Conscription? yes and no. One volunteer is worth 7 pressed men!

One only needs look at the way Iraqi conscripts abandoned their positions, leaving their ultra expensive modern equipment, to understand that, and in order to fight, YOU NEED SOMETHING TO FIGHT FOR AND WORTH PRESERVING!

A fair and egalitarian society, and equal treatment before the law!

Invariably those who do most of our fighting have the least to lose? Come from the poorest backgrounds and lowest socioeconomic circumstances?

Albeit, they can sometimes learn a useful trade that quite massively improves their post military circumstances as does property and business loans, education grants and imposed gratuity.

Opposing something as absolutely terrifying as an villainous ISIS, requires more than quivering in absolute fear conscripts, but men and women with plenty to lose and enough unadulterated guts to do what needs doing to defeat it.

And given all that is so? we are just not getting there!

Housing is no longer affordable for the lower paid 40%. Ditto justice!

As always the privileged classes seem to fare better when it comes to education. And when challenged they often retort, we pay the most taxes!

Well given tax avoidance enables many of the most privileged to avoid paying any tax, how true is that?

And as always, we see power and influence being used to enable some to shirk their duty?

In any event, if we do have another war, god forbid, the safest place will be at the front, given civilians, politicians, the national grid and all our productive capacities will be the first target of choice!

And given the array of modern weapons, rocket firing drones and bunker busting bombs etc, all very reachable preferred targets.

And targeted not only to kill the will to win, but the will to just resist!

That being true, we need to declare both a state of emergency and martial law, if we are ever forced to defend these shores?
Rhrosty.

Those who kidnap innocent children (only boys, the author suggests) from their homes, families and schools, trying to break their spirits and forcing them to do time in prison-like conditions as slaves who must obey all orders, their sole "crime" being that they were born where they were and reached the age of 18 in relative good health - are no better than any paedophile or Islamic State terrorist.

Should Australia support this despicable torture, it will no longer be worthy of being defended, including against terror.

Any moment while reading this article, I expected the author to bark: 'Hey, YOU ... reader! Sit up straight!'

Medal-heads like these are full of all kinds of romanticised notions of turning boys into men and using these noble, heroic, trained and ever-alert boys-turned-men to defend us from all evil everywhere.

Unfortunately, the reality is a little different. Those 'boys' are almost always conscripted to fight the wars and power struggles of dictators, imperialists and banksters. They die in their thousands (or millions, depending on the size of the dictator/imperialist/banksters' particular power struggle) because it's all really just about bums on battlefields.

Oh, that's right. I forgot. The author wasn't talking about wars, he was talking about conscripts defending us from terrorism.

Yeah, right.

Here one for you. I've actually met Col Hackworth. when I served with 1 R.A.R. attached to the 173d (S) Airborne at Bein Hoa. 65/66. Heis Son until recently was the 1St. Sargent of the 173d Airborne in Italy.

Great man.

Medals? Iraq? Odd emotional, irrelevant comments to make.

The point, if you read the story, is about giving people some basic skills to cope in a situation like a Lindt cafe scenario or a Paris scenario as "civilians", having previously completed their national service. Who is talking about fighting in conventional wars or even in counter terrorism? Bizarre assertions to make.

What is wrong in giving a large number of the population training which would be of use in the world in which we know live in? We pay house insurance in the hope we never have to use it..

Or do you prefer to hand over more power to the state to protect you by curtailing your civil liberties and intruding into your private life and in turn does nothing. Heaven forbid if you were placed in a situation like in Paris and wished you had something to assist you to stay alive.

There was a National Service scheme from 1951-59 in Australia if I remember correctly which was done in blocks of 3 or 4 months & no one sent to fight in Korea (1951-53).

We're in 2016 and not 1968....we are not re-fighting VIETNAM ! The world has changed. So must we !

Supposedly giving people the skills to fight terrorism on their own ground is just another sloppy justification for recruiting young men (and now, young women) into forming an involuntary army to fight imperial wars.

Conscription, or national service, or whatever you wish to call it, is rarely ever used for civil defence. In the US, they called it the military reserve (as they did in Australia in the 1960s). People signed up to lift themselves out of poverty or to pay for college tuition. However, they soon found themselves having to do tours of duty in the West's imperial wars on Afghanistan and Iraq.

If we were serious about creating a civil defence network against terrorism (including sexual terrorism), then we would allow people to have their own weapons and to enforce training programmes to teach them how to use those weapons (Swiss style).

But this is unthinkable. The concept of allowing ordinary people to use weapons to defend themselves is too threatening to the powers that be. It's much more palatable to create a military national reserve, overseen by the military high command, to provide a supposed national defence. Then we have a ready-made military force to be called on whenever we want to destroy an enemy that does not cooperate with Western interests.