China watch.

It might not surprise many of you that the specific reported retention bonuses started being paid to members almost two years ago. It's just only going to the media now. It obviously has been in the White Papers every year, but it conveniently hasn't suited anyone to write a story about it until now. Retention bonuses happen with startling regularity. At least, at a regularity that most people on the outer probably would be startled by. It's generally different trades each time because the ebb and flow of recruiting different trades has a cycle and therefore so too does retention problems.

The problem is that there's about a five year gap that is happening and that's why it's so dire at the moment. There's a bit of winding road to explain this, but if you can sit through it it'll help to make it make sense. I'll try to simplify it but this is how I see it.

Pension/Super plans;

DFRDB - 1972 - 1991: Full pension on retirement. Can't find the info but I'm pretty sure you could start drawing pension at 50. Happy to be corrected on that. Rate increased for years of service with most benefits achieved at around 20+ years of service. Once you hit the highest cap you were set up for retirement in comfort. Pension is paid in perpetuity.
MSBS - 1991 - 2016: Full pension on retirement. You can draw your pension at 55. Rate is based on your final annual salary, so staying in longer to increase your rank and therefore your pay was/is beneficial. Pension is paid in perpetuity, and while the rate is not as juicy as DFRDB you also can elect to receive the portion of your Super that you paid (rather than the gov as your employer) as part of your pension OR take it as a lump sum. Either way, you have a guaranteed pension amount that is indexed against CPI which you can also offset by the Age or War pension if they still exist at retirement.
ADF Super - 2016 - Current: 16% Super instead of the standard 10.5%. That's it. You can draw your Super at retirement at 67. Have fun if you'd planned on being a lifer and your role was physically draining because you're probably going to get to 8-10 years and need to retire from your physically demanding job. Then you're going to be back out in the job market with everyone else because you can't draw your pension until you're 67.

That is, DFRDB-ers were basically given golden handcuffs. If you were on that scheme and you got out before 20 years frankly you were a bit nutty. Or just so over it that the thought of being set up for the rest of your days wasn't appealing enough. Even a salty Lance-Jack-For-Life would have retired in comfort.
MSBS-ers get a sneaky benefit of gaining extra benefits at eight years (your pension indexation and Defence Home Ownership Scheme rate jump significantly). From there it's only a hop, skip and a jump to long service leave so of course you stay at least the extra two years to get to ten years. I will forever be grateful to the salty SNCO who strongly advised me against switching over when they started telling us about this new scheme that was going to becoming out in a few years' time.
ADF Super kids, frankly, got shafted. Sure, they get extra Super paid into their fund every year. BUT they also get no pension. Zip. Zilch. The medical pension that's provided if you're unable to work due to injury is about the same as industry standard and it's not a pension so much as an insurance payment. From what I hear you have to fight every step of the way to get and keep it. 

That 'hidden from the public' retention function no longer exists. People who're irritated, disillusioned or just plain not feeling it anymore have no carrot to keep on trucking. You get 16.5% on your super which is a massive amount but when it's 'invisible money' because you don't see it in your pocket on pay day, a lot of younger troops look at that and think "yeah cool story, but it doesn't help me now". I probably would have the same attitude if I were only 18-19 and looking at my options after my first four years. How do you stop that from happening? Offer them a bucket of cash which is actually a drop in the ocean compared to what you used to give them over the course of an individual's retirement.
Problem is, that's not working. The younger generation are looking at it and saying "yeah but I can get that retention bonus as an annual pay increase if I get out so thanks but no thanks".

The simplest explanation is often the correct answer. It's not morale. It's not wokeism. It's people realising that the grass is greener elsewhere and acting on that fact.

But with all the wardog talk going on and China being China, retention bonuses suddenly newsworthy. It's just that they're really only reporting the outcome of the problems rather than what's actually causing the problems in the first place. The gradual and casual degradation of benefits that used to be enough to make people hang around for a bit longer, and the refusal to keep up with cost of living to ensure your members feel fairly remunerated for their efforts.

The best career in ADF was sign up, do a tour or two at $10k per month tax free, use that as a deposit on a house or two, get some decent qualifications then discharge and start earning big dollars on civi street. Like double your ADF pay. Exactly what little miss did.

What field is she in? Every ADF person in my field I have come across was unemployable.

The Yanks were not always like that, only in comparatively recent times, hell, I can remember in the 60's that the USA was the kings of the world.

"Problem is, a lot of what we produce has foreign inputs. We get a lot of out fertiliser from overseas for example...something we are proactivity working on at the moment but still quite a few years off from.."

True, generally, but, involved in agriculture as I am, we source almost all our fertilizer from the waste (blood and bone) from various abattoirs. Its enough for the few thousand acres we farm, but wouldn't supply all that's needed.

Port Kembla had a reasonably modern fertilizer plant in the 70's and 80's. so we do know how to do it, it would take time to ramp up production but we wouldn't starve.

I agree that modern agriculture equipment is too technical and needs lots of specialized maintenance and parts that wouldn't be obtainable, but we do have a lot of family farms and there are a lot of older headers, planters etc rusting away on these properties that could be rebuilt as they are not high tech. Time would be the issue, and yes, it would be a belt tightening period, but we would survive as a nation. Unlike China who would be in trouble if they were blockaded.







A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.

"And then what happens when suddenly we're on a war footing? "

A letter arrives, by registered mail, you cant refuse, be at the local recruiting office at such a time.

Welcome back, here's a rifle, f..k off and defend your country.

Thank goodness I'm too old now for National Service. I probably couldn't pass a decent medical, nor could I see far enough to be useful. However, being a Tradie with an Engineering Certificate, may be a NCO position I couldn't refuse.

My papers said until the age of 65 I could be called back up, when did it change ?






When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind. CS Lewis

For me, prepping is a state of mind that is grounded in the core belief that YOU and only YOU are responsible for your own well-being.

Just don’t get vaxxed and you’re safe from recruitment. I’m exempt, medically unfit, refused entry because of my colour impairment. 

Lmao, you'd be diversity hire and therefore higher on the list than anyone!

And hate to break it to you frost but in war time being colourblind only gets you so far. You can enlist in multiple different trades with colour blindness these days. You can even get an exemption for extreme colour blindness. You just get shoe-horned into a job that's not reliant on your ability to recognise colour difference. Pretty sure you'd be safe from infantry, they kinda like you to be able to tell the difference between tracer rounds and armour piercing lmao

Camouflage would be a good pigeonhole for u.





FEAR doesn’t have to stand for Forget Everything and Run.