Keynote address to the Save Our Heroes Summit, NSW Parliament House, 6th November 2019

Thank you Sharri, what an extraordinary morning we’ve had. So very powerful and to each of the mothers who have spoken today I want to say thank you so much. To the Daily Telegraph you’ve done an extraordinary thing in bringing together this group and I want to acknowledge the work of Gemma, Matthew, and Adella in driving this campaign forward.

I want to recognise the many veterans’ advocates in the room and thank you for the work you do on behalf of our community. I think it is important to acknowledge the NSW government’s leadership, particularly I want to thank David Elliott MP and Greg Warren MP for the bipartisan commitment that they’ve given to strengthening veteran institutions in this state, to acknowledge the Premier Gladys Bjerejiklian for joining the calls for a Royal Commission today, I think that will be a very powerful voice behind the campaign, and I also want to acknowledge James Griffin MP the NSW Parliamentary Secretary for Veterans Affairs – himself the son of two veterans. I lost a friend of mine who I deployed to Iraq with two years ago to suicide. When I sat down with his parents and asked them what more could have been done one of the things they identified was the need to have a veterans notification service so that when some of our veterans fall into the criminal justice or health systems someone with an understanding of their veteran experience could be alerted and respond to them. I went to James and said this is a problem and we’ve got to fix it and he said “No problem”, so thank you James.

I want to acknowledge the families who have spoken so powerfully but also those in the room who haven’t spoken today and having been doing powerful work. I’m thinking particularly of Karen Bird – thank you for your leadership, thank you for the work that you and John have done, you are doing extraordinary things. You are pressing for justice and you will be building a better veteran’s system,

I’ve been fortunate to spend the last two years working with and for veterans around the country and I’ve talked to them in RSL sub-Branches everywhere from Eumungerie to Ulmarra to Moruya. In St Marys in Western Sydney I sat down with  our RSL sub-Branch members who had lost two of their own in the same veteran family to suicide within the space of a few weeks I listened as they explained how they had put the pieces back together and stood themselves back up and continued counselling their mates, some without any formal training whatsoever. Informal work to save the lives of their mates. I’ve heard from my wife Daisy, a Lifeline counsellor whose spent many hours on the phone talking to those contemplating suicide that talking about suicide does not make it contagious. It’s so good that today we are addressing this issue head on, we are looking in the mirror, we are dealing with the problem, and we are acknowledging it directly and that is very powerful.

I’ve been lucky enough to talk to veteran leaders and government leaders on these issues too and I want to acknowledge the Prime Minister. I went and saw him a year ago to talk to him about the issue of veteran suicide. I asked him for help to get our volunteers in the RSL community and the Legacy community training in suicide first aid response so that they could have more expertise to keep their mates out of that dark hole. To his credit he stepped up, he put funding in this year’s budget to provide funding for 7,000 members of the RSL and Legacy community to be able to do that training to make sure we’ve got an army of first responders who can step in and help. So, thank you Prime Minster for that and thank you for meeting with the mothers this morning.

We’ve heard a lot about the problems today but I want to try and step back and look hard at the core reason why we are failing to cut through the obvious and enormous problems in our veterans’ system. Why aren’t we making progress? What is the problem at the core of why we are here today?

Let’s start with what isn’t a problem.

·        The problem isn’t a lack of money. We’re spending $13bn a year on veterans, we spent $600m on the Centenary of Anzac, we found half a billion more to tell new stories at the Australian War Memorial. Veterans charities across the country control billions in property and funds, in RSL NSW alone more than $2bn in assets and considerable revenue. RSL clubs have considerable revenue. The problem is not money. Australians continue to donate to veterans every year during Legacy week, Anzac Day, and the Poppy Appeal.

·        The problem isn’t awareness. Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are more visible than ever. Last year the Invictus Games brought the courage of veterans and their families into millions of Australian homes, creating a deep and rich conversation about veterans, their potential and their problems.

·        The problem isn’t expert advice. We’ve got ten years of reports and reviews from mental health expert, policy expert, parliamentarians. We’ve just had the most comprehensive and forensic examination of the veteran support system that’s ever been done by the Productivity Commission. The summary for that report alone is 83 pages. We don’t lack for advice.

·        The problem isn’t people. There are thousands of staff in the Department of Veterans Affairs in Open Arms. In charities around the country we’ve got tens of thousands of passionate volunteers who are out there every day, committing their hearts and offering their hand to help their mates.

·        The problem isn’t good intent. Australians care deeply about veterans, defence leaders want to fix these problems, and the leaders of DVA and their political leaders are working hard to make the veterans systems better.

So, what is the problem? Why can’t we get this constipated system moving?

The veterans’ sector is in desperate need of, and is crying out for, strong and sustained national leadership.

Lack of leadership on veterans’ issues is at the heart of all the issues we are talking about today. We have not had it for a very long time, possibly since the 1980s.

I want to tell you what strong leadership looks like in the veterans’ sector. Last year I presented the RSL’s highest award to a Vietnam veteran named Peter Poulton who lives near Wollongong. After he returned from Vietnam, he became a policeman based out of Goulburn. In the late 70s his sergeant called him. The police sergeant’s son, who had fought at Fire Support Base Coral had gone into the shed at the rear of his property dressed in his ceremonial uniform. He had gone in and he hadn’t come out. His father couldn’t go in and so he called Peter a fellow veteran and asked him to go into that shed. What Peter saw there spurred him to spend the next 30 years leading the veteran’s community. He built veterans scholarships, memorials, and he was the driving force behind the committee that convinced then Prime Minister Bob Hawke to lead the Welcome Home Parades for Vietnam Veterans in 1987. That’s what strong and sustained leadership looks like. That is the positivity that can come from the type of tragedy we are talking about today.

I don’t mean to say that we haven’t seen leadership on veterans’ issues in recent years. We’ve come a long way. Five years ago, it was difficult for a veteran to go the Department of Veterans Affairs and use their military ID card to prove their identity. That’s how bad things were. In the time since we’ve had so many initiatives that have helped veterans

·        In 2015 we saw the Afghanistan Welcome Home Parades under Prime Minister Abbott.

·        In 2016 we saw veteran employment initiatives, commissioning of new mental health studies into veterans, and the seeds of the Productivity Commission inquiry developed under Prime Minister Turnbull.

·        From the parliament, we saw the 2017 inquiry into veteran suicide and the 2018 report into veteran transition, the latter chaired by Jim Molan who is here today.

·        In 2018 we saw Prime Minister Morrison commit to the Veterans covenant

I should also acknowledge the leadership of Dr Brendan Nelson who has helped us to tell the stories of more veterans, particularly those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, Dr Nelson is a case in point. When you have someone constantly on the job at the very top level, driving an agenda, you get results for veterans and their families, you get outcomes.

But whilst much has been done for veterans in the past five years, unfortunately leadership attention has been all too fleeting. One off announcements and initiatives, I’m sorry to say often made in April and November, which whilst well intentioned don’t lead to the deep reform of this support system that we so desperately need.

We know that the system is struggling on so many levels. We can see that in the fact that we don’t even know how many veterans there are in Australia. That’s because in the hundred years that we’ve been deploying men and women to fight for Australia, no one thought to ask how many are living amongst us or where. We don’t even know where to begin putting the support systems and services that we need, and we won’t until we put that question on the 2021 census. Our charity system for veterans is struggling there are 5000 charities in Australia that say they are there to help veterans and their families. IN the second world war we had a million men and women under arms and half as many charities. That is a sign of a veteran’s charity system that is not functioning as well as it could or should. We have a minister handcuffed to some of the most complex legislation the parliament has ever seen: that is unfair, creates inequities, make it harder for veterans to get their claims through. DVA are facing a deluge of claims, an 83% increase this year alone in people who need help, right at the time that DVA are trying to modernise their processes. And of course, the Productivity Commission told us earlier this year that the system is antiquated, broken, not fit for purpose, and it is causing harm. The system is causing harm. That’s what a year long study told us. And all of that is before we get to the stories that we’ve heard in the room today.

There is so much good will to help veterans but even good ideas can’t get through. We saw Adella’s story earlier this week about the Veteran Sport Australia initiative which came from the Sydney Invictus Games, trying to get ahead of the curve – trying to park the ambulance at the top of the cliff rather than the bottom to make sure we can get veterans and their families into sporting communities so that their wellbeing improves over time and they don’t need to come in through the doors of DVA. But that funding proposal for $4m has not left the Minister’s desk since February. If we can’t get good ideas up then we have a problem in the system.

What will make the difference in all of these issues is strong and sustained leadership.

Now we cannot just ask that from the Veteran Affairs Minister because these require whole of government solutions, and state government solutions, because so many of the systems that veterans and their families rely on are run by state governments. DVA is too busy running the bureaucracy we cannot look to them to design it as well. We cannot look to them for the leadership we need in the veteran community. We’re not getting the leadership we need from the private sector – there are far too few people studying veteran issues in our universities. Whilst we have think tanks on almost every federal government issue, there’s no think tank on veterans’ affairs and yet we are spending $13bn a year on it. There’s no one who can come up with independent policy ideas, scrutinise DVA, or report on outcomes.

Our ex service organisations and veterans’ charities as much as they are modernising and committing to do better, are right now not capable of leading this conversation at the national level. I hope they will be soon.

We’ve had ten years of reviews, plenty of initiatives and money, all the good will in the world, and yet the very first time the system is forensically assessed by someone like the Productivity Commission it is found to be failing on all fronts, not fit for purpose. The Productivity Commission says the only way forward is fundamental reform, redesigning the system from first principles.

That’s why we have been calling for a Royal Commission these last six months and why we call for it again today.

But that call has been resisted by the government. They say veteran mental health is no different to mental health in the wider Australian community. That’s true to an extent. But we must focus on veteran mental health issues as a unique problem for three reasons.

Firstly, every soldier, sailor, airman, and airwoman is exposed to the risk factors that could bring them to the point that so many we have spoken of today came to. Our responsibility to them is greater because these men and women have offered unlimited sacrifice to Australia to keep us fair and free. And we have the ability to engage with the veteran community in ways that we don’t with the general community. It should be easier to engage with veterans because of the multiple touchpoints we have with them and the camaraderie that continues after service.

Minister Chester has said a Royal Commission is too expensive and the money might be better spent on other things for veterans and their families. But in the time since he said that, we haven’t seen much spending on other things to help veterans and their families. There’s been very few announcements since the federal election. Over the next decade we will spend more than $100bn on the veterans’ compensation system. That amount is uncapped. There are two things which shape how much money we will spend – how often Australia deploys our military to fight, and secondly the wellbeing of veterans. The more we spend now to get that right the less veterans we will have requiring compensation from the government. A small down payment now on a Royal Commission will yield returns in the future by making sure the system works and better developing veteran wellbeing. And finally, we’ve heard that a Royal Commission would be too tough for the family and friends and veterans themselves. Well today has been pretty tough, I don’t think these families in front of us would shy away from a Royal Commission, instead they would embrace it with open arms.

Let me add to the calls today by flagging a few more reasons why we should have a Royal Commission. As we’ve seen in other sectors, when you put them under the microscope of a Royal Commission it sometimes shows the problems are worse than we thought and shows problems we didn’t even know existed. Already this year we’ve seen that the problem of veteran homelessness is much worse than we thought. A few years ago, we estimated that there were 3000 homeless veterans, at Senate Estimates in 2016 DVA staff estimated the number at 300, a comprehensive study released this year shows that the number is 5800 – 20 times what we thought. We’ve seen similar signs with the number of veteran suicides.:

Royal Commissions demand that we examine the very principles of how our support systems work. We saw a great example of this when the Secretary of the Department of Veteran Affairs went in front of the Royal Commission into Aged Care. She said that we’ve basically left the system on autopilot when it came to aged care for veterans. It hadn’t been thought about very much. In preparing for her evidence to that inquiry, the Secretary determined to create a position focused on veteran aged care. Royal Commissions force action, they compel results, you cannot duck from the issues that they examine. That is ultimately why we need one for veterans. In the absence of strong and sustained national leadership on veterans a Royal Commission will compel action and deliver accountability.

At the core of what we are asking for today is that these issues are no longer ignored. That this new generation of veterans is seen, heard, and respected.

To achieve that we need strong and decisive leadership from the very top.

The tragedy here is that this is an issue we’ve faced before. We’re re-learning history. When the veterans sector fell into crisis after World War One with too many charities competing with each other and confusion about the best way ahead, it took the then Prime Minister to convene a national conference to look at the best way to solve veterans’ problems. When that system fell into disrepair in the 2910s it took the 1924 Royal Commission on War Disabilities to set up the principles that still benefit veterans today. Only strong and decisive leadership, or a Royal Commission, can deliver what we need to get this sector back on its feet again.

 I know that our political leaders are thinking hard about how we can do this. To them I say Australia’s living veterans need your help. They have stories to tell you. Stay home from that next overseas commemoration service you get invited to. The veterans you need to hear from are in Holsworthy, not Hamel. If you want to connect with the veteran’s community don’t fly to the Western Front, drive to Western Sydney.

To our Prime Minster, thank you for meeting these families this morning. Now we need your strong and sustained leadership on this issue for the rest of your Prime Ministership.

·        First, we must establish how many veterans Australia has.

·        Second, the Productivity Commission has provided a fully reasoned blueprint for how to rebuild this sector from scratch. It needs to be fully funded, implemented, and that needs to start now because it may well take a decade before we get that system in place.

·        We need you to build an independent peak body of veterans with the capacity to measure outcomes, generate ideas, and help veterans’ charities and ex service organisations transform themselves for the future.

·        To make sure that veterans are considered all across government why not put the Veterans Affairs Minister into your cabinet. When we deploy Australians to war, there needs to be someone in cabinet thinking about what happens to them when they return.

·        We need you to fund initiatives like Veteran Sport Australia and Team Rubicon are working hard to keep veterans out of hospitals.

·        We need you to make this a personal priority. Appoint a personal envoy if need be, with the kind of leadership that Brendan Nelson showed, to work across government to ensure better outcomes for veterans.

What we are asking you to do is to leave a legacy for today’s generation of veterans but also those men and women we will deploy into harms way in the decades ahead. The opportunity is now, you’ve never had so much support behind you to fix this system. The choice as to how we fix the veterans system is in your hands.

I want to close by thanking the families for the leadership you have shown. It is hard. It is gruelling. It hurts. I want each of you to be confident you are laying the foundations for a better system for my generation of veterans and on behalf of my mates I can’t thank you enough. I wish you every ounce of courage for the work you are doing and for the campaign ahead. Thank you very much.