Can our Pacific neighbours help meet our defence force manpower shortage?

The Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister has been refreshingly frank when it comes to the serious manpower shortages in our army, navy and the RAAF.

Despite an intensive recruitment campaign, including incentives, recruitment is about 5000 short of target. You could sense the frustration in Minister Marles voice when he outlined the problem.

The time has come for a more innovative approach to recruitment. And we need to look no further than our own Pacific neighbourhood.

Essentially only PNG and Fiji have substantial defence forces. In the case of PNG it has suffered through inadequate funding, outdated facilities, too much indiscipline and, sadly, even corruption.

The Fiji military is better managed and funded. It plays a useful role in international peace keeping missions.

Despite significant funding support from Australia, improvements in the PNG defence force have been slow.

The PNG Government is rightly preoccupied with law and order - the preserve of the police force, which has also been chronically underfunded since Independence, not to mention poor discipline.

We need to continue training and equipment support for the PNGDF.

But why should not young Papua New Guineans - men and women - be offered the chance to join the ADF. The same applies to young Fijians, and probably Tongans.

Prior to Independence a number of Papua New Guineans served in the ADF including in officer ranks.

The most prominent was one of my good friends, Brigadier General Ted Diro, the first national to command the PNGDF.

Like many Papua New Guineans Ted had politics in his blood. It came as no great surprise when he took me out to lunch and told me he was resigning as PNGDF commander and would stand for the Central regional seat at the 1982 national elections.

I warned him of some of the hazards of political life, but I did not discourage him at all. He won his seat and became Opposition Leader in the new Parliament. By 1988 he had teamed up with Pangu's Rabbie Namaliu and rolled the Wingti Government. He was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Public Service Minister.

As he was about to embark on an impressive agenda of long needed public sector reform he was cut down by the Ombudsman Commission over alleged leadership code breaches.

In a country desperately short of high-quality ministers his career was effectively over. Sadly!

His son Siali had followed him into the army and he was trained at the Duntroon Military College. Ted invited to be his guest at his graduation. It was a memorable occasion, and what stood out was the regard in which he was especially stood out was the high regard in which Siali was held. He eventually returned to the PNGDF and early this year he was appointed and the PNG military attaché at the High Commission in Canberra.

I digress. But the point I want to make is that an innovative recruitment campaign in the region would help fill the manpower gap in the ADF.

Some of the recruits might be given fixed term visas other might be offered visas that would include the possibility of gaining Australian citizenship.

What this proposal would do is build goodwill between Australians and our Pacific neighbourhood.

That would be a most welcome addition to the task of restoring goodwill in our region. That goodwill cannot be achieved by generous assistance alone.

The argument will be advanced that we are denuding the manpower capacity of our neighbourhood. The flaw in that argument is that certainly in the case of PNG a number of good, disciplined force members, officers and other ranks have left the service out of a sense of frustration.

But recruitment does not have to have defence force training as a condition.

Each year a significant number of students graduate from universities and TAFE colleges. For the majority, the prospect of securing employment is just about zero.

Any recruitment would have to take into account family links with Australia and similar links that would make recruits suited to integrate into a very different lifestyle.

So how many might be recruited? It would not be hard to find 1500

It is certainly worth looking seriously at the possibilities.

If young Australians don't want to serve in our disciplined forces I'm sure we have neighbours who would grab the opportunity with both hands!!