Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Defence Personnel) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to speak on the National Commissioner for Defence and Veteran Suicide Prevention Bill 2020 and the National Commissioner for Defence and Veteran Suicide Prevention (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2020, and I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House criticises the Government for failing to:

(1) address the high rates of suicide and mental health conditions among current and former Australian Defence Force personnel, as evidenced by the latest Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data; and

(2) establish a full and independent Royal Commission into veteran suicide, with broad terms of reference, and a clear start and end date".

At the outset, I want to say that Labor recognises the unique nature of military service, the sacrifice of current and former ADF members and their families and the outstanding contribution they make to our nation. We are committed to supporting our ADF members and veterans during their service, in transitioning from service and in their lives beyond service. For our part, Labor takes the issue of defence and veteran suicide very seriously. This is why we came out in support of a royal commission into veteran suicide in December last year.

The government's announcement in February of a new National Commissioner for Defence and Veteran Suicide Prevention, only after widespread calls from veterans and sections of the media for a royal commission, is disappointing. Despite the overwhelming support for a royal commission the Prime Minister stubbornly refused to listen to the veterans community and establish a royal commission earlier this year. In response, Labor cautiously welcomed the announcement of a national commissioner as a step forward because, as we said at the time, we didn't want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. On that basis, Labor will not be opposing these bills in the House. But we reserve our position until we see the outcome of the Senate inquiry into these bills.

Like so many in the veterans community, we have serious concerns about the proposed national commissioner. The fact is that, since the government's initial announcements, we and many parents and family members whose sons and daughters tragically have taken their own lives after long battles with the Department of Veterans' Affairs have become increasingly convinced that the national commissioner won't be better than a royal commission as the government has claimed. The government has a lot of work to do to convince us and many in the veterans and wider community that they are genuine in tackling this issue. A growing concern shared by many veterans and families is that this is simply a marketing exercise—an announcement, not a plan to tackle the issue. It won't accomplish what a royal commission would because it lacks the resources, the scope, the powers and, in particular, the independence from government to ask the difficult questions.

Labor's position is that only a full royal commission, with a clear start and end date, will achieve this. Otherwise, the national commissioner just creates yet another layer of bureaucracy which will achieve very little. But we know that the devil is in the detail, so we've studied the legislation and we've been consulting widely to hear from stakeholders and experts. We want to scrutinise it thoroughly to see if the proposal will have the powers of a royal commission. This is why we supported referring the bills to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee inquiry. We've got concerns about the proposal and believe only a thorough and comprehensive inquiry will address these.

The government has a trust deficit with the veterans community. Together, these issues which I'm about to elaborate upon really cause the veterans community to have grave concern about the government's real intention here, and whether this is an actual plan to address these issues and not just a marketing exercise. There are four issues I want to address that encompass part of the amendments that I have moved. The first issue is the DFRDB issue. The government announced that they would have an inquiry by the Commonwealth Ombudsman as a result of requests by the veterans community into the Defence Force Retirement and Death Benefits Scheme—an independent investigation. This has bedevilled and vexed many in the veterans community and caused tremendous concern and angst. The government eventually announced the outcome of the inquiry. We welcomed the government's apology to veterans. We welcomed the fact that the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation, which manages the DFRDB scheme, had accepted the Ombudsman's recommendation to improve advice to and communication with members. The Ombudsman found that there were false expectations of a more generous long-term outcome, and this constituted defective administration by Defence. We then expected the government to engage with the veterans community, because we know that people who suffer financial loss can apply for compensation through the government's Scheme for Compensation for Detriment caused by Defective Administration. It's a well-known fact. We expected the government to engage with the veterans community in relation to that. We expected applications to come out of the government's engagement with the veterans community. Too little has been done, and this has caused concern and real worry in the veterans community.

The second issue is the announcement the government made in March last year, before the last election, that they would examine, at the request of so many totally and permanently incapacitated veterans, the compensation they were paid as income—the special rate pension. Those veterans felt it wasn't benchmarked properly and that its real purchasing power was declining. The government announced that there would be an inquiry conducted by David Tune in relation to that issue. We provided bipartisan support. The government received the report of that review in August last year and sat on the report, releasing it just after the budget. I can't count the number of times I've spoken to people in the veterans community, in speaking at conferences and congresses of the TPI community, about the anxiety caused by the government's failure in this respect.

In the end, in the budget, what has the government done? As I said, the government released the outcome of the review just after the budget. In the budget, there's a little bit extra help for those TPI veterans who are renting. Up to 20 per cent of TPI veterans will receive some rental assistance, far short of what was expected. This has caused a trust deficit amongst veterans communities, and TPI veterans have been very vocal about it.

The third issue is the government's much-heralded national Veteran Health and Wellbeing Strategy. The minister stood over there and announced that they would have that wellbeing and health strategy, which is the very subject of these bills and the amendment today, by the end of last year. That came and went—pre bushfires, pre pandemic. Eventually, on 15 May this year, we discovered the strategy had been put up on the website. There were blank pages, a few pictures, a litany of policies and programs which were already being rolled out—really a bit of a damp squib of a strategy and a policy. The veterans community was very underwhelmed by it.

The fourth issue, which again is the subject of these bills, was the Productivity Commission report, which the government received in the middle of last year, releasing it on 2 July last year. There were 69 recommendations. There were some we came out quite strongly against pretty well from the start—for example, the idea of abolishing the gold card for veterans and their families. We straightaway said we didn't support it. In addition, there was the idea to create and privatise the Veteran Services Commission that the PC had recommended in its interim report. We said we wouldn't support that. We asked questions in this forum, including in question time, consideration in detail and Senate estimates, about what the government's intention was.

Remember, the government released this report on 2 July last year. The government responded to that report in the budget. And what did they say? There's an interim response. There's 69 recommendations by the Productivity Commission. The government responded to only 25 of those and we have no idea when the government's eventually going to respond to the rest. In the budget there was a bit more support for counselling and mental health services—for increased fees for mental health services like psychology and psychiatry. We welcome that. I commended the government for it. But there was nothing in terms of extra support for physiotherapy or occupational therapy. It's not just mental health; mental health goes hand in glove with physical health, and the government did nothing in the budget in relation to that.

So you can see there's a real trust deficit when it comes to the government on these issues, and veterans feel left out and left behind accordingly. As I said as I moved this second reading amendment criticising the government in relation to this issue, on 9 October we saw the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare figures on ADF personnel and veteran suicide released. They show that our veterans urgently need help. There needs to be a royal commission into this painful and ongoing scourge. The data showed that there were 33 deaths by suicide amongst serving and ex-serving ADF personnel in 2018; 465 suicides between 2001 and 2018. That's about 10 times more deaths by suicide than there were combat deaths over the same period.

The sobering reality is that many veterans believe the actual suicide rate is much higher. Anecdotally, we lose around one veteran a week, at least, to suicide. That's because the official figures may not pick up that someone was an ADF member; or there may be other factors involved, such as a vehicle accident that masks the true nature of what has happened—not to mention the number of veterans who try and take their lives each year or who suffer mental health issues including suicidal ideation.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report shows that male veterans are 21 per cent more likely to die by suicide than men in the community generally, while the rate of suicide amongst ex-serving women is twice the general female population. Alarmingly, the research shows that ex-serving men had a 66 per cent higher suicide rate when they were discharged for medical reasons compared to men who were discharged voluntarily.

This update is a wake-up call and yet another report in a very, very long line of reports which now go back decades. We're losing the war when it comes to saving our current and former Defence personnel. The data sadly backs up the experience of veterans like former special forces officer Major Heston Russell, who I spoke with recently. Major Russell told me that he'd lost more men—more of his mates—to suicide than in four deployments to Afghanistan. It shows we need to do a lot more to support our ex-serving men and women and prepare them for life after the military through assistance with mental health and wellbeing, employment and housing. It highlights why we urgently need a royal commission into veteran suicide to get to the bottom of these tragic deaths.

The evidence is overwhelming, and it's not getting any better. Labor broadly welcomed the Morrison government's announcement of a National Commissioner for Defence and Veteran Suicide Prevention earlier this year. It's just a small step forward, notwithstanding the pleas of Julie-Ann Finney and parents of veterans for a full royal commission into veteran suicide. But how has it taken the Morrison government eight months from making that announcement to us debating this today in the House? How serious can they have been that it is now eight months later and we're having a debate today on this topic?

Further, we're disappointed that the Attorney-General rushed ahead—strangely enough, despite the fact that we're having a debate eight months later—and appointed an interim national commissioner on 30 September, when the initial consultation process had only just concluded and well before the parliament had a chance to even vote on the enabling legislation. It is interesting that the announcement was made late in the day—under the cover of dark, if you want to avoid scrutiny—suggesting the government knew that there were issues with the process and it wouldn't go down well with the veteran community. It was a pretty sneaky thing for the government to do, actually. While Labor has no personal criticism of the interim national commissioner, Dr Bernadette Boss, who was a magistrate and a coroner, and a brigadier in the Army Reserve, we are concerned that the government made certain assurances that they wouldn't appoint someone with a military background. It's another act of bad faith with veterans. We fear that Dr Boss, as an Army officer, could have a conflict of interest that would open the office to perceptions of institutional bias towards Defence, undermining trust in the office. It confirms our suspicion that the new position will not have the independence of powers to really get to the bottom of veterans' suicide in the way that a royal commission with broad terms of reference could.

You might have thought that maybe a former High Court judge, a Supreme Court judge or a Federal Court judge, even someone with experience in running royal commissions or someone who has presided as a judge for a very long time—independence, fresh eyes—would have been a more appropriate appointment. I'm very concerned that the commissioner could end up being a glorified federal coroner, which is essentially redundant when we know that state and territory coroners, with experience, police resources, pathology resources and counselling resources all have expertise to investigate veterans' suicide, and that's what happens now. What's more, the so-called independent review into past suicides that the interim national commissioner is undertaking is basically an in-house desktop review. It is nothing like a royal commission. For a start, the review's terms of reference are fairly narrow—for example, the review will only cover deaths that occurred between 1 January 2001 and 31 December 2018. That excludes David Finney, for one, who passed away in 2019. His mother, Julie-Ann Finney, was one of the faces of the campaign for a royal commission into veterans' suicide. It is another slap in the face and an act of bad faith with veterans and their families. Furthermore, you have to question the interim national commissioner's capacity to adequately investigate 456 or more deaths from 2001 to 2018 and produce an interim report after 12 months and a final report after 18 months as has been announced. I'm not making that up. Those time frames are what the government has set. To put that into perspective, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody involved four commissioners, each with two teams, who investigated 200 deaths over four years from 1987 to 1991. Clearly, this in-house, watered down review will not have the standing of a properly constituted royal commission, and it's doubtful whether it can be done properly.

Not only has the process behind the national commissioner been suspect, but in substance it's deeply flawed as well. The government has made much of the new body being a rolling royal commission, and bigger and better than a royal commission. They're saying it would be a permanent and enduring voice to parliament. It seems this is okay when it comes to veterans but not when it comes to our First Nations people. The inconsistency and hypocrisy of this—that this government will not accept a voice to parliament for Australia's First People but will go ahead with this idea of a so-called voice to parliament—will not go unnoticed by Australia's First People.

That something is enduring doesn't make it inherently superior, particularly if it's not properly informed or constituted from the beginning. It's fairly clear that this standing body will not have the powers of a royal commission as the government is claiming. A number of veterans, academics and legal experts we've consulted have advised us that a royal commission with broad terms of references and with a clear start and end date is needed, and that is world-best practice. As one submission to the government's consultation put it:

… a Royal Commission which by definition is the highest form of inquiry on a matter of public importance. In addition to having wider and more significant powers ( for instance to refer matters to the Director of Public Prosecutions ) , the benefit of a Royal Commission is that it definitively establishes the facts at a point in time—

and makes a series of considered recommendations that are very hard for governments to ignore.

In contrast, the proposed national commissioner model is in and of itself unproven and untested. It could roll on for many years doing its check-ins and its check-ups and lodge annual reports without a guarantee of meaningful change and action to prevent defence and veteran suicide. There is no guarantee of systemic change, merely, at best, a guarantee of individual case reviews, more likely to be desktop as it's already been happening. This is unsatisfactory and unacceptable. It almost implies there's no expectation of success or finding solutions to prevent these tragic and needless deaths.

The logical conclusion is that a royal commission should precede any permanent standing statutory body and that the body should be informed by the strong and definitive recommendations of a royal commission. Indeed, a royal commission could recommend a standing permanent capability be established to oversee ongoing reforms to prevent veteran suicide in the future, possibly even along the lines of a better version of a national commissioner. A good example of this is the Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Service or the Wood royal commission on police corruption, which led to the establishment of a standing police integrity commission. As it stands, the proposal in these bills puts the cart before the horse—and a pretty dodgy looking cart at that.

Following on, the government has described the national commissioner as has having powers broadly equivalent to a royal commission, and some powers in the legislation are closely modelled on equivalent powers under the Royal Commissions Act 1902. Having widely considered legal matters on this issue with experts, Labor's concerned only a royal commission, for example, would have unambiguous powers to hold public hearings, summon witnesses, compel the production of evidence, pursue disciplinary proceedings and, crucially, even refer charges of criminal or official misconduct to appropriate authorities and make recommendations for compensation. As such, the bills may try to mimic royal-commission-like powers, but there's an inherent structural or design flaw in that the national commissioner will effectively be a government official sitting and working alongside other government officials in the Attorney-General's portfolio. This means they can be hired and fired by the government at any time and are much less likely to exercise those powers to hold Defence, DVA and other agencies to a serious level of scrutiny for their roles in defence and veteran suicide and. As it will have a budget of about $30 million, less than half of an average royal commission, Labor fears the national commissioner will not be properly resourced to do its job.

I want to touch on one other aspect we've received some feedback on. Many veterans and families are deeply cynical that the proposals in these bills represent an attempt by the government to try to limit scrutiny and criticism of it and its agencies, to protect these institutions. Amongst some in the veterans community there is almost a complete lack of trust and confidence in the government and departments like defence and even veterans' affairs. These bills refer to the national commissioner as taking a 'trauma-informed and restorative approach' to their work and in particular having a preference to hold private meetings with families of suicide victims, ostensibly out of respect for them. Some are concerned this is a code for wanting to silence them behind closed doors when, in fact, many families actually want to have a public platform to tell their stories in order to seek restorative justice. As one researcher and veteran I've spoken to put it: 'For some veterans false promises and a lack of transparency and accountability will simply compound trauma, which does nothing to decrease the trust deficit between veterans and the ADF, the department and the DVA.' This person noticed that this in turn can create further distress, which in turn may lead to self-harm and even suicide. You only have to look to the Productivity Commission report from the middle of last year to see that's true.

We know that only a royal commission will provide closure, healing and restorative justice for the defence and veterans community. In other areas such as mental health, institutional child sexual abuse, aged care and disability services we've seen the benefits of royal commissions. Why not a royal commission into veterans and defence suicides? Importantly, it would provide an opportunity for us as a community to listen to the parents and families of veterans who have had their lives taken, and assure these people in a very public way that we're doing everything we possibly can to prevent these tragic deaths from happening in the future. The Prime Minister should show faith in veterans and their families and establish a royal commission, so we can get to the bottom of veteran suicide and deliver real accountability and justice for the families once and for all. They deserve nothing less than a royal commission.

In closing, we have a special obligation to help our veterans. We train them, we ask them to put their lives at risk for us, yet we find too many of them slipping through the cracks, not getting the support they deserve and they need, and their families are suffering as a result of what's happening. In some cases the individual veterans tragically have taken their lives, while others are permanently scarred and damaged. The evidence is overwhelming, the government must do better. They must address veterans' mental health and suicide, which is precisely why I'm moving the second reading amendments and raising concern about the government's proposed approach in this area.

We will continue to engage with the veterans community and stakeholders on these bills. We've encouraged people to have their say on the legislation in the current Senate inquiry, which reports back by 30 November this year. We will come to a final position on the legislation in the Senate once we've seen the outcome of these inquiries. But I say to the government: do the right thing; reconsider your position; don't procrastinate any longer; call a royal commission, give it strong powers, give it broad terms of reference; do the right thing by Julie-Ann, and so many other parents who have suffered so tragically as a result of the needless deaths of their sons and daughters.

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