Youths 'too fat' to enlist

By John Kerin
December 12, 2005

Training ... recruits must meet basic fitness standards / File YOUNG Australians are becoming too drugged and too fat to answer the call to serve their country in the military.

Increasingly unhealthy lifestyles - coupled with the ageing population and competition from private sector jobs - are hindering efforts by the Australian Defence Force to attract enough physically and mentally fit recruits to defend the nation.

On current trends, the ADF warns that the defence force will shrink from about 52,000 personnel to 48,500 by 2010 - significantly below the 55,000-strong force planned by Defence Minister Robert Hill.

The ADF's internal recruiting plan for 2005-2010, obtained by The Australian, warns that overuse of recreational drugs - particularly marijuana - among 15-year-olds, and junkfood-related obesity in the young are expected to worsen over the next decade.

"The high incidence of non-medical drug use among young people (recent studies suggesting up to 50 per cent of 15-year-olds smoke marijuana at least once a month) ... severely limits the pool of recruitable candidates," says the ADF recruiting report, completed last month.

And it warns that the obesity problem is "expected to worsen over time as Australian society reflects the phenomenon found in developed nations".

One in 12 military candidates already fail the physical or mental fitness tests, and overall the ADF fell 1000 short of its recruitment targets last year.

The report says the rate of childhood obesity in Australia is "one of the highest among developed nations", with 25 per cent of children assessed as overweight or obese, up from 5 per cent in 1965.

Senator Hill will unveil this week a strategy to expand the force to almost 55,000 to meet the challenges of the global war on terror. As part of the plan, he wants the army to recruit an extra 2500 personnel.

Labor defence spokesman Robert McClelland said Senator Hill had "Buckley's chance" of boosting defence force numbers, given the pressures on defence force recruiting.

"Unless there is major shift in the way the defence force treats its young people, it is going to be a struggle," Mr McClelland told The Australian. "Military justice, remuneration and postings are all issues that need to be addressed."

Mr McClelland said education on diet, government-subsidised subscriptions for children's sport and incentives for teachers to coach should all be part of a co-ordinated plan to tackle obesity and drug abuse in the community.

"That would not only improve the health of the community but have a flow-on effect to rates of defence force recruiting," he said.

Australia Defence Association executive director Neil James said the force ought to be applauded for "publicly confronting drug abuse and obesity, which are cruelling its recruiting efforts".

"While you are still getting the same proportion of people interested in joining the defence force as you always did, more of them are failing the psychological and physical entry tests," he said.

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