Land Force Reserves and Homeland Security: Lessons Learned from the Australian Experience

Abstract

The Australian Army is now more than a century old, but for much of its history it had no formal, organised reserve force as we understand that term now. The CMF was reconstituted in 1948, and although successive governments were committed to the creation of a regular field force of brigade group strength, practice rather than policy suggested that the mainstay of the ground defence of Australia – homeland defence by any other name – continued to be the part-time force. The only time in which the non-regular force has been called up and utilised in the defence of Australia and Australian interests was during the Second World War. The Vietnam War then completed the demise of the old-style citizen-soldier structure and function in Australia.

In Australian practice there has been no tradition of reliance upon reserve or citizen-force soldiers in times of national emergency. The Australian Army, like its counterparts among its ABCA allies, has undergone considerable downsizing since the Vietnam War and the return of an all-volunteer military. However, certain long-term features of the Army Reserve pose a continuing challenge for defence planners and policy-makers who would utilise reservists on defence tasks in circumstances short of a ‘defence emergency’ (the euphemism of choice now that ‘in times of war’ has been deleted from the definition governing call-out). The Australian Army Reserve is a post-Vietnam legacy force, and although legislative measures have removed the impediments to call-up and deployment that previously restricted its use, in most other respects nothing much has changed. The current and likely future requirements for force projection in our region and beyond it in defence of Australian interests suggest that we need an effective ‘One Force’ Army in reality as well as rhetoric. To date, however, we seem as far from attaining it as ever.