Thank you very much Ben and it is wonderful to be here with my parliamentary colleagues, Dan Tehan, the Minister, Richard Marles, the Shadow Minister for Defence and our Chief of Defence Force and our service chiefs, leaders of business and industry but as Ben said, above all, you, our veterans. This is about you.
Now, my commitment to this initiative – this initiative grew out of getting to know so many of today’s veterans – the veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. I came to know them through my son-in- law, James Brown, who many of you know and many of you have served with. That’s how I got to know John Bale and that is how I got to know so many of those younger veterans, particularly at North Bondi RSL. Indeed we talked about this, the need for this, about a year ago there.
We best honour in these centenary years the Diggers of 1916 by supporting the veterans and the families of 2016. That is a key insight. You put your lives on the line for us. In a dangerous world, you stand there defending our freedoms and we owe it to you to make sure that you are always supported and that, when you leave the service, when you transition out of the ADF you have the great opportunities that you deserve.
I want to make this point – this is not about charity. We are not asking businesses to engage in some sort of philanthropic exercise. I want to remind business leaders, and I know many of you know this very well, that the servicemen and women of Australia have unique skills, extraordinary experience. As we were discussing earlier, they change jobs every couple of years. Many people in the private sector and indeed even in the public sector will have 20 years’ experience but it might be one year’s experience 20 times over. Service in the ADF is constantly changing, new challenges all the time. It imbues our servicemen and women with leadership, with the ability to understand and meet diverse and unexpected challenges in a volatile world, in a world of great disruption. Few are as well-endowed as they are to deal with that challenging environment.
What I want to encourage employers like yourselves to do is to open your doors to this talent pool, to consider how the leadership and the skills that veterans hold regardless of their core or their rank can benefit your organisations. Promoting the employment of veterans is a key agenda of my Government. I have made this a Prime Minister’s initiative in order not only to raise awareness among the public and private sector employers of the value that our veterans represent, but to demonstrate that veterans and spouses of veterans and spouses of serving ADF personnel is a national priority that should be embraced by all sides of politics and Richard's presence here is testament that it is, that is great. It should be, and I trust will be, supported by future Prime Ministers. Richard's undertaken that when he is Prime Minister, he will be supporting it as well. That is good. I am sure he sends the same message from other aspirants on his side of politics.
We have a much greater recognition today of the obstacles that military personnel face when they have to make the transition out of the ADF and Ben spoke about that a moment ago. Some ADF members cannot properly record their service on their resume because of the highly classified nature of their roles. Others face employers who are not familiar with the skillset or how it might benefit their workplace. It is difficult to accurately describe the extraordinary leadership experience that is gained by serving in a Defence Force role. It is really unlike any other, as are the benefits that this experience can offer.
Both younger and older veterans make the same point to me, that employer awareness of their experience and skills needs to be improved. While we would never instruct business to hire veterans as a patriotic obligation, feel free to do so however, we can certainly help them appreciate the enormous well of human talent. This is an untapped resource or insufficiently tapped resource that is available to business.
Today's servicemen and women operate in a highly professional, high-tech dynamic environment. They have acquired the type of skills that employers value so much in this modern digital economy. They embody the agile and adaptive qualities that you, employers, value today.
In January, I visited our troops in Iraq. There on the frontline of ADF engagement, young men and women were engaged in highly skilled operations using state-of-the-art technology, right at the very cutting edge of 21st century technology. The skills they have developed in such a unique high pressure environment will be, in due course, an asset to almost any organisation.
It is worth remembering that some of the most significant technologies of the 20th and indeed 21st centuries are by-products of military ingenuity. Famously DARPA, the United States defence agency tasked with the development of emerging military technologies created the precursor of the internet itself, the most transformative piece of infrastructure ever created by mankind, as well of course GPS.
Here in Australia, the defence science and technology group devised the black box flight recorder now found in almost all commercial airplanes. Military innovation in Australia spurs greater and broader economic activity, it is a key part of our Defence White Paper, our defence industry plan and our defence industry investment plan. I know many of you have read it very carefully. It is all about innovation, it is about advanced manufacturing. It is about using the very best, the fastest, the most adaptive tools that technology can provide. That is what our servicemen and women are able to use. That is how they are equipped to be 21st century talent in the broader civilian world.
They're not just tech savvy. They are resilient, they are motivated, they are experienced, they have demonstrated loyalty, courage and commitment and they are proven problem solvers, dealing with unexpected, unpredictable environments. They are capable leaders, knowing how to work with and manage small groups to very large organisations. They have confronted the need to make what are literally life or death decisions under incredible pressure. They operate around the world. They are used to dealing with people from different countries, different cultures, different backgrounds in every respect. They are a very versatile work force, very talented work force.
Looking around this room, the opportunity to harness the skills of someone who has had a career in the ADF is very clear. The Australian Defence Force produces world class engineers, technologists, project managers, tradespeople. Whether you are a logistics and technology company such as Australia Post and its CEO Ahmed Fahour is here, or a large technology company, an international consultancy like McKinsey, which is represented here, or the many other companies and organisations proudly represented here today, the chance to hire a veteran should not just be a badge of honour but a very sensible productive business decision.
The combination of hard and soft skills that our veterans possess cannot be obtained anywhere else. J.P. Morgan's representative will shortly give us some valuable insights into their highly successful US Veterans Employment Initiative, the 100,000 Jobs Mission. We will also hear from the Chief Executives of the RSL, Soldier On and Mates4Mates, about the skills and qualities veterans have, why businesses should employ them and what businesses can do to increase the rates of veteran employment.
I know momentum is building and there is good work underway. I understand that Soldier On and J.P. Morgan have recently held discussions with business leaders about creating employment opportunities for veterans and their partners, whose careers too often are interrupted when their spouse or their partner is posted to a new location.
My Government is committed to working with you, the captains of industry and the major employers of Australia. My Government will act as an exemplar in employing ex-servicemen and women and the Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Dan Tehan, will outline the measures that we will undertake.
Today I am making a commitment to you, I am not asking industry do anything that my Government is not prepared to do too. We will establish an advisory committee of corporations that will help industry embed veterans’ employment programs in their recruitment strategies. This will be an entirely industry-led body that will consider initiatives like mentoring programs and mechanisms that will help employers understand how certain ADF skills translate to the private sector.
Corporations will be invited to register and have the right to advertise that they are an industry veteran employment ambassador. This will not only raise the profile of the initiative, it will also reassure veterans that they are dealing with an employer who is aware of their circumstances.
There is also of course an opportunity for ex-service organisations to partner in the initiative and indicate the services they can offer and to recognise the achievements of small, medium and large enterprises in creating employment opportunities for veterans. We will set up the Prime Minister's Annual Awards, the criteria for which will be developed in consultation with the industry advisory committee.
I know you will have great ideas of how we can work together to get veterans into jobs, to use their skills and give them a sense of greater place and purpose back in civilian life. We already have organisations doing a fantastic job supporting our ex-servicemen and women. Those Australians who, as I said, have made and are making today great sacrifices to defend the values of freedom that we hold so dear. Our freedom depends on your service. In return, our veterans simply ask for a level playing field when they return to the civilian work force and to have their skills recognised.
If we work together, business, government and ex-service organisations, we can make this happen. I repeat again what I said at the outset - in this centenary year, the best way to honour the Diggers of 1916 is to support the veterans, the servicemen and women of 2016 and their families.
This initiative is going to help us do that. We will honour your service, we are with you, we are backing you. We are backing you into a successful transition when you leave the ADF into a great and fulfilling civilian career. Thank you very much.