Chief of Army admits females recruited for infantry before men

It was Senate Estimates. And the topic was Defence. On one side was the Chief of Army, Angus Campbell. He was confident, cocky and condescending.

On the other side was Senator Fraser Anning, the grazier from Queensland. He was coughing and clearing his throat. No doubt, he is more comfortable at home with his cows than in a committee in Canberra.

And surrounding them was the sycophantic crowd praising the naked emperor’s clothing.

It takes courage to walk into that room and ask the questions that no one wants to hear. But Fraser Anning did just that. He looked at the Chief of Army and asked if Defence had ever commissioned a study to determine whether placing females in combat roles would increase Defence capability.

The answer: no.

Boom!

And then, when the Chief of Army claimed that there were no quotas for women, Anning asked why the Chief of Army had previously informed the Senate that the recruiting targets for females had not been met.

The answer: there are no ‘quotas’ and instead the Army simply won’t recruit males unless no female is found within six weeks of the job opening up.

Boom! Boom!

These answers given to Senate Estimates last night should shock the nation. And they come just days after the Army also informed Senate Estimates that just 24 of the 154 females recruited for an infantry role have passed their basic training courses:

Question 6

Please provide a breakdown of Reserve/Full Time females who were recruited into the Army for a role as a Rifleman:

a. How many commenced via the Army Pre-Conditioning Program?
b. How many completed the Army Pre-Conditioning Program?
c. How many commenced the Recruit Training Course at Kapooka?
d. How many completed the Recruit Training Course at Kapooka?
e. How many commenced Infantry Initial Employment Training?
f. How many completed Infantry Initial Employment Training?

Answer

The Army Pre-Conditioning Program is designed to assist women to meet the general entry-level fitness standards and build resilience to successfully complete the Army Recruit Course.

The Army Recruit Course is designed to prepare and train recruits to be soldiers in the Australian Army and commence their respective Initial Employment Training. Initial Employment Training is designed to train soldiers in their Employment Category or trade.

For the last six years, the Army has embarked on a costly and politically-correct crusade to bring females into the infantry.

It has been done on an assumption and without any research. And to make it happen, blokes have been told to go away.

It takes, on average, almost eight months for a male to join the Army. And the Chief of Army has just let them know that they won’t get a look in if a female applies before them and punches out eight push ups at a recruiting centre.

If they can’t manage that, women can still take a position via the Army Pre-Conditioning Program, which will give them 49 days of paid training to help them reach that target. It’s almost one week of training per push up.

True, if no woman can be found, men will be contacted six weeks prior to the position opening up and offered a job. But after waiting for months, for many this will be pointless. They’ll have already found a job doing something else.

The Chief of Army claims that this system is helping Defence secure the best talent possible. The reality is that it is turning talent away. Our military is weaker for it.

Last night the clichés rolled. Angus Campbell told the Senate that half the nation’s talent was in its female population. Following that logic and the Army might as well recruit everyone and grab all the talent on offer.

No one denies that females are talented. But the infantry requires specific talents: strength, endurance and fitness. And Defence’s own statistics show that when it comes to these talents, females can’t compete.

Of the 154 women recruited for infantry since 2016, just 24 have passed basic infantry training. Already 25% of those have been medically downgraded.

And every single female recruited for an infantry role via the Army’s vaunted Pre-Conditioning Program has failed to qualify as an infantry soldier.

When asked if the Army concedes that this program has been a failure for the infantry, the Chief of Army said no.

Seriously?

In terms of success, this program has been an utter disaster. It is a barren wasteland with a 100% failure rate. Yet the Chief of Army claims it is working. He sounds like this guy (and you wouldn’t want him running our military):



Taxpayers are wearing the burden of this costly program.

Millions have been spent on advertising to make it happen. Millions more have been spent on squandered training days.

And the unit which is receiving these women is now in the process of sacking almost as many male soldiers due to  comments they have made about women on Facebook.

In the big picture, every single dollar spent has been wasted with absolutely zero increase to capability, while those who could increase it have been turned away.

That’s bad enough. On the financial figures alone, the program should be scrapped.

Making it worse is the fact that standards have been dropped. And that means capability has actually been diminished.

Comments from recruit instructors or those at the School of Infantry make it clear that assessments are no longer as rigorous as they once were, just to enable females to pass. Consequently, the quality of male soldiers will also decrease.

And worst of all is that this entire program has been based on a politically-correct assumption. No research has been done at all.

There is no data to back the Chief of Army’s claim that female infantry soldiers increase capability, unit cohesion or the ability to win on the battlefield.

And the Chief of Army has no idea whether those women who do get through will not suffer an increased risk of long-term health consequences over their male counterparts.

If any other organisation embarked on such a program without any due diligence it would be rightly described as negligence.

Unfortunately, the Army is not any other organisation. It is not a business that this nation can afford to fail because it embarks on some politically-correct flight of fancy.

Yet it is being eroded before our very eyes, while the crowd bays for the emperor to walk back down the cat walk.

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Today's Sonia Kruger fails to have racism complaint dismissed two years after she said Muslims should be banned from Australia

Today Show and The Voice host Sonia Kruger has failed to have a racism complaint against her dismissed. Kruger sparked outrage after saying Australian borders should be closed to Muslims.

The Civil and Administrative Tribunal rejected Channel Nine's application to have the complaint dismissed without hearing, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Sam Ekermawi made the complaint saying Channel Nine had vilified 'ethnic Muslim Australians'.

Kruger said Australian borders should be closed to Muslims while discussing a column written by Andrew Bolt on the Today Show in July 2016.

'I mean, personally, I think Andrew Bolt has a point here, that there is a correlation between the number of people who are Muslim in a country and the number of terrorist attacks,' she said.

'Now I have a lot of very good friends who are Muslim, who are peace-loving who are beautiful people, but there are fanatics.

'Personally I would like to see it stopped now for Australia. Because I want to feel safe, as all of our citizens do, when they go out to celebrate Australia Day.'

Mr Ekermawi wrote an email to the Anti-Discrimination Board of New South Wales saying Kruger had dehumanised Muslims.

The Nine Network applied to have Mr Ekermawi's complaint dismissed, saying the segment discussed religion and not race.

They also said Mr Ekermawi's history of making vilification complaints meant it would be an abuse of the tribunal's processes to allow the complaint to proceed.

NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal deputy president Nancy Hennessy refused Channel Nine's application.

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Japan coal threat could cost Queensland ‘jobs and billions’

Japan’s biggest steelmaker has threatened to slash its demand for Queensland coal and find other suppliers amid an escalating ­industry brawl that could see “significant job losses” and billions of dollars wiped from the state’s budget.

On a trade mission to Tokyo, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will today meet Japanese steelmakers and Foreign Minister Taro Kono over the freight ­dispute between her state’s rail monopoly, Aurizon, and miners, including BHP, Glencore and Rio Tinto.

The row follows the draft ­decision of the Queensland Competition Authority to cap Aurizon’s income at $3.8 billion over four years — about $1bn less than the company said it needed — and restrict maintenance costs that it passes on to its customers.

Aurizon’s subsequent cost-cutting, which includes fewer freight services with more maintenance shutdowns for trackwork, risks cutting exports from central Queensland coalfields by about 20 million tonnes each year. The hit to royalties is ­estimated at $2bn to the state’s budget over the next four years.

Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation, which spent more than $2.5bn on Australian coal in 2016, last week wrote to Ms Palaszczuk expressing alarm at the looming shortfall.

“We are afraid that this might damage the reliability of the supply chain of Queensland coal, and as a result, we will inevitably have to consider buying coal from other regions,” managing executive officer Yasushi Aoki said in the letter, obtained by The Australian.

Ms Palaszczuk, whose state exports almost $5bn of coal to Japan each year, said she would “reassure the Japanese gov­ernment their coal exports are secure”.

“It is very important that Auri­zon and the QCA sit down and try to resolve this issue as a matter of urgency,” she said.

It comes as the Palaszczuk government is set to announce a boost in infrastructure spending in the June 12 budget on the back of rising coal royalty payments, which the industry estimated would hit $3.7bn this financial year.

Aurizon chief executive Andrew Harding has told staff there would be “significant job losses” if the QCA’s “fundamentally flawed” draft ruling was not changed. “If the draft decision stands, it will permanently change the way our network business operates, resulting in significant job losses in both network and support areas,” he said in a message to staff.

Mr Harding said ignoring the draft decision, delivered in December, and maintaining normal operating practices was not an option because the final ruling would be backdated to July 1 and leave Aurizon facing a “huge financial hit”.

“The QCA have recommended we drive our operational and maintenance practices to the lowest possible cost regardless of the impact on our customers.

“They have also recommended one of the lowest rates of return on any regulated asset in Australia.”

Liberal National Party leader Deb Frecklington urged the government to assertively “intervene” and make the QCA and Aurizon reach a solution.

However, Queensland Resources Council chief executive Ian Macfarlane said Ms Palas­zczuk was “absolutely right” to respect the independence of the QCA. He said Aurizon was going to the big miners individually to broker side deals outside the regulator’s process.

“Aurizon is using thug tactics, being a monopoly, saying to the coal companies, ‘If we don’t resolve this issue, we are going to cut your exports’,” said Mr Macfarlane, a former federal resources minister under Tony Abbott and John Howard. “This is going to cost this state enough to pay the wages of 7000 teachers or nurses a year.”

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University degrees costing up to $100,000 may get you NOWHERE

Young Australians are often told that the path to success is paved by a tertiary education.

But a new study by Ernst & Young may have debunked that apparent myth, with almost half of Australian university degrees now at serious risk of becoming obsolete in the next decade.

The company has called on universities to future-proof themselves given the current model leaves graduates with more debt and poor job prospects, the report said on Tuesday.

More than 50 university leaders and policymakers were interviewed and more than 3000 students and employers were surveyed.

Around 42 per cent of current and past graduates felt their degree needed to be overhauled.

Only 36 per cent of those studying humanities, culture and social sciences and just 41 per cent of science and mathematics students thought their degree was relevant to their job.

'Australian universities are under threat from changing learner preferences, new competitive models and international competition,' Ernest & Young Oceania Education Leader Catherine Friday said.

'They need to move now to ensure they meet the needs of a changing society and changing economy. To succeed, they will need to deconstruct the higher-education value chain, offering new formats such as unbundled degree programs, continuous subscription-based learning and just-in-time learning options.'

The report urges universities to collaborate more closely with industry in creating course content to produce more work-ready graduates after 50 per cent of employers claimed that management and commerce degrees are not worthwhile.

'Australian universities are ranked last in the OECD ranking for the ability to collaborate with business on innovation,' Ms Friday said.

'Fixing that has become an urgent priority - 51 percent of international students believe their degree needs to be transformed and the university leaders we spoke to estimate that 40 per cent of existing degrees will soon be obsolete. Those institutions that can crack the new, flexible teaching learning models required will reap the benefits, as they outpace competitors that persist in delivering three to four-year degree programs that employers simply do not value.'  

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Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here