Claire Clutterham (Sturt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Defence and Veterans' Service Commissioner Bill 2025. In this House, we have spoken, on many occasions, about the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, which delivered a report in September 2024. This report was the culmination of three years of inquiry into suicide in Australia's defence and veteran population, and it noted that even one suicide is a crisis. The final report, which was an analysis of complex cultural and systemic issues relevant to suicide and suicidality amongst serving and ex-serving Australian Defence Force members, contained 122 recommendations to government, designed to provide the foundation for meaningful, practical and sustainable reform.

Given this level of significance, the royal commission, the report and the recommendations—including their progress—should continue to be spoken about in this House with an ingrained degree of regularity. The importance of keeping this conversation going, of keeping reforms moving, of continuing to discuss and mitigate risk factors and of providing support to serving personnel and veterans cannot be understated, and it should never stop.

The final recommendation, recommendation 122, was that the government establish a new statutory entity to oversee systemic reform on a whole-of-defence basis. The precise wording of recommendation 122 was that the government establish a new statutory entity to oversee system reform across the whole Defence ecosystem. It reads:

The Australian Government should establish a new statutory entity with the purpose of providing independent oversight and evidence-based advice in order to drive system reform to improve suicide prevention and wellbeing outcomes for serving and ex-serving Australian Defence Force members.

This was said to be the most critical recommendation of the 122 because of the foundation it would provide to the other recommendations and the fact that it would be the most significant action the Australian government could take to address Defence and veteran suicide.

In response to this recommendation, the government said:

The Government agrees to establish a new statutory entity to oversee system reform across the whole Defence ecosystem as a priority.

The Government will appoint an interim head of the oversight body to work across government and provide advice on the establishment of the permanent oversight entity, including legislation required, to enable its establishment by September 2025.

The government delivered on that commitment, and it is important that it delivered on that commitment.

The position of this government and of all Australians and all participants in this House is that the death by suicide of any Australian, including our veterans and current serving Australian Defence Force members, is a tragedy. It is unacceptable that Australia has lost more serving and former serving personnel to suicide over the last 20 years than through operations in Afghanistan and Iraq over the same period. It is unacceptable.

So, since September 2025, the Defence and Veterans' Service Commission, legislated in February 2025, has been up and running. The Defence and Veterans' Services Commission is dedicated to providing independent oversight and evidence based advice to the government in order to drive the necessary system reform that we need to improve suicide prevention and wellbeing outcomes for current and ex-serving members. It has, at its heart, the goal of facilitating long-term accountability for the systemic reforms envisaged by the royal commission so that the lives of those who protect Australia now and for future generations are themselves protected today. Quite rightly, the commission has a dedicated and sustained focus on suicide prevention.

In order to ensure that it can report on the government's progress in implementing the response to the recommendations of the royal commission, on the third and sixth anniversaries of the government's response, being by 2 December 2027 and 2030, the commission needs to enjoy independence functions and have the powers necessary to meet these objectives and to maintain the trust of the Defence and veteran community. It needs to have the structures, independence and mechanisms to call for accountability in this respect and to call for more progress, for improvements, for changes.

This bill delivers on the full implementation of this by enshrining the legislative establishment of the Defence and Veterans' Service Commissioner and Defence and Veterans' Service Commission into its own independent standalone legislation, as always intended. The bill promotes the required independence, in that the commissioner will be appointed by the Governor-General following a public and competitive process.

The bill also operates to prescribe powers of the commissioner, which are entirely appropriate powers and drafted through the lens of accountability. Firstly, in addition to the reporting already outlined, the bill empowers the commissioner to further report to the Prime Minister and minister where they consider that inadequate and inappropriate action has been taken by a Commonwealth entity in respect of recommendations contained in a report to the commissioner. This creates an appropriate duty on those in charge of Commonwealth entities to take steps to facilitate that the entity does use its best endeavours to assist the commissioner in the performance of the commissioner's functions. A similar duty is placed on officials of the entity.

For a commissioner led special inquiry to be successful and produce meaningful, broadscale outcomes, the commissioner needs access to all relevant information needed for that inquiry, so the bill also includes entry-to-premises powers and powers to obtain access to documents by remote means for Commonwealth entities and their contractors for the purpose of a special inquiry. Quite rightly, this bill also includes new offences for the provision of false and misleading information or documents or the destruction of documents or things.

Inquiries can only be successful if relevant stakeholders with actual lived experience of the inquiry subject matter are consulted in an environment where they have the confidence to give full and frank evidence and explanations. That is why the bill expands the scope of witness protections so that a person does not encounter detriment in providing information to an inquiry. This has two outcomes: firstly, the risk that the commissioner will not be provided with all information relevant to the inquiry will be minimised; and, secondly, the person providing the information to an inquiry will be supported and protected. It is critical to the success of the commission that those with relevant information feel supported and protected in providing information to an inquiry by the commissioner. If someone voluntarily provides information, then any necessary and applicable protections from criminal and civil penalties have been expanded.

That the work of the commission is transparent is another key focus of this bill, as is the need to cement accountability of the commission and to cement accountability of the bodies or persons that are subject to oversight. This bill does that in a number of ways: through a focus on procedural fairness, and the bill crystallises procedural fairness by requiring the commissioner to afford a response opportunity to an agency, official or other person who is the subject of any criticism in a draft report; through reporting, as the bill requires Commonwealth entities, officials or other persons to provide to the commissioner information about the implementation of recommendations relevant to them; through accountability, as the bill requires the government to table a statement setting out its response to an inquiry report in parliament; through clarity, as the bill provides certainty that the commissioner may publish reports at the commissioner's discretion and make public statements about an inquiry; through urgency, as the bills include statutory deadlines for the completion of two inquiries into the Commonwealth's implementation of the government's response to the royal commission recommendations; and through transparency, by providing the terms and conditions of appointment of the commissioner in a standalone bill rather than in rules.

As part of my work as the member for Sturt, I have met a number of incredible veterans who have served our country with distinction. They have sacrificed, endured, felt alone and been asked to draw on every strength within them in order to act with bravery and courage for others. I won't forget one veteran in particular, Tyrone, who served in the infantry and who I met at See Differently in Gilles Plains in Sturt as part of the OPK9 program. Tyrone had a beautiful OPK9 Labrador who was his best friend and who had saved his life. Tyrone explained to me that his mental health trauma from service had previously been so bad that he couldn't get out of bed—a fit, healthy young man who couldn't get out of bed.

Things got better with time, and he could leave the bed, but he couldn't leave the house. He couldn't go onto the street, couldn't go to the grocery shop and couldn't talk to others. Then, over time, things got a little better, and he could leave the house, but only with his wife. He couldn't go out alone. This, of course, affected his wife and her independence and impacted her quality of life as well. Tyrone then joined the OPK9 assistance program and was allocated a support dog named Teddy, and Teddy changed everything. His calming, confident presence has allowed Tyrone to leave the house, to go to the shop and to do things on his own—but always with Teddy by his side. It makes me deeply sad when I think that things could have been different for Tyrone—much worse—without the support of his wife and the See Differently program. That Tyrone received the support he needed to return to being a functioning member of the community is a positive story, but there are too many veterans who do not have the same level of support. There are too many stories that do not follow the same path as Tyrone's. There are too many tragedies, and that, in itself, is a crisis.

The changes in this bill will ensure that the commissioner has the tools necessary so that the Defence and Veterans' Service Commission is enabled to drive system reform, to improve suicide prevention and wellbeing outcomes for serving and ex-serving Australian Defence Force members. Accountability, transparency and prompt action are facilitated by this bill, and it is our duty in this House to do this. It's not set-and-forget. We must monitor and measure the effectiveness of these measures and continually adapt, make changes and make improvements to ensure that the commission and the commissioner can always be a powerful force for the systematic change that we need. I commend the bill to the House.

See this speech in context