Rebuilding Australia through improving Defence preparedness

Professor Geoffrey Blainey posits Australia was better prepared to help confront the challenge facing the Empire in 1914 at the outbreak of WWI through having a solid civilian soldier corps. Good point; I cannot disagree. Our civilian soldiers at least had a rudimentary military training and melded, as a rule, quite well into the martial lifestyle when needed.

The basic military training administered gave the civilian troops the mate-bonding and the underlying espirit de corps within the civilian community which is so lacking in today’s generally fractured, ill-disciplined and divided society.

The fix, to my mind, lies in reinstating National Service.

Such an initiative will build the solid community foundation for not only getting “Australia back on track”, but, more importantly, begin a fix for Australia’s current parlous defence recruiting and retention problem.

National Service across the three arms from age 18 for at least 18 months.

The initiative will not only demonstrably stiffen Australia’s defence posture in an inoffensive way, but also be a defense and nation-building mechanism operating in collusion. Both are sorely needed right now.

As a postscript, I must point out that civilian soldiers from the 39th Battalion, CMF, blunted and turned the Japanese land thrust on Port Moresby back during WWII. More notably, it was an Australian civilian soldier who educated the British High Command on the Western Front in WWI on how to roll back the German Line and achieve victory in what had been a bloody stalemate for years.

That soldier was General Sir John Monash.

Wing Commander Wayne ‘Noddy’ Parsons, RAAF Retd

 

FILE PHOTO: Australian Army recruits in training at 1st Training Battalion, Kapooka, NSW. 1RTB photo.

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