National service

National service

By Toby Hawker

"I call for the introduction of national service for a period of 12 months compulsory for males and females upon finishing year 12 or reaching 18 years of age". — Pauline Hanson

Whilst it may sound appealing to some denizens of talkback radio to have all of those dangerous young people off the street, national service is no solution, to either the problems of the young or the society of which they are a part.

It has been suggested that a good reason for national service is the unacceptably high level of youth unemployment — perhaps if we gave young people a bit of discipline and good old-fashioned militarism they wouldn't be so intent on just hanging around.

Indeed, Hanson advocates a "civil service, with a touch of military training". Just the thing for getting all the work done that might otherwise have to be performed by willing people, with acceptable levels of pay and working conditions.

But even if, just for a moment, we ignore the meagre pay and enforced labour that draftees would have to accept, there is the small matter of military indoctrination of masses of Australian youth. Do we really need a mass of young people, taught how to kill others as effectively as possible right after they've learned how to work well and not make trouble at school?

Of course, we might have to get back to locking up people whose beliefs, religious or otherwise, don't include practising how to kill their "enemies", but they're probably "un-Australian" anyway.

Hanson, while arguing for a withdrawal of aid to all countries and the scrapping of all treaties with the UN as friendly international gestures, advocates taking an entire year out of young people's lives to work for peanuts and learn how to kill and do what they are told. It's a great pity that suggestions for real jobs, training, education and choices for young people can't get the same attention as the brutish idea of national service.

From GLW issue 259