QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Mr KEOGH (Burt—Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Minister for Defence Personnel) (14:22): When it comes to our Australian Defence Force, our people are our most important capability. But, when we came into government, we confronted a Defence Force that, under the coalition, was shrinking. There had been a failure of the coalition to make sure we had the Defence Force that we needed in the geostrategic circumstances that we confront.

So we committed to rebuilding the Australian Defence Force when we came to government. We took urgent steps. We introduced better health care, we introduced better access to study, we introduced more flexibility to Defence housing, and we've had better access to family health care as well for those members in our Defence Force.

Of course, we added the continuation bonus as well. We've also been bold in how we promote joining the Australian Defence Force, not just on TV, radio and billboards. We've been in social media—we're on TikTok as well—making sure that our young people are seeing the advertisements and the— Honourable members interjecting— The SPEAKER: We're not having screaming.

We're not going to do that. I'm going to ask the member for Riverina to remain silent for the remainder of this answer. Mr KEOGH: We've been making sure that our young people see the over 300 different role types and opportunities available to them in our Defence Force, and our Defence Force numbers are now back on track.

We are growing for the second year in a row. Two financial years ago, we had our biggest recruitment numbers in 15 years, with over 7,000 people joining the Defence Force. This year, it's over 8,000 people joining—our biggest in 16 years.

Separations rates, which under the opposition were around 10 per cent, are now down to 7.4 per cent—the lowest in 15 years. We now have the largest Defence Force that we have had in a quarter of a century because we've invested more than $1 billion in supporting recruitment to and retention in our Defence Force, which, in the geostrategic circumstances we face, is critically important work that we do—making sure that we are on track to growing our Defence Force to be 69,000 people by the early 2030s.

I mentioned that there are more than 300 different roles available across our Australian Defence Force—the obvious roles in infantry, in Air Force, in Navy but also so many different roles across the cyber domain and the space domain as well. And we've accelerated the timelines on recruitment. They're now under a year and, for those most critical roles, they are now down to 150 days.

We continue to work on bringing down those recruitment timelines, which had blown out to over a year under the coalition government. We are delivering real change to support our Defence Force in growing instead of shrinking like it was under the opposition. I say to everybody: if you're interested in joining our Defence Force, go out and Google ADF careers.