be highly appropriate for the Australian Defence Force to reflect this diversity and be far more multicultural and inclusive of Polynesian, Melanesian and Nepali members.

Expansion of our military recruiting base to New Zealand, the Pacific and the rest of the Commonwealth, including UK and to Nepal would not be hard or a ‘politically courageous’ thing to do. It would be well accepted as being necessary and in fact highly desirable by the wider Australian community. [4]

Broadening and Deepening the Recruit Pool in a Crisis

Broadening and deepening the military recruitment pool swiftly has been done before when previous generations of Australians needed to recruit at speed the volunteer manpower needed to prepare for war. It is not contested that the international situation in the decade ahead means that Australian defence spending must increase and that nationally we need to ‘lift our game.’

In practice that means swiftly modernising weapons and equipment and also increasing the ADF’s size, flexibility, endurance and lethality. To achieve these outcomes increased manpower is not optional. The Department of Defence needs to set aside the current citizenship legislation and to publicise the fact that there are good jobs and careers with lifelong benefits on offer to interested recruits at home, across the Tasman and far beyond our shores.

We are in a long and persistent recruiting crisis with serious implications for the ability of the ADF to offer even minimal national security now, far less staff its future platforms. Without a change of course the Government’s targets for increasing an all-volunteer ADF by mid-century, by a third, will remain permanently over the horizon.  The Australian government needs to drop the pointless and discriminatory citizenship restrictions which are getting in the way of attracting the best and brightest of our near neighbours from New Zealand and the Pacific and those tough young men from the high Himalayas.

 

Avoiding Military Anorexia

Military anorexia is a term for when a nation’s armed forces have lost so much muscle that they are no longer able to bear the weight of legitimate and reasonable governmental expectations and perform previously routine operations. Military amnesia is when the institutional memory of the force has departed the operations room and the command and control and planning tasks are no longer well understood by those entrusted with them.  In combination these two states are lethal to military effectiveness and must be avoided by all volunteer armed forces such as the ADF.

With an influx of thousands of keen younger men and women who are attracted to the ADF as a career, from within the Australian population, and from overseas, we can avoid military anorexia and increase the ADF to the required and optimal strength it needs to be at to do what is likely to be asked of it in the years ahead.

Numbers still matter on the battlefield, as the war in Ukraine is demonstrating every day. Napoleon is alleged to have said, ‘Mass has a beauty all its own!’

It has also been said by those that have observed warfare closely that, ‘Other things being equal, victory in battle, goes to the side with the bigger battalions.’

The ADF cannot afford not to grow its numbers if it is to remain a credible fighting force, and a force for good in the world. Now is the time for bold and effective changes to its faltering recruiting practices which are no longer fit for purpose.

[1] Canberra RiotAct and Canberra Times 18 March 2025

[2] Gurkhas serve as engineers as well as infantry in the British Army

[3] Gurkhas served at Gallipoli, in North Africa, in Italy and most recently in 1999 in East Timor with their ANZAC brothers in arms. While serving in the British Indian Army Gurkhas and British regular battalions, saved India from being invaded by the Japanese when they defeated them on Kohima Ridge.

[4] Increasingly the Australian Catholic church’s parishes are staffed by migrant clergy from around the world, because the numbers of local catholic recruits to the priesthood has become negligible. These overseas recruits to man the pulpits are welcomed by the wider community, as would overseas born troops serving Australia in the ADF.