Editorial: Defence cash must target low morale

Opinion

The Government doubtless hopes that a $4.6 billion boost in spending will diminish much of the election-year heat over this country's defence preparedness. Such should not be the case, given the vagueness of the 10-year plan announced yesterday for recruiting and retaining military personnel. What remained unsaid was far more important than the stream of generalities emanating from the Beehive.

Nowhere did the Government indicate that it understood why personnel were quitting the Defence Force in such numbers. Neither did it explain precisely how, and when, this injection of funding would reverse the trend. The fact is that without significant spending on equipment which befits a fully fledged combat force, personnel retention and recruitment will remain a hard slog.

People are leaving the armed services not because the wages are poor - there have been four pay increases in the past four years - or because the employment conditions are particularly wretched. They are going because of the lack of job satisfaction and the limited opportunities on offer.

Poor morale affects all three services, but, most particularly, the Navy and the Air Force, which have been emasculated by the Government. When the Air Force was deprived of its strike wing, it also lost its top pilots and support personnel to Australia and Britain. Its main task now is to keep aged Hercules transport aircraft and helicopters in the air to support the Army. Upgrades will come too late to leaven the attitude of many who have had to deal with the persistent breakdown of this equipment.

The Navy now comprises just two fighting ships, the overworked Anzac frigates. The arrival soon of new patrol boats and a multi-role vessel is all about coastguard policing and Army support. It is not the stuff of protecting trade routes, traditionally the main role of any Navy worthy of the name.

Even the Army, the beneficiary, in equipment terms at least, of the Government's determination to transform Defence Force personnel into peacekeepers, is troubled. Not only were far too many light armoured vehicles bought but they have proved problematic from the start. Their operational record with other armed forces reinforces the folly of this concentrated use of precious resources.

What, then, is the Government's response to the Defence Force's dire state and dismal morale? A 10-year plan that supplies no detail of when the $4.6 billion will be spent. A plan, indeed, that smacks of the kind of imprecise long-term programme trotted out by governments in election year.

There is, for example, no indication of how much money will be spent in the first year, or subsequent years. Neither is there any detail on how it will be spent. Is the idea to continue along the same track and recruit more foot soldiers and engineers for peacekeeping work? Or will more specialised spending reflect an acknowledgment that we do not live in the Prime Minister's rightly ridiculed "benign strategic environment".

Regrettably, what may be gleaned from the spending announcement is not promising. This $4.6 billion is being portrayed as the complement to the Government's 2002 Long-term Development Plan. That document gave $3 billion over 10 years to the Defence Force to buy equipment. It is the plan that, among other things, consigned a major part of the Navy to coastguard duty.

The Government is right in one respect. There is an urgent need to replace the personnel drifting away from the Defence Force. And it will take time to recruit and train people to operate the present equipment and that to be bought over the next decade.

But that hardware is hardly of a calibre likely to attract a host of top-flight recruits to the armed services, or to retain them. Until the Army, Air Force and Navy resemble a real Defence Force, one in which people can serve with pride, the ranks will continue to thin. And the Government will be guilty of continuing to disregard the realities of an unstable world.