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A Senate Estimates exchange reveals Australian combat engineers aren’t allowed to change their own light bulbs — they must log a job through an app and wait for a contractor instead.

Now this is going to sound like a joke, but hilariously, it’s not.

How many Australian army combat engineers does it take to change a light bulb?

If you answered “none”, you’re correct.

Not because our soldiers are busy defending the country. No. No. They’re just not allowed to change light bulbs.

We know this because last week, NSW Liberal Senator Jess Collins was trying to understand how it is that the defence force has so much money, and yet can’t seem to afford things.

So she asked Defence officials to explain how the army works.

For example… When a light bulb blows in barracks, what happens?

There’s an App for That

Collins asked during Senate Estimates,

If I’m a combat engineer on a base and a light bulb goes, what do I do?

Here’s the response from Defence Department First Assistant Secretary of Service Delivery Leanne Monterosso:

You would log a job on service connect which is an app that we have or on the intranet and somebody would come out and change your light bulb for you.

Did you get that?

If a light bulb blows, you don’t grab a spare one. Too dangerous.

Instead, you reach for your phone, log onto an app, submit a request, and wait patiently for help to arrive.

Pertinent Questions

Senator Collins followed up with the question every taxpayer was already asking:

Why can’t I change the light bulb myself? If I’m a combat engineer, why can’t I change the bulb myself? Why do I have to go through that process?

And there’s the response from Department of Defence Deputy Secretary Security and Estate Celia Perkins:

Where would they buy the light bulb from? Where would they store the light bulb?

Excellent questions.

I would have thought you buy a light bulb from Bunnings, and you store it in a cupboard.

And then, when you need it, you take it out of the cupboard, stand on a chair – or if Workplace Health and Safety is watching, a ladder – and you know… screw it in.

But I only know that because I’m not a bureaucrat in the Defence Department with a budget of billions.

And I guess you’d need a budget of billions if every time a light bulb blows you have to get soldiers to log on to a specially developed app, after which a tradesperson arrives, but not before being given a safety briefing, undergoing a security check and being signed on to base… after which he can change the light bulb… before returning to main office to sign out of the base and return home where he submits a bill to the Commonwealth.

I suppose soldiers could change light bulbs themselves, but… well then we’d be wasting the app.

The Real Cost of Changing a Light Bulb

Senator Collins wondered aloud:

How much does it cost to change a light bulb?

And that’s the problem, isn’t it?

When you’ve got billions, it doesn’t really matter whether changing a light bulb costs $2 or $200 or $2000… it’s just taxpayer money.

Taxpayer money that’s supposed to be used in the defence of our nation. Instead, it’s being used to protect us from unauthorised globe replacements.

Meanwhile, Defence tells us it can’t afford to keep facilities like Victoria Barracks in Sydney open.

Funny how that happens when changing a light bulb requires an IT platform, a contractor, security clearance and enough paperwork to invade a small country.

Collins told the public servants who, by this time, were looking like rabbits in headlights:

I know you’re looking at me like, this is a ridiculous questioning but I’m trying to understand the maintenance program on these bases. I mean part of the rationale for selling Victoria Barracks Sydney – the heart and soul of the army – is because things like changing a light bulb cost too much!

Senator Collins finally reached the only conclusion any rational person could.

A combat engineer can blow up bridges, go behind insurgent lines, but he can’t change his own lightbulb.

That’s correct.

If war ever comes to Australia, let’s just hope the enemy has the decency not to shoot out the lights.

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Republished with thanks to The James Macpherson Report. Image courtesy of Adobe.