The Royal Australian Navy is planning to recruit British Navy personnel made redundant by government defence cuts.
More than 5,000 Royal Navy staff are expected to lose their jobs over the next four years.
The Australian Navy, which has failed to fill recruitment quotas in recent years, has sent a delegation to the UK to discuss taking on skilled workers from the RN, including engineers and doctors.
Hundreds of British sailors, including many that had served in the liberation of Libya, were told in September they would be losing their jobs as part of a first round of cuts that will see the RN reduced to 30,000.
Other services will also suffer job losses, including 16,000 soldiers and 5,000 air force personnel, as the British armed forces will sees a total reduction of 8%.
In March, the Ark Royal, the RN's flagship carrier, was decommissioned as part of a cost cutting that will see £5bn saved from the defence budget by 2015.
Speaking to the Independent, a RAN spokesperson confirmed: "The Royal Australian Navy has been in talks with the Royal Navy about this possibility but that obviously will depend on those personnel meeting the Royal Australian Navy’s requirements.”
According to the Daily Telegraph, the Royal Navy is “comfortable” with the RAN offering redundant staff this “career transition option”.
However, critics of the British defence cuts have argued that Australia’s willingness to take on the highly trained staff highlights the folly of the government’s plan.
Speaking to the Telegraph, Admiral Sir John Woodward, leader of the RN task force that retook the Falklands in 1982, said: “If the guys who are being cut by our own foolish government want to go and work for the Australians good luck to them. They know how we train our people and we have trained a lot of theirs over the years. They know what they are getting.”
The RAN is desperate to recruit staff having recently ordered a new fleet of warships, including three Hobart class air warfare destroyers, due in service in 2014. The Australian Navy has also struggled to staff its submarine fleet in recent years.