Home buying is put off July 24, 2000 Defence personnel tend to put off buying a home because of a lack of locational stability, the Posting Turbulence Review Team (PTRT) has been told. It has also been told that Defence housing should be allocated on an "as needs" basis, not on a rank basis. These two issues are among many raised with the team during its national tour of major ADF regions and bases. The team has consulted approximately 250 ADF members, and their spouses, from all services and ranks, on a range of issues relating to posting turbulence such as: home ownership, career management, removals and family life. The PTRT was set up on Feb 1 2000 and is headed up by BRIG Dave Webster. The team's objective is to study all Service infrastructures, career management policies and service practices with the aim of reducing 'posting turbulence' for personnel and identifying where savings can be made for the ADF. The team is due to report its findings to HDPE in September. Personnel consultations on 'posting turbulence' were achieved via 29 focus groups that were run between April 10 and May 22. CAPT Mal Christie and Ms Samantha James, from the Directorate of Strategic Personnel Planning and Research (DSPPR), conducted the focus groups on behalf of the PTRT. Focus groups were conducted in Canberra, Gallipoli Barracks, RAAF Base Amberley, Lavarack Barracks, RAAF Base Tindal, Robertson Barracks, HMAS COONAWARRA, HMAS STIRLING, RAAF Base Edinburgh and Fleet Base East. Some of the themes and issues raised by ADF members, and their spouses during consultations were: Personnel tend to be put off purchasing a home because of a lack of locational stability. ADF policies designed to assist personnel purchase a home are perceived to be complicated, inflexible, hard to understand and difficult to access. ADF personnel cannot afford to purchase a home in some regions, even if they want to. The Defence Relocation Centre's (DRC's) and the Defence Housing Authority lacks customer focus, empathy for Service personnel and product knowledge. Defence housing should be allocated on an 'as-needs' basis - not on a Rank basis. Back-to-back shore postings are appealing to members with dependants for stability reasons. However, single members tend to prefer a higher posting frequency. Technical trade specialists prefer to stay longer in the one place to develop expertise. Other categories/musterings/corps prefer to be posted more often to get broad experience and increase promotion prospects. Members do not wish conditions of service to be cut any more and are generally against the 'cashing out' of removals or limitations on removal size. Members with school age children prefer postings to occur at the end of the year. Members without school aged children are generally happy to be posted at anytime of the year all members. Family considerations tend to come before career considerations in most cases. Most members said they would refuse a posting, promotion or get out before they disrupted the family unnecessarily.