Australia's war-fighting capability is being compromised by 'near-persistent' demands to respond to domestic emergencies, according to findings from a parliamentary inquiry.
abc.net.au/news/department-of-defence-natural-disaster-emergency-response/102857208Australia's war-fighting capability is being compromised by "near-persistent" demands to respond to domestic emergencies, according to findings from a parliamentary inquiry.Pressure on the ADF to respond to national disasters has become "unsustainable", the report warns
"If the civilian community are over-reliant on the ADF to provide responses to now predictable annual natural disasters in Australia and our near region, this provides an easy opportunity to take hostile cyber, kinetic or hybrid actions, coercing governments to make impossible choices," the report stated.
"They cannot be seen as a shadow workforce, because it risks and degrades their war-fighting capability, which is what the country trains and pays them for," the Labor MP said.The committee also urged Australia to "draw a line in the sand" on alleged war crimes committed by elite personnel in Afghanistan.
But Mr Hill said the committee wanted to "rebalance the national conversation" and "regain perspective" to minimise the impacts of the "long shadow" of conflict in Afghanistan. Instead of growing the Defence Force by 1,000 members, the ADF went backwards by around 900 personnel, the report found, a reduction of nearly 6 per cent on the previous financial year.
The committee made 12 recommendations, including that Defence make six-monthly reports to monitor progress in recruitment and retention.Personnel can't work in 40-degree heat
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