Take a Chance on Me

As a long time defence partner I know how hard it can be to find work when you arrive in a new location. With a posting cycle of anything from one to several years, any sort of career continuity can be challenging and non-existing. Long gone are the days when partners stayed at home with the children. With more females and now recognised same-sex couples in the military, there are also many male civilian partners looking for work. Many partners are professionals in their own careers and nearly all want to work to support themselves and their families.

On notification of our second posting, I took the initiative and put a business case to my employer to see if they would be willing to continue to employ me but allow me to work from home from interstate. This would allow me to keep my current role but support my husband’s role in the Air Force and continue to move with him. I was grateful when the CEO agreed to this, and I have continued to work for the same employer for eight years across several interstate postings. Other defence partners are not so lucky with 14 % of partners unemployed compared to 6% of the civilian workforce.

A recent article in the Huffington Post from Suzie Scanlon Rabinowitz, Managing Partner of a US legal firm, reports that they have taken the initiative to employ legally trained military partners. As a part of the ‘gig’ economy the law firm is helping to “create job opportunities for this talented and under-appreciated pool of attorneys” by providing temporary employment opportunities for them and negotiating with different states to amend laws surrounding legal licensing restrictions.

Similar issues occur here in Australia with defence partners who are doctors, nurses and teachers having to apply for varying state licensing when posting interstate. Although defence often covers the costs, the time it takes to complete the paperwork with each move can be frustrating. Wouldn’t it be great if governments could take the initiative and remove some of the barriers to employment for defence partners?

With a more flexible work environment on the increase, it certainly makes sense for defence partners to investigate alternative employment options for themselves here in Australia. It would also be pertinent to suggest the defence force itself look to making things a little easier for partners and families. We’re a spirited and creative lot and sometimes it pays to think outside the box a little and investigate what is out there and who is willing to take a chance.

If defence partners are happily employed in posting locations it can make a huge difference to their quality of life as a defence family.

Wish You Were Here

When I met my husband all those years ago, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had simply met ‘the one’ and was living happily in my little idyllic world, planning a wedding and a future together.

All of a sudden I became a ‘defence wife’, or a ‘military partner’ and at the time I truly didn’t appreciated the complexity behind these labels. In the years that followed, I soon realised that being in a relationship with someone in the military does have a profound effect on your life and everything in it.

Our first posting was to a small town in country Victoria. I had never heard of it. I had to leave a job I adored and move to a town where I knew not one person to re-establish myself and find work. This was my first taste of what my life would be like. I’m a social person by nature but even I found this task daunting. I could only imagine the anxiety each and every posting order brings for someone less outgoing. Partner employment is one of the biggest challenges for defence families with 14% of civilian partners unemployed compared to the national unemployment rate of 6%.

Once we started a family, the situation became even more complex. My eldest daughter is now 12 years old and is attending her fourth school. She has lived in six different houses on six different interstate postings. She’s a quiet, reserved ‘tween’ and finds making new friends challenging. Moving children from school to school is not always ideal and many families often elect to become MWDU or Members with Dependents Unaccompanied which means the Defence member moves to one location while the family stays in another for various reasons. You can only imagine the strain on relationships this can cause.

Then there are the deployments. In the weeks leading up to the deployment I find my husband ‘checks out’ of our life as he prepares to go. There’s often limited contact and a constant worry from my end as I avoid watching the news for anything relating to the warzone he is deployed to.

Somehow though, we have managed to survive almost 20 years together. I’ve done things I never thought possible and made the most amazing friends in this crazy life we are leading.

There are thousands of military family blogs. There are not a lot of Australian ones. Through my writing I hope to share my unique insight into the good, the bad and even the ugly of being ‘married’ to the military and how we have managed to make it work.