The Australian Defence Force is facing an acute recruitment crisis . Only 80 per cent of the 69,000 personnel needed to meet future challenges have signed up. The government recently announced recruitment will be opened up to some foreign citizens to try to fill this gap. Not only is the Australian military failing to achieve planned growth, it is actually shrinking, as Defence Chief General Angus Campbell told a Senate inquiry in February.
They thought a lesser sense of obligation and service is one reason. Another is the fact that the black-and-white picture of “my country right or wrong” has been muddied following media coverage of alleged Australian war crimes in Afghanistan. The evidence confirms waning national pride among young Australians. We analysed publicly available data from the World Values Survey, a wide-ranging poll of people’s values around the globe conducted since 1981.