ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the military in Australia and looks at how Australian law has dealt with the issues of both conscientious objection and selective conscientious objection. It explores how the law has dealt with these issues it will then be possible to see what the practical effect of this has been on Australian military operations. The Australian Defence Act, which for simplicity will henceforth be referred to as the Defence Act, was the first legislation passed by any country in the world to grant total exemption from military service on the grounds of conscientious. World War II was the first time that the conscientious objection provisions of the Defence Act were tested since this war was the first one in which Australians were conscripted into military service. The number of people serving in the Australian military had been wound back since the end of the Second World War and National Service was designed to boost numbers of men.
