It's happening again, suddenly the politicians are wondering why service retention rates are low. A recent report stated that on average 30% of service personnel are considering leaving, citing a wide range of reasons, including poor equipment, low pay rates and instability.

The minister for Defense, Senator Hill didn't win many friends when he was shown on TV news laughingly deriding service personnel's complaints - all we can say is that he should take a reality check, go out and learn for himself and stop taking notice of his minders.

One area that's set for investigation is recruiting. No surprise, we've been reporting on this since 2000. Horror stories abound, yet the "system" does little to fix the problem. We even had army PR phone us once when we made enquiries as to problems we'd uncovered - not so much because they were concerned about helping solve the problem, but because one of our associates just happened to have the same name as a prominent TV journalist. This flushed PR into action and we soon had Captain Spin-Doctor on the blower rattling off the party line.

It was obvious he wasn't concerned about learning the facts - his job was to patch around the truth and make it all sound better. Full of platitudes and newspeak, the Captain was determined to paint a pretty picture irrespective of the situation. And that's part of the problem. There's people in high places with their heads in the clouds who aren't prepared to get hands on and find out for themselves. Instead they allow themselves to be snowed by jargon, watching with awe as the marketing gurus crank up their Power Point presentations and prattle on about how the new defense web site is taking a million hits a day and the PHP form submit system is working in a robust and seamless fashion.

Take a hint Senator Hill, act like a leader and stop laughing at the service men and women who have to suffer your tasteless jibes without recourse. Take a hard look at the organization that's running the recruiting system, then believe very little of what they tell you. One of the reasons they aren't making the numbers has nothing to do with the economy, it's because they are losing too many potential recruits before they even reach the start line. In a few words, frustration and inefficiency is causing many to give up when their applications mysteriously vanish in a puff of smoke. Recruiting shouldn't be an obstacle course, however it seems that the civilian outfit who's involved either unwittingly or intentionally believes this to be the case.

As for the other problems, the government is still getting defense on the cheap. It's not a good look when soldiers are buying part of their own kit because they're not satisfied with issue equipment. We've even heard of soldiers running short of ammunition during training, the reason being the budget allocation has been spent. What's next? They pay their own airfare into operational zones?

And what about allowances? Why when soldiers are posted overseas, as was the case in the Solomons, should they have to wait 90 days before their salary becomes tax free, and is only then refunded? The excuse is that it's an administrative "thing" by the tax department to prevent free loaders from hopping on the gravy train. Such parsimony only leads to discontent.

The root cause, however, is that not enough is being spent on defence as a proportion of GDP. We're about 1.6%, it should be approaching 3%.

So gentlemen politicians, get off your tax payer funded backsides and open your eyes - otherwise one day when you need soldiers to save your expensive hides, they just might not be there!

Editor May 24, 2005