RSS Feed
July 15th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda TEN months after announcing it would lift the ban on women in combat roles, the Australian Defence Force says it has no sense of how many female soldiers are interested in front-line jobs.
The Sunday Age asked this week how many women had applied for previously excluded posts, which they will be able to take up from January next year.
The ADF was unable to say if any formal applications had yet been lodged, nor could it shed light on the number of female troops sounding out commanders before submitting paperwork.
”As the process of seeking expressions of interest from current serving members is in its early stages, it is difficult to judge the current level of interest,” a defence spokesperson said.
The move of women into combat roles will be phased in over five years. Women already serving in the military who pass entry tests will be able to take up posts from 2013 as navy clearance divers, air force guards, combat engineers, in artillery and explosive ordnance disposal.
But women outside the forces will only be able to apply for such roles towards the end of the five-year transition.
In an interview with The Sunday Age, Defence Minister Stephen Smith said the culture of the Defence Force and its attitudes to women had improved, but there was ”more work to be done”.
Mr Smith said traces of discrimination would continue and full equality for military women would be elusive until we saw ”living, breathing examples” of female role models at the highest levels.
But he said change was happening, albeit more slowly than in the wider society, and that Australia could have a woman as Defence Force chief in the next two decades.
”Defence has made mistakes in the past. We’re doing better now than we have done in the past, but there’s more work to do,” he said.
Mr Smith said the controversy over the ADF Academy Skype sex scandal last year had ”crystallised” defence’s cultural problems and led to an outpouring of complaints about abuse. The government is on the cusp of announcing if it thinks a royal commission is warranted.
But he argued it had also changed the way such complaints were handled – and he says every allegation since that time had been handled in a way that was ”entirely appropriate”.
”I think it will be a long time – a very long time – before anyone in defence who is handling a response to an allegation of inappropriate behaviour towards a woman … thinks it will be a good idea at the same time to deal with disciplinary matters unrelated,” he said
Mr Smith attracted praise and criticism last year for publicly condemning the treatment of a female cadet whose fellow trainee officers allegedly broadcast and watched her having sex with a male classmate without her knowledge.
But he says the controversy sped up the timetable for reforms to change military culture, to ensure complaints of abuse are handled more sensitively and to dismantle the legal ban on women serving in some front-line roles.
Asked if he would handle the situation exactly the same way if he had his time over, he said: ”Absolutely. No regrets whatsoever. If I had my time again, if I had two weeks, two months or two years to think about it, I’d do exactly the same thing.”
Related posts:
Views: 0
Posted in 
Tags: 
