I have been busy and havent had a chance to post. 
Well lets look at the benifits I get as a Leading Seaman i am on a base sallary of $43,000 plus $9,500 service allowance PLUS tier 3 seagoing allowance $18,000. Thats my my normal pay. When my ship is along side in home port (sydney) which it has for the last 5 months for a refit, I work 0800 to 1530 with an hour for lunch an half hour of other breaks 5 days a week. Plus i play an hour of sport in work time everyday and on wednesday afternoons i play team sport for 2 hours in work time. I get my meals cooked for me for free, and they aint half bad compared to the crap i see sold in the city. My uniforms are washed at work for free and i have a bed to sleep in AT WORK (on my ship)  during lunch. 
At sea i work about 12 hours a day an get bugger all sleep because i serve on warships an we are always training. I have done 3 active service deployments to iraq/afghan and up there the normal routie for navy is 28 days at sea, and then 7 along side in places such as Dubai. Getting $150 a day ontop of our normal pay completely tax free.. Yes i earn my money at sea from hard work. But you will never have as much fun anywhere as you will stepping ashore after a month at sea in a town full of beautiful women and a pocket full of your hard earned with your best mates. 
There are women on ships now too so there is no funny business like old times 
I get free medical, dental. I get $270 per week for my rent. And i claim all my snowboarding gear on tax and take 2 weeks unchecked leave off per year to compete in the interservice snowboarding championships. Also when tax time comes around i normally get a bit back from just being in different parts of the world that have lower tax zones. 
I get 35 days leave a year (7 weeks). 
That pretty much sums up how i work an get paid. Now im only 22, i think im doing ok out of the navy. I dont know about the army, but our navy is the highest paid navy in the world. I grew up on a yacht so the sea is nothing new to me 
edit: and about the collins class submarine you are very very wrong. Yes when they came out they had all kinds of weapon system problems. But they have been rectified and vastly improved, now our collins class submarines at the worlds biggest joint naval excersise in Hawaii (RIMPAC) are kicking ass. They are SO GOOD that they have to make a mistake on purpose so the other subs can find them. HMAS Farncombe and crew managed to sink an entire carrier battle group flotilla in wargames. Which is no mean feat and has never been done before. So before your quick to critique our capabilites, maybe you should read some uptodate news on our steel sharks. 
Dont mention the Sea Sprites, they are a waste of money, and defence royally fucked up on that one!