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ADF on hunt for foreign recruits

<LI class=byline>Mark Dodd
January 13, 2007
DEFENCE force recruiters are increasingly looking overseas to help ease a growing skills crisis blamed partly on the resources boom.

The Royal Australian Navy is so hungry for officers and sailors it has listed 38 job categories it will sponsor for permanent residency. Figures obtained by The Weekend Australian show more than 1500 technical defence vacancies alone need to be filled. And while the Howard Government has been happy to trumpet its $22 billion defence spending splurge, little thought appears to have been given to the number of highly trained men and women needed to run it.
The 12,800-strong navy has 696 technical vacancies to fill.
The RAN's website lists 38 categories of vacancies for which the navy is willing to sponsor permanent residency visas through a special agreement with the federal departments of Employment and Workplace Relations, and Immigration and Multicultural Affairs.
There is no impediment to foreigners from any country joining the ADF as long as they meet Australian immigration and permanent residency requirements as well as obtaining a national security clearance and meeting the normal defence entry standards. As soon as they are eligible they must become Australian citizens.
"Foreign nationals may join the ADF in competition with other suitable applicants irrespective of previous military service. They must meet Australian immigration and permanent residency requirements as well as the normal ADF entry standards," a defence spokeswoman said. "Overseas applications from foreign nationals with extensive military experience will be considered for positions where skill shortages exist in the ADF. Overseas recruitment is designed to supplement, but not replace, Australian domestic recruiting efforts."
Navy vacancies include aviation engineers, helicopter pilots, electronic warfare analysts for submarines, but also chaplains and musicians. It is a similar story with the RAAF.
With a nominal permanent strength of 13,000, the air force needs 457 technicians to keep its fleet of jet fighters, transports and helicopters at peak operational readiness.
The army appears to be faring best of the three services. The 25,000-strong force has 362 vacancies in its technical trades.
But with the delivery of new Abrams tanks now under way, and armed reconnaissance helicopters rolling off the assembly line in Queensland, senior commanders are becoming increasingly concerned at a growing deficiency in skilled tradespeople. Australia's seemingly insatiable resources boom gets much of the blame.
"Queensland and Western Australia in the mining industry there, it's going gangbusters," Chief of the Army, Lieutenant General Peter Leahy, said.
"You can't blame young blokes looking at $150,000 and saying, 'I'm into that.' I think we've got to match that, but it's not all about money."
While Britain and New Zealand have been the traditional recruiting pool for the ADF because of the similar levels of professional standards and training, the dragnet has been extended to Canada and now the US where ads have been placed in military publications seeking appropriately skilled new recruits for the ADF.
The Australian Defence Association's Neil James said there was no magic solution to solve the recruitment crisis.
British submariners had been attracted to the RAN in the past.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...7-2702,00.html

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