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Royal Australian Navy to Go on Two Months Christmas Holidays

Posted: 23 Nov 2008 04:03 AM CST

royal_australian_navy

The Royal Australian Navy is planning for two months long Christmas holidays. The Australian Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has stated that Christmas shutdown from December 03 to February 03 would encourage the Royal Australian Navy staff to avail a long break and to be more family-friendly.

However, the Deputy Chief of Navy, Rear Admiral Davyd Thomas, RAN, has clarified that the Christmas stand down period is part of the Chief of Navy’s “New Generation Navy (NGN)” program, and will not have any adverse impact on national security.

The NGN program was initiated as the navy is facing severe staff shortages of about 2,020 skilled staff and a 27 percent yearly recruitment shortfall, compounded by 11 percent of staff quitting the service each year.

The NGN initiated by Chief of Navy is

to encourage to work smarter and not harder
to enhance work/life balance of the staff
to improve training
to ensure staff retention

During these holidays, all ships not on overseas deployment will remain in the port with a skeleton staff to maintain on-board security. However, an operational response vessel on the East and West coasts of Australia will be on standby to meet any emergency response at sea.

Here is an interesting video clip of Royal Australian Navy.

Read more from Department of Defence and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Post in MarineBuzz on this day a year before:

U.S Maritime Security Expo 2007