ADF’s recruiting crisis ’getting worse’ under Albanese government

The ADF has a recruiting and retention crisis which is only getting worse under the Albanese Labor government, says Shadow Defence Minister Andrew Hastie. “The ADF is shrinking; under the Morrison government we committed to grow the ADF by 18,500 by 2040 so we’d have a complete defence organisation of around 100,000 people,“ Mr Hastie told Sky News host Andrew Bolt. He said this includes 80,000 unformed and 20,000 public servants. “And we’re currently 3,400 people behind. “In fact we’re not hitting our recruiting targets at all; we’re less than 75 per cent of our recruiting targets in the last financial year.“