Is this a joke?

Is this a joke?
ttbn,
I'm afraid it isn't ! Whitlam's legacy is still ruining Australia's majority mentality. Australia has some brilliant thinkers & doers however, this mentality of shirking ANY kind of responsibility yet demand those who pay Taxes support their short-comings is still a very, very scary majority !!
The ONLY way is to deny support when support is clearly not needed. There should be very few choices for those young unemployed to obtain support. They have the choiuce of either stay home with their parents, join a national Service or simply grab ANY work there is available for immediate employment. This insidious "it's my choice" is fine as long we taxpayers can have our choice whether or not we support your choice or not !
I & many of my age had no choice in what work was available, we simply took a job, worked at it & when the opportunity arose to get a better job we took it ! Of course the big Goaf facilitated freeloading to a great extent & this is what caused the me, me mentality that is now so hard to shake off !
Training other Nations' soldiers is like leaving your keys on the front gate !

Bring back the Nashos......

Ho Ho.

Here is the rub. Uncle Sam is mad. Not only mad, but has grown more evil and corrupt. It’s refreshing to see the young of recruitment age also recognise the fact and have sense enough to avoid the US plague of corruption and mismanagement.

The next step for a Government pretending we are not aware of the obvious, is conscription.
Try that one on us and the truth is bound to escape.

As for recruiting those poor souls soon to be suckers to a lost cause in the Islands, usury at its worst!

Dan.

Perhaps this clown should have a look at what happened to Rome, when she included foreign nationals in the legions.

Hasbeen,
I think a better comparison would be the British Army, which recruits a lot of soldiers from Commonwealth countries including Australia.

"Despite an intensive recruitment campaign, including incentives, recruitment is about 5000 short of target."

Maybe there's a take-away in that for you.
Nobody wants to give their life so that you can have a war with China.
Why don't you sign up yourself, since you're so enthusiastic about it?
Or do you think you're too important?

Better still...

Why don't you grab your rifle and jumpsuit and we'll parachute you in.
- We'll let Xi know you're coming.

If you want to die for a cause you believe in then that's one thing.
If you want others to die for your cause then it would be better if you went down to Victoria and got yourself voluntarily euthenaised.

Perhaps, but shouldn't be limited to the pacific but include Asia and south America.

Excellent character and reasonable English language skills would improve their chances, methinks. As would I.T. skills, and computer literacy. We need nuclear technicians for the new subs and a nuclear industry as a support measure for new subs.

As for citizenship, that would need to be attached future employment in rural and regional Australia exclusively. And affordable housing/housing and business loans.
Alan B.

Conscription? National service? Ok for my generation and those before! but not the millennials or the Y generation. Bring back high school cadets and conscription. But with the understanding that one volunteer is worth ten pressed men.
Alan B.

The Australian Army is becoming so high tech and reputation of National Service so bad (males only sexism?) that you need recruits meeting all the literacy, language and physical requirements (eg. height) for a 5 year initial sign on.

All this means the author's latest suggestion, like his regular self-serving, name-dropping, grandiose, brain waves, is another non-starter.

Also such Army recruits would need to be Aus citizens who might naturally wish to bring their whole family/clan/native village to dear old Oz. Many of the latter might come from the uneducated, barely English speaking, hunting and gathering Highlands

- and so straight on to the Higher Living Standard Aussie dole queue.

<< Maybe there's a take-away in that for you.
Nobody wants to give their life so that you can have a war with China.
Why don't you sign up yourself, since you're so enthusiastic about it?
Or do you think you're too important?

Better still...

Why don't you grab your rifle and jumpsuit and we'll parachute you in.
- We'll let Xi know you're coming. >>

It was worth skimming the comments ... just to catch this little gem ... well spoken, Armchair Critic ... the perfect response to the gung ho militants out there talking up war with China ... Richard Marles included.

a better comparison would be the British Army,
Aidan,
Well, consider this-how many of us would be here today if it weren't for them-you included ?
If you think the future can somehow be sorted by rattling the past instead of learning from & stop repeating past mistakes then please do so asap because the way we're going isn't really all that good !

A war with China? The reason for the need for more recruits? Simply put, the last thing our military would want is a hot war with China! Similarly, the last thing Ukraine wanted was a war with Russia.

But if a hostile wants your territory and resources? Do you vacate the field and say, help yourselves. Allow the foreign aggressor to move in, confiscate buildings, land, infrastructure, change the law so as to make the average citizen a slave or a tenant in his own country, begging for crumbs from the new master's table.

NO! You beef up your military and defense preparedness. And your deterrents, which need to have the foreign generals say, the price is too high for what they may gain.

We don't want a war with anyone and the best way to ensure we don't have one, is to make the price of conquest way too high! And that my friends is, why we need more manpower!
Alan B.

Perhaps if we treated those we already have better, we would not need so many recruits.

Many of the best are leaving due to the way they are treated, & the lack of value placed on them.

In the US many join for the training. Warfare is a high tech business today. Dumb, uneducated folk are not needed or wanted. The training is very good in many professions, & give the recruit qualifications, & a pathway into a well paid specialty after their service. In Oz the training is the same, but do not result in qualifications recognised is civilian industry. Well trained people have to go through the civilian training, to get qualifications.

Then we often forget the servicemen do have lives of their own. The old navy "pier head jump" of transferring people at literally hours notice to a ship, or different part of the country, is not acceptable in a peace time defense force. While perhaps somewhat acceptable for youngsters, it will not be tolerated by folk with families to consider.

We don't want a war with anyone and the best way to ensure we don't have one,
Alan B,
The Voice, if not run by people with integrity, will be a path to a Civil war here !