Talk:Conscription in Australia

National service in Vietnam

I am stunned by the glaring errors of fact in this section:

1. National Servicemen had no choice about serving in Vietnam. Ask Normie Rowe or any of the thousands of others who were forced to serve there, or any of the families of hundreds who were killed. What a crock!

2. "most of whom were married" -- wild, unsupported assertion. What's your source?

3. How could 20 year old conscripts (???) have been "older and more mature" than the Australian Army professionals? Jeez ...

This section needs a DRASTIC rewrite replacing this rubbish with factual information.

Ok, fair points on your part. I haven't read the old version, but I believe point 1 is actually true. IIRC you were forced to do the national service, but unofficially if you didn't want to go to Vietnam you were given a position elsewhere whenever possible. This was totally unofficial, and totally the military acting without political endorsement. And sure, there may be factual errors, but you don't have to be an ass when telling people about it. At least someone went out of their way to write the article in the first place. The Bryce 11:04, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Some comments. I removed this text: '"In 1966, during a state visit by US President Lyndon B. Johnson, protestors in Sydney chanted LBJ, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today? and many lay down in front of the car carrying Johnson and NSW Premier Robert Askin. When the driver asked Askin what he should do, Askin reportedly replied "Run over the bastards". The event was widely reported and the ABC's current-affairs programme This Day Tonight created a storm of controversy when it sent up Askin's boorish behaviour in a satirical song. In Melbourne, protestors splattered Johnson's car with paint bombs; two young students who threw paint bombs were seized and beaten by police and security guards, then arrested and subjected to a forced psychiatric examination."' because it is not particularly relevant to the anti-conscription movement. The Johnson protest was an anti-war, anti-US protest, NOT an anti-conscription protest and belongs somewhere else.

As for factual errors (point one above, ending in "what a crock!"), National Servicemen DID have options to avoid service overseas. the conscription scheme was full of ways to avoid serving in Vietnam it's just that they were poorly publicised and required planning. If you joined the CMF before you were called up, you did not have to serve outside Australia. Conscientious Objectors were also given opportunities for non-combat roles, it's just that many of them rejected even non-combat service. The main problem for conscripts was that you couldn't join the CMF 'after' call-up, and if you stood on principle and opposed 'only' the Vietnam War, the law did not provide for you to be exempted. Plenty of peopel massaged their opposition to serve into full-blown CO cases, and about 50% were awarded (see SOS Syney Newsletter, August 1966, p.4, held by the NLA). I can provide archival source material where necessary. 01:45, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I was also under the impression from reading Gary McKays book 'In Good Company' that you had to still actually volunteer for overseas service and you had to pass the gruelling pre-deployment fitness and battlefield tests at the Land Warfare Centre at Canungra. If you failed there you were not sent, whether or not you actually wanted to go.

And how do you think someone who didn't want to go would have been treated by the others? There are many ways in which pressure can be applied. HiLo48 (talk) 01:56, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Discuss links here

Editors regularly clean out undiscussed links from this article. Please discuss here if you want a link not to be cleaned out regularly. (You can help!)--VS ^talk 04:33, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

VS ^talk has removed an external link to a website which I administer. I believe the link is a relevant citation to this article. I acknowledge as an editor of this article, this is potentially a conflict of interest.

• Australian Draft Resistance and the Vietnam War

is an original source reference for the development of the section on conscription during the Vietnam War. I believe this link is highly relevant to the article. Under Wikipedia:Conflict of interest guideline I should not add external links to articles I have published (even though they may be authoritative texts) except after raising them for discussion on the talk page. Please discuss and decide on the relevancy of the link. --Takver 17:38, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

IWW in WW1

In my view this article substantially underplays the significance of the Industrial Workers of the World in defeating World War One conscription in Australia. I'm planning to edit on this subject soon.....

It is an odd or at least very partisan comment to make that Billy Hughes took the ALPs "talent" with him when he crossed the floor to form a pro-war government btw. This is referenced to Robert Manne, a conservative social commentator, and a very bright fellow to be sure but one very much with a POV. Jeremy (talk) 07:14, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I would be careful categorising Robert Manne as being in any particular spot on the political spectrum with any certainty. That article rightly tells us "Manne's allegiances within the Australian political scene have moved from left to right, then back to left again". The source is a print one, with no publication date listed, so it's hard to know where Manne was politically when it was published. However, if you have good sources to write about the IWW, please do. HiLo48 (talk) 11:10, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

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Current situation?

The lead paragraphs- "Australia currently only has provision for conscription during times of war." imply that there is a currently policy stating that there can/would be conscription in time of war. Is this so? If so, is there a ref for this? We need a paragraph, however brief, at the end of the article summing up the current situation, if data/refs can be found. IceDragon64 (talk) 11:23, 14 March 2020 (UTC)