Australia’s military to recruit non-citizens in bid to boost troop numbers

The Australian military will begin recruiting some non-citizens in a bid to boost troop numbers, the country’s government has said.

Only people from other members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partnership who hold Australian permanent residency will be eligible.

The move is part of a push to build a military that can resist foreign coercion through blocked trade routes in the future, Australia’s defence minister Richard Marles said.

Mr Marles, who is also deputy prime minister, said the change was a major step towards addressing a 4,400-person shortfall in the Australian Defence Force, whose target strength is 63,600 full-time personnel. The government intends to increase that number to 80,000 by 2040.

Relatively low unemployment is one of the factors working against the Australian military attracting and retaining personnel.

“We are not trying to make ourselves a peer of the United States or of China,” Mr Marles told delegates at a security conference. “That’s not a credible thing to propose.”

“In a far less certain world, do we have an ability to be able to resist coercion of any adversary and to make our way?” he added.

New Zealanders who have lived in Australia for at least a year will be eligible to join the military from July, and permanent residents from the United States, UK and Canada will be eligible from January 2025.

Australia’s Five Eyes partners are also struggling to hit military recruitment targets. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has promised that 18-year-olds will have to perform a year of mandatory military or civilian national service if his Government is re-elected at next month’s General Election.

The New Zealand Defence Force is short of 1,300 uniformed personnel, officials reported in February, after losing 30% of its military personnel between 2021 and last year.

New Zealand’s defence minister Judith Collins said Australia’s criteria for recruiting New Zealanders, including a ban on those who had served in a foreign military in the past two years, meant the two militaries will not be competing for personnel.

“Australia is New Zealand’s only ally, and we continue to have a very close relationship,” Ms Collins said.

Australia has struck a partnership with the US and UK that promises to create an Australian fleet of submarines powered by US nuclear technology.

Five Eyes

Tensions between the two militaries in waters where China has contested territorial claims have been building in recent months.

Mr Marles said he had raised a recent clash between the two militaries at a weekend meeting with Chinese defence minister Dong Jun.

Australia accused a Chinese fighter jet of endangering an Australian navy helicopter flying over the Yellow Sea by dropping flares in its path.

China accuses the Australian air crew of spying on a nearby Chinese navy training exercise.

“It was a good meeting. It went longer than was anticipated. It was very frank,” Mr Marles said of his meeting with Mr Dong on the sidelines of the Shangri-La defence forum in Singapore.

The incident over the Yellow Sea followed another that took place in international waters off Japan in November, in which Australia accuses the crew of a Chinese destroyer of injuring an Australian diver with its sonar equipment. China denies injuring anyone.

“We know how to engage with each other on bases which are safe and professional,” Mr Marles said. “It’s not enough that it happens only in the vast bulk of occasions. It needs to happen on every occasion.”