Deputy Speaker,

I welcome the Honourable Member for Canning’s motion on growing the ADF by 18,500 people by 2040.

This is a burning national interest we on both sides of the House and Senate should support with more than words.

Defence currently employs 77,000 uniformed personnel, which is 5.4 per cent or 4,000 below the minimum required.

The Defence Minister pointed to what he called a “personnel crisis” driven by a growing inability to retain ADF members.

The Labor Party committed to boosting the force by 18,500 out to 2040, reaching around 101,000 including civilians.

So far, Defence has planned its growth of 12,500 people.

10,449 of those will be uniformed Australian Defence Force Members.

2,051 of those will be Australian Public Servants.

Government is awaiting the recommendations of the Defence Strategic Review, announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in August 2022.

But there are things we can do right now.

Defence has already started making changes to drive recruitment and retention and grow its workforce, including:

• Expanding the ADF Family Health Benefit, which increases reimbursable services and allowance for dependents, which came into effect in December 2022.
  
  
• Changing Remote Locality Leave Travel, which includes an additional trip home per year for those working in remote locations, which came into effect in November 2022.
  
  
• Changing Defence travel policy which makes allowances more accessible, which came into effect in October 2022, and has received significant positive feedback from Defence personnel.
  
  
• Expanding the Defence Assisted Study Scheme and Study Bank programs, aimed at improving and increasing access to education opportunities, which will come into effect in late January 2023 with benefits realised from the 2023 new academic year onwards.
  
  
• The revised ADF Higher Duties Allowance policy, which comes into effect in early 2023 will properly compensate ADF members when they conduct higher duties.

The Honourable Member for Canning’s motion also rightly points to the need to build a strong values-based narrative of service, duty, and country to appeal to new ADF recruits.

This is a critical factor.

In an insightful piece for the Australian Army Research Centre, Tingting Luo, an Army Officer who worked in the 6th Brigade and the 7th Brigade, pointed to three limitations.

The first is exactly this point that current defence recruitment campaigns sell the ADF as a kind of individual lifestyle choice.

The framing is all about what the ADF can do for you, and not what you can for your country, which is a problem.

Luo also suggests that the ADF could show more flexibility in leveraging civilian qualifications, which is often an issue.

Finally, she calls for a new recruitment and retention task force to take the work forward of expanding the ADF.

The Government is working hard to ensure that recruitment processes are as effective and quick as possible to ensure that bureaucratic stoppages do not stop the ADF in its tracks.

Thanks Deputy Speaker.