Lateral recruitment, Sir Humphrey?

The military is one area of Government we should support - it is something Government should do.

But this

The New Zealand Defence Force is recruiting in the United Kingdom after a round of redundancies and a mass exodus of staff.

Today the Defence Force announced that 685 people left the service voluntarily between August 2011 and January 2012 last year. On top of that, 212 were made redundant last year, as part of the defence force's White Paper review.

Defence spokesman Squadron Leader Kavae Tamariki said the current rate of attrition was high, and the need to recruit overseas was vital.

"The decision to recruit personnel from the UK is part of the NZDF overall recruitment strategy to recruit the right amount of the right people, with the right attributes, at the right time and place to sustain NZDF operational outputs," he said.

"The process of overseas recruitment is part of lateral recruiting, and is focussing on shortfalls arising from attrition and not on ranks and trades deliberately reduced by the NZDF civilianisation programme."

Hey we have high youth unemployment - why are we not recruiting them?