The Commonwealth Ombudsman, in his role as Defence Force Ombudsman, has overseen reports of serious abuse in the Australian Defence Force (ADF).
In a statement, the Ombudsman said that while most of the reports to his office related to historic abuse, it continued to receive some recent reports of unacceptable workplace behaviour and abuse.
“These recent cases do not point to systemic abuse in the manner which was apparent in Defence in earlier periods,” the Ombudsman, Michael Manthorpe, said.
“However, the fact that incidents continue to occur reinforces the importance of continued vigilance,” he said.
“It is critical that Defence continues to monitor, review and strengthen its policies and procedures, including its recruit training and annual training programs, particularly for commanders and managers.”
Mr Manthorpe said this was so that the risk of systemic abuse was mitigated and to ensure that where inappropriate behaviour or abuse did occur, incidents were dealt with appropriately at both the individual and organisational level.
“Our inquiry assessed the recruit training curriculum and content, delivery and evaluation approach,” he said.
“Overall, our inquiry did not identify significant concerns with the ADF’s approach to recruit training.”
The Ombudsman said however that some areas for improvement were identified, including that training specifically teaching recruits about required behaviour was not included in all parts of the training framework.
Mr Manthorpe made five recommendations covering how recruit schools assessed instructors who delivered behaviour training; how Defence evaluated the effectiveness of required behaviour training developed by the recruit schools; and how Defence evaluated the effectiveness of required behaviour training developed externally to the recruit schools.
He also covered how Defence used data to assist in the identification of systemic issues related to incidents of unacceptable behaviour or culture to feedback into training and how Defence collaborated across the Services to inform continuous improvement and better practice approaches to behaviour training.
The Ombudsman’s 19-page report 04/2020 Inquiry into behaviour training for Defence recruits can be accessed at this PS News link.
