Little attention was grabbed on June 4 when Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles used the phrase “a significant crossing of the Rubicon” to describe a fundamental change in the make-up of the Australian Defence Force. Just a few weeks later on July 1, the ADF would open up recruitment to non-citizens.
Defence Personnel Minister Matt Keogh added that the Government was “being bold in order to grow the Australian Defence Force.”
They later clarified that this bold crossing would in fact be cautiously staged. For now, it targets foreign citizens already residing in Australia, who, in exchange for serving in the ADF, will be immediately eligible for citizenship. As of July 1, eligible New Zealanders can apply; and from January 2025 Americans, Canadians and Britons.
But as Marles stressed, the government has “an eye beyond that to the Pacific,” and it is there that the true goals of the policy seem to lie. To that end, the government has been in discussions with their Papua New Guinean counterparts for some time. Speaking at an event in May, Defence Industry and Pacific Minister Patrick Conroy said the two governments had discussed “targeting PNG school-leavers” who “want to learn a trade”; Conroy imagined them “serving in Australia, contributing to the ADF… then perhaps going back to their home country in retirement with a skill that they can start a business with,” supported by an ADF pension. “That,” Conroy said, “is a win-win by any measure.”
Despite the river-crossing rhetoric, this is straight out of Australia’s dog-eared playbook.
Going back a long way, Australian governments have tended to see migration as a necessary evil, and migrants themselves – especially from the Pacific – as collateral for nation-building. In 1863, 67 Pacific Islanders were transported to Australia to work on sugar and cotton plantations. Over the next 40 years some 62,000 followed, becoming labourers and domestic servants. Many were kidnapped – “blackbirded” – or conned into indentured servitude. Beginning in 1906, those who remained were mostly deported.
That same year, the very new Commonwealth of Australia claimed full control of British New Guinea, formerly administered by Britain and several Australian colonies. The territory had been annexed in the 1880s to rebuff advancing German imperialists. PNG only gained its independence from Australia in 1975.
These days, the government fears not Germany but China; and supporters of expanding ADF recruitment to Pacific nations see this as a way of gaining the upper hand, as well as addressing a chronic shortage of willing ADF recruits. Anthony Bergin, a senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (who like Minister Conroy, described it as a “win-win”) said such a scheme would give Pacific Islanders “something China can’t offer them.”
But besides citizenship (assuming that remains on the table), what’s being offered? Contrary to the government’s exuberant language, this is not about upskilling school-leavers. It is about recruiting young people to leave their country and join a foreign military institution beset by a culture of abuse, whose most decorated living soldier likely committed monstrous war crimes. An institution that at its heart is not about “teaching trades”, but using violence and violent threats to secure objectives, which more often than not – be they in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan – have had a contentious link to the national interest. An institution that we know does grave, often permanent harm to many who serve in it.
Moreover, the self-serving realpolitik that drives this policy stands in sharp contrast to Australia’s attitude to being a compassionate global citizen. For years, people have risked their lives to come here seeking protection – including from Australia’s military foes – only to be turned away or locked up, commonly by our military. Yet now, once again faced by a need it cannot service within its borders, Australia beckons.
John Maloney is a barrister, teacher, podcaster and writer.
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