Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to give a shout-out in the Australian Senate today for a good mate of mine—fellow Tasmanian Dean Yates. Dean is a highly experienced and acclaimed journalist who spent 20 years working around the world, including in war zones. Dean, I'm very proud to say, has just finished writing a book. It has taken him seven years. The book is called Line in the Sand and it's a life-changing journey through the body and mind after trauma. It has been highly acclaimed. Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize winning war correspondent for the New York Times, said it's 'destined to become a classic'. Matthew Green, author of Aftershock, described it as 'a clarion call for a new approach to preventing and treating trauma'.

Dean was the head of Reuters Baghdad during the Iraq War and was there for five years. Central to this story, and the reason that I'm raising it in the Senate today, is that Dean lost two of his staff to an Apache helicopter gunship attack, commonly now known as 'collateral murder'. The release of the video by WikiLeaks propelled Julian Assange to the international stage. Dean lost two staff members, Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh, who were shown being blown to pieces in that video. The trauma that Dean suffered, that he has carried throughout his life, has led to severe moral injury and severe PTSD. This book is such an honest account of how Dean has had to come to terms with this and the trauma his family has been through. He talks very broadly about all the veterans and other people he has met on his journey.

Dean has become a fierce campaigner for the release of Australian Julian Assange, including giving evidence in the UK trial recently around his extradition trials. If you're interested in press freedoms and if you're interested in trauma, please buy a copy of the book Line in the Sand.