Radio Interview, 2GB Ben Fordham Live

SUBJECTS: Defence Force Recruitment; Steel and Aluminium Tariffs; WeChat; Chinese Naval Task Group. 

BEN FORDHAM, HOST: The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Richard Marles is live on the line right now. Minister, good morning to you.

RICHARD MARLES, DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: Good morning, Ben. How are you?

FORDHAM:  I'm doing pretty well. You've got all of these young people wanting to serve their nation, but you don't have a spot for them just yet.

MARLES: Yeah, look, I hear those stories and it certainly makes frustrating listening for me. This has been an area that we've been working on and has obviously been a challenge. We've made it clear to Adecco, who is our contractor here, that we really need to be doing much better in this space. To put some numbers around this, the processing time for new recruits is about 268 days. That is unacceptable in our view.

FORDHAM: Well, we've got to pause there for a moment and really take a breath and pick ourselves up off the ground. The average processing time is 268 days?

MARLES: It is. To put it in context, when we came to government, it was actually at 300 days. So, it's come down in the last two and a half years. But also to put it in context, the target that we want to get to is sort of around 125 days or less, but we're obviously a long way off that and we need to be doing– the process obviously needs to work much more quickly. The point that is being made by a number of your listeners, that we've got people who are putting their hand up, and in fact, in the last 12 months we've had 69,000 applications. That's the largest number in a couple of decades, which is so encouraging, that side of it. It's an 18% increase in the last 12 months.

FORDHAM: Sure, but Minister, let me jump in. We're currently short 5,000 troops. We're now welcoming foreigners to join the Australian Defence Force to fill the gaps. We have locals waiting to join, but we can't give them a start. And I appreciate what you're saying, the average was 300 days, now it's come down 32 days over two and a half years. I mean, of course people are dropping out because we're not giving them a signal that we want them.

MARLES: Well, we want them, but you're right, the processing times need to come down. There's no argument from me in relation to that. And as I say, we've been making it really clear to Adecco who do this work for us that it really needs to be much better than it is. I think part of that challenge is making sure that we look at where the bottlenecks are in the actual processing process. But also being – you look at, I think it's Terry who's written into you– 

FORDHAM: Yes

MARLES: You know, we need to be much more nimble around literally prioritising those areas where there are, where we need to find people–

FORDHAM: It must just be that – because everyone's being bumped back to the new financial year – so it's just, there's no money, right? There's no money until the new financial year. But that is a crooked system because if you've got people now who are ready, you've got to have some money left behind to say, right oh, you start next week.

MARLES: Yeah, no, it's not that. I wouldn't want people to go away thinking that it's a question about money. We're putting more money into Defence. So, that's absolutely not the issue–

FORDHAM: What could it possibly be, then?

MARLES: Well, it is bottlenecks and it's the fact that the system isn't as flexible as it needs to be in actually prioritising those areas where we need recruitment. So, I mean, you are going to find some areas where, you know, we've got a lot of people and we don't need– you know, there aren't that many spots available. But where we have priority areas, and some of your listeners have spoken to their kids being in that situation, well we need to be much more flexible in seeing those areas literally prioritised and we get people in.

FORDHAM: How frustrating for those families, though, Minister, when they see the ads on the TV and hear them on the radio every 15 minutes saying enrol in the Army, we need you in the Defence Force. And they're thinking, well, hello, what about us?

MARLES: Well, it is frustrating and I feel the frustration, believe me. There is a great career to be had there. So, obviously, you know, there's a message here to hang in there. But the main message here is that we are going to get this processing time down. But I'd also want to make this point; we will, in this financial year, recruit 5,800 people. So, that's actually people who will end up in the Defence Force. That's the largest number of recruits that have been done into the ADF since 2008. And on this day, the Defence Force is growing again. You know, when we came to government, the Defence Force was shrinking. When Peter Dutton was the Defence Minister, it shrunk by 1400 people. We've actually turned it around and we are now growing the Defence Force again–

FORDHAM: OK, can I just ask about Adecco? You've mentioned the ADF's military recruitment firm, that's outsourced to the Swiss owned company called Adecco. And that cost taxpayers $1.4 billion. Well, they're not doing a very good job. You need to kick them up the arse.

MARLES: You can be assured that there are very difficult conversations being had with them. And again, to put this in context, the recruitment into the Defence Force has been outsourced for a long time now, so this isn't something that's new. But yeah, we're working with Adecco and it really does need to be a lot better than it is now. And it's not just about keeping the Defence Force at the levels that we've got. It is a good thing that it is growing, but slowly. It's better than it shrinking. But actually we really need to grow the Defence Force significantly and that is our plan through 2040. And so to do that, we need to get people in much more quickly. 

FORDHAM: Yeah. Why don't we stay in touch on those wait times? Because I went through this with Matt Keogh on response times for veterans and he managed to really improve that situation to get those delays fixed or at least improved dramatically. So, why don't we do the same on this one? I better get a couple of quick comments from you on some other things. Briefly, if I can, news out of America this morning, Australia will not be exempt from Donald Trump's tariffs on aluminium and steel. What do you make of that?

MARLES: Well, obviously it's really disappointing news. Tariffs don't make any sense, it's an act of kind of economic self harm. We'll be able to find other markets for our steel and our aluminium and we have been diversifying those markets. But we're obviously really disappointed with this. I would say, though, we’ll keep advocating to the United States on this issue. Last time around it was nine months before we got an exemption in relation to steel and aluminium out of the Trump administration in its first term. So, we'll keep pressing the case, we'll keep diversifying our own trade. But look, there's no hiding this, we're really disappointed with this decision.

FORDHAM: Also, we broke a story this morning about a concerning article that's attracting a lot of attention on Chinese social media, on WeChat. Some of the quotes in the article include “if we can take over Australia, it'll be a good opportunity to sandwich Southeast Asia in the south and the north” and the top comment on the article is this one, “if the US takes Canada as an additional state, why can't China take Australia and New Zealand?” Now, as we pointed out this morning, this is not some official statement from China. It's something that's doing the rounds on Chinese social media. But the experts we've spoken to this morning say we should be concerned about this kind of language. What do you say?

MARLES: Well, I think it's the sort of thing you see on social media. I mean, it's completely far fetched and we are in no danger of that, let me make that clear. But we are very focused on what we need to be doing in terms of our national security, in terms of our defence strategy, and we bring to bear all the intelligence that we've got out of there. And you can be sure that in the $50 billion that we are putting into Defence and growing our defence spending, we are making our country much more resilient, and much more capable, and much more lethal.

FORDHAM: You can understand why people are nervous after what happened with the Chinese frigates. I mean, have we got enough Virgin pilots to keep an eye on the Chinese navy?

MARLES: That's a little unfair, but we had– 

FORDHAM: Well, that's what happened.

MARLES: Not quite, but those frigates were being– 

FORDHAM: No, that’s what happened. It was a Virgin pilot who spotted it.

MARLES: Well, there was a broadcast that was picked up by commercial pilots and the New Zealand frigate who was working closely with the Australian Defence Force. And they all picked it up at the same time. That's actually what happened. But we shadowed this Task Group from the moment that it came into Australian waters in an unprecedented level of surveillance. So, we know exactly what they did, exactly what their configurations were, what exercises they were practising. I might say that's something that the former government did not do when the Chinese navy were last year, three years ago. But we have totally shadowed that Task Group in all its travels in the vicinity of Australia, and we're completely clear about what they were doing. And in an unprecedented way know exactly the exercises that they were practicing. And that's invaluable for us.

FORDHAM: Okay. Are they gone now?

MARLES: They are, yeah.

FORDHAM: Where are they?

MARLES: Well, I'm not sure where the Task Group is now, but it's well north of Christmas Island and through the Indonesian archipelago, so well beyond Australia. And we, to give you a sense of that, we had Australian frigates that were shadowing the Task Group right up to Christmas Island, and basically to the edge of the Indonesian EEZ. And so for the whole time that the Task Group was within the vicinity of Australia, there were Australian warships and indeed P8s, which are an Air Force plane, surveilling the ships so that we knew exactly what they were doing.

FORDHAM: Yeah, a bit of muscle flexing going on from China. Good to talk to you. I appreciate you jumping on the line this morning. Richard Marles.

MARLES: Pleasure, Ben.

ENDS