Yes! The association was established to help connect all ADF and Defence APS personnel, including ex-serving members. We are very keen and excited to welcome ex-serving people to reestablish old connections and foster new ones.

Yes! While we are a 'veteran' association, we welcome Defence APS members (current and former) to join if they meet our membership criteria for either of our membership categories.

Unfortunately, not. Our membership is almost exclusively for current and former members of the Australian Defence Force plus Defence APS employees. While we do accept foreign military personnel, this is only temporarily while they are living in Australia.

Yes! We are mindful that not everyone wants to submit their information via an online form, which can be especially true for people working in Defence. We currently have two alternative options available:

1. Email: You can send us an email to admin@avla.org.au with responses to the membership form questions that you feel comfortable answering. At a minimum, the following will need to be submitted:

   a. Your first and last name

   b. Which membership category you are applying for

   c. Which eligibility criteria best represents your situation

   d. The following confirmation statement “I confirm this information to be accurate, agree to receiving communications from AVLA, and agree to be bound by the Constitution if I am accepted as a member.”

2. Phone: You can send us an email with your preferred phone number, and we can organise a time for our staff to call you and take your membership form answers verbally.

If you are applying to join as an Ordinary member, but don’t feel comfortable providing enough information for us to verify your eligibility, then we will admit you as an Associate member until such time as we can verify things further.

There are two main reasons for the number of questions asked within our forms.

1. Verification. To obtain enough information to verify your connection to Defence and membership category eligibility. The eligibility side of the equation is especially important when trying to verify those who wish to join as Ordinary members.

2. Services. Our questions around your suburb, languages known, and service status all assist to give us a better picture of the demographics of our members, and informs our executive decisions around which services we prioritise the development of.

If you would prefer not to provide the level of detail requested, that is totally okay, and we do not want this to exclude you from joining up and benefitting from membership. In this case, we recommend that you review the previous FAQ question ‘Are there other options to register, other than the online form?’, and consider registering through one of those alternative means.

This is entirely up to you, however, as an external-to-Defence association, it is our preference that members sign up with their civilian/personal email address. This also reduces the risk of becoming disconnected when on extended leave, or when you transition out of Defence.

Absolutely! As an association run largely by active Defence members, we have a deep understanding of the importance of this topic, and we have been very mindful of data security in establishing our systems. Both our website and email infrastructure is hosted by a reputable Australian provider who only uses Australian servers. We use only encrypted storage solutions that meet Australian Government standards and is secure at the PROTECTED level.

We have also established our Privacy Policy in line with Australian requirements, and have consulted other Australian veteran organisations to build our understanding of how to best protect the data/information that we receive from those interested in joining or volunteering with us.

For membership applications, once we have confirmed your eligibility to join, we securely delete and anonymise whatever information we can to ensure your identity is as protected as possible. For instance, we will place you into categorised age brackets (eg. 17-24, 25-34, 35-44 etc.), and also change your recorded location to a nearby suburb to reduce your stored personal information, while retaining enough information to provide our services.

Our association is open to all current and former members of Defence, including those who only speak English – just so long as your interest in language extends past the fact that you speak it.

Yes, absolutely! People who speak or know any world language, including First Nations languages are eligible to join our association either as Ordinary or Associate members. The association will be working towards developing opportunities for as many of the languages spoken by our members as possible, including English, First Nations, foreign, and Sign languages.

This is certainly the aim of the association – to provide opportunities and resources to help build up all linguists, regardless of their background or language spoken.

Yes, they can. While there will be a number of services and benefits that can only be accessed in Australia, such as our networking activities, state branches, conferences etc. we will still work to develop a suite of resources that will benefit members no matter where in the world they are posted.

Don’t worry, we have no intention of spamming you with emails! Most of our promotional campaigns will be published via our various social media channels, with potentially a monthly or quarterly newsletter being developed at some point to keep members updated via email.

From time to time we will also communicate with you about opportunities that we think may be of interest to you, such as new services or resources becoming available. Most engagement about volunteering opportunities (if you have indicated your interest in this) will be targeted based off members locations, skills/experience, or recorded availability.

We will, however, occasionally send out wider communiqués when:

• Inviting members to nominate for a specific committee or working group

• Notifying you of an upcoming annual general meeting

• Informing you of important changes to the association or our policies

• Letting you know about any upcoming conferences