Senate debates

Wednesday, 11 October 2006

Matters of Public Interest

Australian Defence Force

1:00 pm

Photo of Mark BishopMark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry, Procurement and Personnel) Share this | | Hansard source

In today’s matters of public interest discussion, I want to raise a range of matters that come under the generic heading of culture within the Australian Defence Force. But before going to the body of my remarks, I will open by commenting that there appears to be a divide emerging in respect of the clear and continuing success of our forces that are deployed in operations overseas. The range of areas of interest in which we have involved our troops and our Navy and Air Force personnel in overseas deployments in recent years is indeed remarkable: Bougainville, East Timor, the Solomon Islands, Afghanistan and Iraq. And the public reports coming out from representatives of the government and from the Defence Force, and the anecdotal advice from a range of those men and their families, are entirely consistent and give great credit to those men, who are involved in dangerous activities in those parts of the world. Without exception, their activity in the field is beyond the maximum that could be expected.

They have been engaged in a range of often dangerous activities, often for long periods of time, under huge degrees of private stress and huge degrees of stress on their equipment. Without exception, they have behaved or engaged with gallantry, in the fine tradition of our armed forces, wherever the theatre might be. I am not aware that there has been one minor adverse comment as to their conduct in operations or in battle, in their preparation and, more importantly, the way they conduct themselves wherever they might be in the world. So that is a matter, clearly, of great pride to the men and women themselves, to their officers, to the Australian Defence Force, to the government and, clearly, to the wider community that supports their involvement in those various theatres of operation. One should always make those comments at the outset, in any discussion on matters that affect the Australian Defence Force, because that is their primary role; that is their role of substance: to conduct themselves well in difficult fields of endeavour.

Having said that, in the press of late there has been coverage—it is notorious—of a range of matters on the procurement side, on the personnel side, which perhaps do not go to operations themselves, and the way that individual men conduct themselves when they are deployed, but go more to the administration and management of the Department of Defence.

So on one side we have a group of thousands of men who conduct themselves without peer wherever they are required to attend around the world, and on the other side at the same time back home there appear to be, as I say, continuing problems, which almost appear to be insoluble, on both the procurement side and the personnel side.

In my comments today I want to remark on the culture within the Australian Defence Force as it operates within Australia. I want to refer, at the outset, to a range of statistics that have become public in the last two or three weeks. They relate to harassment matters within the ADF; suicides, which have occurred regularly over the last 10 years within the ADF; the more recent six-monthly review, by the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, of the government’s progress in implementation of military justice reform; and, latterly, the government’s legislative response to the establishment of a new Australian Military Court, which was the subject of a public hearing on Monday of this week. The Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade is, I believe, going to give a report on that for the consideration of Minister Nelson on Thursday or Friday of this week.

I link all these matters—the sexual harassment matters, the suicide issues, the six-monthly review by the Senate committee and the government’s legislative response to the Australian Military Court—because it appears, to the interested observer looking in from the outside, that the government’s commitment to reform of military justice within the Australian Defence Force is not as strong, not as consistent, and not as thorough as we had been led to believe when former Minister Hill announced the government’s response, I think late last year.

Going to the facts first, there have been, according to the latest public figures provided by the government in answers to questions on notice, some 88 cases of sexual harassment in the 12 months of the financial year 2004-05. Sexual harassment is a fact of life. It is never accepted; it is always deplored. But, in a large institution like the armed forces, it is not unreasonable to assume that there will be some bad apples who will engage in behaviour that, by any norm, is unacceptable. What is of concern is that 88 complaints were upheld in 2004-05; that in the last two years the incidence of complaints has significantly increased—100 in 2004 and 107 in 2005—and the rate of upholding of complaints is on the increase.

Of concern in that context is that the punishments or the reprimands visited upon those who were found to have been at fault were relatively minor. Only one person was reposted after a finding of guilt; all the others were simply warned or issued counselling processes that they had to undergo. One draws the conclusion that the seriousness of the offence is perhaps not accepted at higher levels within the ADF in the manner that it should be.

Similarly, with respect to the incidence of suicides, over the last 10 years there have been almost 80 suicides recorded—49 in Army, 23 in Navy and seven in Air Force. Even this year to date, suicides have occurred in both Army and Navy. Suicides occur and are to be greatly regretted, but it is reasonable to assert that perhaps some of the indicators that lead up to that final choice being made by those individuals are not being noted or observed accurately and that the appropriate processes have not been put in place to give men or women assistance before they make that most terrible final choice.

In that context, government is well aware of the problem. A review has been conducted of the last seven Army suicides. I am advised that that report has gone to the office of the Minister for Defence, and he has been in receipt of it for some time. Unfortunately, the findings of that inquiry, as to the cause of the suicides of these seven people in the Army, have not been released. Again, it is an indicator that, firstly, it is aware of the problem—and that has to be respected—and, secondly, as the review was conducted after 2004, it is indeed a sign of progress. What is unfortunate is that the review findings have not been published and the government is yet to announce its response to those review findings so that the appropriate procedures can be put in place to ensure, as much as we can, similar events do not occur in the future.

I am of the view that that report, its findings and the government response need to be made public as a matter of urgency. Why as a matter of urgency? Firstly, we do not want any further suicides occurring within the defence forces. More importantly, if there is not an explanation as to why they occurred, you cannot devise a program or a system to make sure that, as much as humanly possible, they do not occur again repeatedly into the future. The test is to put out the findings and to explain them, to explain the solution and to explain the processes that are going to be put in place so that the wider community is assured that, at all levels within the armed forces and at all levels within government, there is a serious attempt to make sure those matters do not occur again.

Similarly in that vein, back in early August the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade did its six-monthly review into the government’s legislative response to the series of measures it proposed to adopt as its solution to the problems arising out of military justice issues and the earlier recommendations of a previous Senate inquiry. Unfortunately, the response of some in the armed forces was to suggest that things were approaching 100 per cent successful, that the errors of the past had been totally rectified and that problems were not going to occur into the future. Some of the press comments that came out of the ADF that day, when the Senate committee report came out, were frankly misleading. The Senate committee did indeed make some comments but the comments were of a bipartisan nature—the report from the committee was unanimous—and its findings were deliberately of concern. The committee was sending a message to government that it does not accept that a lot of government programs and a lot of the government’s response to date are being taken sufficiently seriously by elements of the Australian armed forces and that a lot of the press comment latterly has been little more than spin in attempting to cover up what is not yet an acceptable level of behaviour within the Australian defence forces. Indeed, as latterly as August, two months ago, the committee said:

... a major shift is required in the attitudes of all ADF personnel to achieve lasting change in the military justice system.

It said that the prevailing culture—the current culture in the ADF—may well undermine the success of current reforms. Improvements in process will not of themselves change these attitudes of a deeply entrenched culture. Ominous signs remain over the capability of service police, especially in the light of the handling of the investigation into the death of Private Kovco. The committee also said:

... a fundamental change in the ADF mindset must also occur to overcome the stigma attached to reporting wrongdoing or making a complaint.

So that Senate committee, which generally now comprises different personnel to those who were part of the original Senate inquiry into military justice, made a series of loud comments to government that a lot of the reforms that it was instituting as its response to improve military justice within the Australian defence forces were being blocked by certain elements within the Australian defence forces. If that is the case, if those findings in the first six-monthly review are correct, it means that we will have ongoing problems within the Australian defence forces in Australia on the issue of military justice and the way they treat people who make complaints relating to a range of matters. The attention of government needs to be refocused on this area to make sure that its express intent is given effect to.

In my final minute, I would like to mention the discussion, in a preliminary way, of the Australian military court that was conducted on Monday evening in this place. Frankly, the way the explanatory memorandum and the submission by Defence relating to that bill were presented to the committee was glaringly wrong. The facts were misrepresented and a range of submissions that, frankly, were inaccurate were put forward. The whole attitude of those who were responsible for the drafting of the bill leads one to say that there does not appear to have been any great change in attitude at all on the part of government to this issue of military justice.