Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Defence Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 to address the military justice system. At the end of 1987 I resigned from the Australian Federal Police to begin 18 months of very interesting and exciting training at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, starting in January 1988. Unfortunately, to my shame, I was charged twice as a cadet. That was my introduction to the military justice system. It is a disgrace! Both my cadet charges were for heinous offences relating to uniform shirts—polyester shirts. It is a grievous tale. About eight weeks into my training, an inspection revealed that there were not enough ironed shirts hanging up in my cupboard, and so a charge was laid against me. As a result of that charge I had what was called a ‘restriction of privileges’, another very exciting moment in my life. After that charge was heard I had to report four times a day for seven days for dress inspections, and for one afternoon of about 45 minutes to an hour of drilling on the parade ground in marching order—which was with helmet, webbing, pack and, at that time, greens. That, too, was a lovely moment.

About a year later, in my final six months at Duntroon, after an inspection of vehicles—which was random in those days, interestingly—I was charged for having another uniform shirt in the boot of my car. It should have been in my cupboard. The week before, we had been drilling on the parade ground—those were the days of SLRs. Shoulder arms was a requirement as part of the drill. My buddy on my left and I were standing a little too close together. The bayonet on the end of his rifle went up and cut the inside of my sleeve—luckily only the sleeve. I thought that further ironing of that shirt was a bit pointless and, probably a bit recklessly, I chucked it in my boot, thinking that that would be okay. Unfortunately, that inspection—looking for contraband, which was just alcohol in those days—took place, and I was caught in possession of goods. As a result of that I lost two days of leave for the offence of failing to comply with a lawful standing order—in other words, having military equipment in my vehicle. So they were my first two experiences with the military justice system. I think most cadets at Duntroon had similar experiences.

The essential point here is that obviously these were not major offences in the military system, but they were treated as training opportunities. Every time you got charged, you then had to go forward and ask one of your mates to be the prosecutor, someone else to be the defender and someone else to be the clerk, as I recall. The cadet company drill sergeant, who was a member of the regular Army, a sergeant from one of the infantry battalions normally, would oversee the training aspects of the hearing, and the officer commanding, the OC who was the major in charge of the company, would hear it. As a little aside, I thought it was a bit ludicrous to be charged for a torn shirt. When they read the charge out, I looked down at the OC’s eyes—he had his cap on and was seated at his table—and a slight wry smile came over his face. Then I started laughing. My lack of respect for the system probably cost me those two days, whereas I might have got off with some other punishment. But loss of leave was not a big deal compared to the restriction of privileges and marching on the square.

After Duntroon I tried to keep on the right side of the military justice system. In June 1989 I graduated and went straight into the Royal Australian Corps of Military Police. In many ways military justice and the DFDA—the Defence Force Discipline Act—were pretty much the bread and butter of my occupation, at least in the early days of my career in the Army. Within the Royal Australian Corps of Military Police there are basically two main streams: the general duties side, which is the field force military police, and the Special Investigation Branch of the military police. The SIB is tasked with doing investigations within the military. The general duties side involves field military police doing things such as battlefield circulation—some people call it traffic control—in the area of operations and some investigations. But the SIB MPs were something like army detectives, although only about five per cent of them had ever actually done the full police detective course.

In my case, having come from the AFP, I had done stage 4 training, as we called it in those days, including records of interview and investigations in general. In my time with the MPS I also did a three-week investigators course with the Victoria Police. That all took place before I even did the eight-week SIB course in the military police. As an SIB commander with the rank of captain I was fortunate enough to lead teams of investigators—this was in 1993—across the major bases in Darwin, Townsville and Brisbane. I was posted to Brisbane. Unfortunately, in 1993-94 the SIB was broken up as part of an efficiency review. That left the SIB teams split up and without the technical support of an objective chain of command. I will cover the objective chain of command soon, because it will become relevant.

Under the revised structure I headed a small group of investigators based in Brisbane, again, unfortunately, with a marginalised MP SIB technical chain of command. That chain of command had no platoon command and few resources at its disposal. So we struggled with a command structure that was made up of a commanding officer and other ranks that had no experience whatsoever of commanding or administering SIB investigators. This was bad for professional military police investigators, because to receive resources for investigations I actually had to go to the unit commander and tell him where I wanted to go and what I was going to do there.

An example of the absurdity of the situation was when I informed my commanding officer—I think he was a transport corps Lieutenant Colonel—of my suspicions regarding the loss of property and fraud at a particular unit in southern Queensland. I informed him of that and asked him for resources. He said that he would think about it. I later found out that he had told his friend, who was the CO of that unit, about what I was talking about. I felt that that was a significant undermining of the investigations process within the military. I therefore believe that leadership remains an important part of the military justice system, because it has been the lack of leadership that has led us to the point where this legislation is required.

Given what I have already spoken about, it is from my experiences of conducting many an investigation in the Army and seeing the way some commanding officers acted that I now pass comments on this bill as possibly more than just a bystander in the process. I served this country as a commissioned officer for about 15 years and, for almost the entire time, I believed that the trouble with the military justice system was that the system was not allowed to work. I believe that the MPs and the SIB could do the job and that we MPs could operate within the DFDA to properly investigate matters. Sure, the equipment was not as good as it is now, but I had my view that we had enough to get on with the job.

My view changed around the time I finished my duties working on Olympic security at the end of 2000. What changed my view was that, as a major, I was given the task at land command to commence collating a list of harassment and similar problems across the units of the command. Land command controlled two divisions of the Army and the brigades down to almost all the field units. They were all under the command of land command. My recollection is that that amounted to more than 10,000 full-time and reserve soldiers. From the records I started assembling I saw that, while the Army was probably no worse than most large organisations at the time, there were enough cases to lead me to believe that there was a fundamental problem preventing the system from working.

But, before imparting my views in this place, it is probably best to speak a little bit about the leadership training of young officers in the Army. Again, my view is that the leadership training is very good within the Army. Members may be aware that, when the Army talks about a commanding officer of a unit, they are invariably talking about a person holding the rank of lieutenant colonel who may well be in command of a battalion or a regiment. COs would always tell their young officers that, whatever happened, the buck always stopped with the CO. I think we even hear a bit of that around here. From what I saw during my time in the Army, responsibility very rarely seemed to land at the feet of the CO. I suspect that true responsibility ended when officers no longer immediately resigned their commissions when they disagreed with orders given or with government policy. Nowadays, officers seem to wait for a job before resigning and then they speak about how much they disagreed with their orders. Again, we have seen examples of that in recent history.

I mentioned before that I thought the system was not being allowed to work. I reiterate my confidence in the training provided in the Army for investigators; although some decisions made in the past did undermine the experience and skill levels of investigators serving at the time. It is my view that the problem originated where MP-SIB investigators did not have the ability to initiate investigations. Unit commanders, the COs, had to call for the SIB before an MP investigation would commence. My experience was that so often the damage was done before the SIB was allowed to investigate an incident that had happened weeks before. It always seemed that some poor sergeant or lieutenant from the unit was told to investigate the incident while still doing all their other duties. I recall several incidents of harassment that were investigated in that manner.

I would like to talk a bit about a not very happy little story that occurred in a unit in Enoggera around 1993 and was investigated within the Army. It transpired that a young female soldier was posted to an electrical and mechanical engineer workshop and a couple of corporals that had a command responsibility over that soldier took a liking to her for physical reasons. Those days are what I call some of the dark days of the military where there was still some tolerance, although hardly any, of this sort of thing. I recall that centrefolds could be displayed in working areas. These two corporals actually held up a centrefold and tried to make some verbal comparisons between this young soldier and the images on the centrefold, in some sort of infantile manner to attract her attention or make themselves more interesting to her. Of course that was a complete failure. But, again, there did not seem to be a whole lot of action taking place to stop that sort of behaviour on the floor in that workshop. There was a breakdown of the command structure and leadership within the unit.

The next thing that happened—and this is where things got out of control—occurred at a corporals’ dining-in night at the soldiers mess at Enoggera. Often the privates were told that they were rostered on to do the waiting and everything like that—bring the food out et cetera. Corporals obviously were the main ranks at the tables that were being served. Officers were invited as well. The case involved these two corporals. They were seated with a lieutenant in between them and this young soldier served them. During the evening, they talked about her and made jokes about her. After the dinner concluded, the young male lieutenant went to that female soldier and said, ‘It’s probably best if you do not go home tonight back to your barrack room because those two corporals talked about how they were going to come to your room and try to rape you.’ Obviously great moral doubt should be cast upon the corporals but, above all, the main problem I see is that a lieutenant did not see that he had a responsibility to act and take action within the unit. He would have said, ‘I’ve discharged my responsibilities by warning that young soldier that there was about to be a problem.’ He did not order those soldiers to the guard post or tell them they would be charged with prejudicial behaviour, which is what I think we called it in Defence in those days. He thought he had discharged his responsibilities by saying, ‘Look after yourself; just don’t go back to your room.’ The fact that an indictable offence, in civil terms, was about to be committed did not seem to have any impact. I think that maybe leadership training was not exactly all that successful in those sorts of cases.

It is no great surprise that aggrieved soldiers of both sexes have been dissatisfied with some of the processes within military justice. After a major incident, an investigation would be done on a part-time basis by unskilled persons, guided by the interests of the CO and heard by either the CO or, depending on the charge, a major within the unit. Possibly weeks later—and we are talking about the early nineties—the brigade legal officer, a major or a captain, would get to see the file. I guess what I am trying to say is that if a CO thought it was in the best interests of the unit, even those sorts of matters he would have investigated within the unit and charges would be brought within the unit, and people who were not really skilled in any form of investigation would take care of these matters. So it is little wonder that people had some doubts about whether justice was being done and whether the interests of the vulnerable were being looked after. I do not mean to say that COs always, or even frequently, intentionally acted to try to hush up incidents. In most cases, they tried to use their considerable experience to make judgements about what they thought was best for their units. It is, however, my view that because of this approach the system of military justice, where it specifically involves the ability of the military to investigate itself, comes undone.

I have great faith that a properly resourced and commanded investigations unit, as we have today, is capable of conducting investigations to the necessary and required legal standards, but it has to be backed up by a willingness of unit commanders to have problems investigated quickly and appropriately. Unfortunately, I cannot see that such a willingness has existed at all times.

I would just like to say briefly that I commend the new government for bringing this bill of the previous government back after it lapsed in 2007. I have very limited time left, but my key point is that rank has its responsibilities within defence. Leaders have a responsibility to stand up for the weaker and more vulnerable. Unit cohesion is not actually served by sacrificing the vulnerable. In my time in defence I have seen some outcomes of a misguided belief that the unit’s standing was more important than a properly constituted investigation. From that beginning, all other aspects of hearings, outcomes and even punishments are affected downstream. Overall, the system has worked in the past, but in some cases it has not. Given the origins of this bill and what it proposes, I commend the bill to the House. (Time expired)

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