Kicking our diggers in the guts

May 29, 2012, 08:49 PM

About 22,000 unmarried soldiers will lose their annual flight home due to Gillard government Budget cuts.

This is while healthy young men of military age claiming to be Afghans - usually without the passports they used to fly into Indonesia - are welcomed to Australia often to be flown around the country and housed in accommodation not available to many Australians.

This is while ministers fly luxury class around the country and the world staying in the best hotels.

The annual flight home has been in place for decades and allows singles based in places far from home, such as Darwin or Townsville, to be with their family at Christmas. Even flights for married troops posted away from their families are also under review.

"The world's changed since that was introduced. You get cheaper airfares, communications are different, the town is not so isolated anymore," Defence Chief General Hurley told the Herald Sun’s Ian McPhedran ( 25/5).

"Do we really need to subsidise 30 or 40-year-olds for a trip home each year?"

“Airfares might be cheap on a general's salary, but the cut was another example of "picking the low-hanging fruit", one soldier said.

Defence funding was cut by $5.5 billion in this month's Budget, adding to previous cuts. Some experts say the country is now virtually defenceless, as defenceless as the politicians left us in the thirties.

The defence of the nation is the very first duty of any government.

If the government can't do that then it doesn't deserve to be in office.