Is It Time For a Diggers Bill?
Should we reward service, or just repair damage? It’s time to offer those who’ve served this country more than just compensation after they leave the ADF.
For the last few years, discussion about the Australian Defence Force workforce has been dominated by a fairly simple problem: not enough Australians were joining, and too many were leaving.
While Defence's 2024-25 Annual Report says it achieved only 77 per cent of its planned permanent ADF inflow, recruitment has now begun to turn around. More than 7,000 people joined the regularand reserve forces in 2024-25. This is the strongest result in 15 years, with separation rates falling significantly. By March 2026 the full-time ADF had grown to 62,653 people, its highest level since 2002.
That is great news, but if more Australians are again choosing to serve, perhaps we should be asking, ‘How can we reward them for it?’
My proposition is a ‘Diggers Bill’.
The concept is simple. An Australian who joins the ADF and completes an appropriate return of service obligation, perhaps fourto six years, should earn a substantial post-service education or future employment entitlement. If they want to attend university after Defence, the nation helps pay their fees. If they already have a HECS debt, the entitlement could be used to reduce it. Vocational, technical, and trade education should also be a big part of the discussion, because not every pathway after service needs to run through a university campus.
It would not replace DVA. It would not be compensation for injury or illness, and it should not interfere with the entitlements of people whose service has caused them harm. It would be something quite different: a reward for having served, earned through service itself.
Rewarding service, not just repairing damage
A great deal of Australia's veteran policy is understandably built around what happens when service goes wrong. We compensateinjury and illness, rehabilitate, provide treatment, battle over impairment points, provide incapacity and compensation payments,and debate whether the nation has properly met its obligation to people who have been hurt while serving it. All of that matters enormously, and after the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide there can be no excuse for Australia stepping backwards in those areas.
But there is something missing from the conversation. Why should the most significant benefits attached to being a veteran so often begin with proving that service damaged you?
Military service has immense value. It takes time from families, moves people around the country, and asks Australians to accept obligations, restrictions and risk that do not apply to most of the population. In exchange, the ADF creates great Australians. The most important resource in our Defence force are men and women who want to contribute to their nation and to make it a better place.They should not need an accepted medical condition before that service is recognised in a meaningful way.
A Diggers Bill would change the emphasis. It would say that Australia does not only compensate people when service takes something from them; Australia also rewards them because they served in the first place.
We've actually done this before
The obvious inspiration is the United States’ GI Bill. Since 1944, generations of American veterans have used military service as a pathway into universities, trades and professions, with the modern Post-9/11 GI Bill contributing towards tuition, books, training and living costs.
But this idea is not as foreign to Australia as we might think.
During and after the Second World War, Australia created the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme. It provided vocational and academic training to returned service men and women and, for full-time students, paid tuition and other fees as well as living allowances. By the time the scheme finished accepting applicants, more than 300,000 Australians had been approved for training. The National Archives describes it as one of the most significant strategies for social change in Australia.
Australia had hundreds of thousands of people returning from service and chose to invest in what they could become next as a thank you. Those people entered universities, learned trades, joined professions, built businesses and helped shape post-war Australia.
Our predecessors understood that looking after people who served did not mean simply compensating them for what they had lost. It also meant giving them the tools to build something afterwards.
In doing so, the nation benefited as much as the individual veteran.
I know what that choice can look like
My own experience is only one small example, but it is part of why I think this idea deserves serious consideration. I left the full-time Army at 31. By then I had a mortgage, a partner and the normal financial responsibilities of adult life. Like many people leaving Defence, I needed to move directly into full-time employment to afford it.
University was not unrealistic because I lacked the ability or interest. It was unrealistic because of economics. I couldn’t stop earning a full-time income, continue paying a mortgage and bills, and then add several years of university costs on top. So, I went to work.
I don’t say that as a complaint. I’m immensely proud of my service and have been fortunate in the opportunities I have had since leaving full-time Army and continuing as a Reservist. But a Diggers Bill would have changed the choices available to me, and I suspect it’d change them for thousands of other veterans as well. If the university funding component had already been earned through service, the financial equation would have been very different.
That is what good transition policy should do. It should create choices. Not every veteran will want to go to university and not every veteran should, but those who have the ability and ambition should not find that the responsibilities they accumulated while serving make further education unrealistic once they leave.
Build on the recruitment momentum
There is also a very practical Defence argument for doing this. Recruiting has been below where Australia needs it to be, but the recent improvement is real and should be encouraged. The answer is not to wait for another workforce crisis before thinking about what makes service attractive. It is to build on the momentum while people are again showing interest in joining.
Defence already accepts the basic principle that incentives influence behaviour. Retention bonuses have been used to encourage experienced people to remain in uniform, while changes to housing, family support and study assistance have all been designed to make service more attractive and sustainable. A Diggers Bill would complement those measures by offering something clear at the other end of a period of service: complete what you signed up to do and the nation will back your next step.
That matters because we should not pretend that every good soldier, sailor or aviator needs to serve for 20 or 30 years. Some of the best people I served with did their initial stint, contributed enormously, and then moved on. There’s nothing wrong with that. A healthy Defence Force needs “Lifers” absolutely, but it also needs a constant flow of Australians who join, serve well, gain experience, skills, and knowledge, and then carry what they learned back into the wider community.
Imagine the proposition to an 18-year-old Australian and their family. Join the ADF. Be part of something bigger than yourself. Learn your job. Travel. Develop leadership skills. Serve your country. Complete your obligation. Then, when you are ready for the next chapter, Australia will reward you and put you through university or further training.
Suddenly Defence is not competing with higher education for young Australians. For many of them, Defence becomes a pathway to it.
The ADF as a nation-building institution
The ADF has always had an extraordinary ability to lift people up. It takes Australians from different backgrounds, education, families and financial circumstances and puts them into an organisation where what matters is whether they can learn, perform, lead, work in a team and accept responsibility.
That makes Defence more than simply an employer. It is one of Australia's great training institutions and one of its great meritocracies. A Diggers Bill would extend that nation-building role beyond the gates of the training areas and barracks.
Every year, people leave the ADF with leadership experience, technical skills, discipline, resilience and an understanding of teamwork that is almost impossible to reproduce elsewhere. Give some of those people access to further education and training, and Australia can convert that experience into the next stage of their contribution.
This is where the proposal becomes much bigger than veterans' policy. A Diggers Bill is not money disappearing into a veteran programme. It is money being reinvested into Australia. It is social mobility, education policy, Defence policy, and veteran policy.
Most importantly, it is nation building.
What could a Diggers Bill look like?
I don’t pretend that every detail is simple, and there would need to be a serious policy process around eligibility and cost. Completion of an initial Return of Service Obligation of four years might be a sensible starting point. Reserve service would need its own fair threshold, as well as Reserve service after full-time service. There should too be provisions for people medically discharged before completing their ROSO.
The entitlement could be capped, or cover an approved undergraduate degree, vocational qualification, or equivalent amount of existing HECS debt. Longer service might earn a larger entitlement. There would also be a legitimate debate about whether part of the benefit could assist with living expenses.
Those are important questions, but they are questions of design. They are not reasons to dismiss the principle before we have even had the conversation.
A better bargain with those who serve
Australia must continue improving the way it compensates and supports people who are injured or negatively impacted through service. The Royal Commission has made the consequences of getting that wrong painfully clear. But compensation should not be the only language we use when we talk about what the nation owes its veterans.
Service should also lead to opportunity and choices.
At a time when recruitment is beginning to improve, we have an opportunity to reinforce that trend and make the proposition of service stronger. If an Australian is prepared to accept the conditions of military life, to train, serve and complete their obligation to the country, then there is nothing unreasonable about the country investing in what they do next.
We have done it before too, and the United States continues to do it. There is a strong argument that an Australian version could strengthen the ADF while also empowering more educated, skilled and capable Australians afterwards.
A Diggers Bill would not be a handout and it would not be compensation. Rather, it would be an earned entitlement based on service, and a statement that serving Australia is something the nation is prepared to reward and value.
Serve Australia, and Australia will invest in you.
That seems like a pretty good deal to me.
Eamon Hale
Defence Annual Report 2024-25. Permanent ADF inflow target achievement and separation data. https://www.defence.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-10/Defence-Annual-Report-2024-25.pdf
Defence: Biggest recruitment surge in more than a decade, 4 August 2025. More than 7,000 personnel joined the permanent and reserve force in 2024-25, the highest number in 15 years. https://www.defence.gov.au/news-events/news/2025-08-04/biggest-recruitment-surge-more-than-decade
Defence: Defence prepares for new National Defence Strategy, 15 April 2026. Permanent full-time ADF strength of 62,653 as at 1 March 2026 and separation rate of 7.5 per cent. https://www.defence.gov.au/news-events/news/2026-04-15/defence-prepares-new-national-defence-strategy
National Archives of Australia: Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme applicants and trainees. More than 300,000 accepted for training; tuition and fees plus living allowance for full-time training. https://www.naa.gov.au/help-your-research/fact-sheets/commonwealth-reconstruction-training-scheme-applicants-and-trainees
National Archives of Australia: Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme administrative records. Describes the scheme as one of the most significant strategies for social change in Australia. https://www.naa.gov.au/help-your-research/fact-sheets/commonwealth-reconstruction-training-scheme-administrative-records
US Department of Veterans Affairs: About GI Bill benefits. GI Bill education and training benefits since 1944. https://www.va.gov/education/about-gi-bill-benefits/
