Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support our troops in Afghanistan. I rise to support our Prime Minister’s views on our conduct of the war in Afghanistan. I support what is being done and I support the purposes outlined by our Prime Minister, how it is being done and how it will be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. But, having said that, I wish to turn to our long duty which will come from this long war.

The long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the war on terror will exercise, I predict, a great and continuing presence in community and political attitudes over the next 50 years. The human and financial cost will last for the next half-century. We can pinpoint when the Afghan war started but not when it will finish, and, for some 21,000 Australian service personnel so far, the end of the war is far less clear or demarcated.

I would like to acknowledge the influence upon my thinking today of the insightful book Anzac legacies: Australians and the aftermath of war, edited by Martin Crotty and Marina Larsson. This book, studying the history and the travails of returned servicemen over 100 years, in its foreword captures the reality of long duty when it says:

… it is a process and a journey not a point in time … private experiences of repatriation are a more complex and individualised matter.

I wish to put on record my acknowledgement of the fine work of the nurses, the physiotherapists and the doctors, the counsellors and the psychologists who are always there for our troops in our medical repatriation and care centres in Melbourne, in Adelaide, in Sydney, in Brisbane or in Perth. Their efforts are remarkable.

Many of our men and women in uniform return home and will do well. Following demobilisation they will be reabsorbed into the emotional security of family and community. Sadly, some will do it much harder. War experiences remain with all service personnel for all of their days. War experience does not simply conclude when the war ends or demobilisation occurs. Australians who served can have physical impairment, psychological impairment and illness for many years. I think it is incumbent upon us in this place at this time to look over the parapet into the distance to the often overlooked feature about service in Afghanistan: what will happen to our returned service personnel over the next two, three, four or five decades? There is much high-blown rhetoric about support for our troops, and the troops believe it. But when they do return if the reality does not match the rhetoric then trouble will follow. Our troops will be cynical if promises or services fail to live up to expectations. Inevitably unresolved anger will follow about government and politicians of all political stripes. Poor experiences will lead to resentment and hostility, which could be layered over five, six, 10 and 20 years time and beyond. The important issue, I suggest, is what happens to our sons and daughters, friends and neighbours who serve in the ADF when they return. It is a question for me, this war in Afghanistan, of support at how people who are and people who surround our soldiers deal with the exposure of war. I want veterans to know that their fellow troops are of good morale. I want veterans to see the support for them within the people significant to them. These significant people are their family and friends. These significant people are the government of Australia. I want our ADF veterans to be able to answer that the risks they faced on our behalf were worth the cost to them.

This war is not a new Vietnam; at least in several ways it is certainly not. Our servicepeople are at war in a time when information exchange is so much faster. Email is so quick. The upside of this, of course, is a closer connection to home. If Vietnam was the television war, Afghanistan and the war on terror are surely the internet war. The downside of this technological phenomenon is that bad news travels quickly. The media legitimately report frustrations and grief. The internet can also allow unfounded rumours about operations and indeed the conduct of our troops. This can be pretty hurtful. Information is having a profound effect. We do not want our troops to win the conflict and be lost in peace. We do not want the nation to disappoint the expectations of our returned service personnel. I believe it is very important to pick up people after their return to Australia, resilience within the ADF, and support both people who have been wounded and those who finish outside the service.

I believe it is important to understand that psychological injuries can take some time to manifest. Conditions do not always present straight away at exposure. Tremors of the mind can take two years and beyond to build. People seemingly all right can subsequently develop a condition, a trouble or an anxiety that erodes their wellbeing. Neil James of the Australian Defence Association has advised me that 53 per cent of Vietnam veterans have presented with some form of psychological condition. He advises me that nearly three-in-four of every peacekeeper who served in Rwanda deal with demons of the mind from what they saw there. One expert has advised me that at least three per cent of returned service personnel from Afghanistan are guaranteed to have a psychological condition but that this number could be higher if the purpose of the conflict and the existing support for the war changes. The mental wellbeing of servicepeople will deteriorate if social support in the community for the war fails. If the fall is expressed in the media, this could be a negative reinforcer of psychological problems.

The transition of service personnel to Australia and to civilian life can be very hard, but it is very important to get right. When people leave the military and return home, often in a different location from the barracks where they have been based, they potentially move into socially isolated existences. If there is insufficient support to help our troops transition to civilian life, to help our troops adapt, they will be maladapted.

It is appropriate and fitting and right that the funerals of our 21 troops who have died tragically receive recognition. Theirs was the ultimate sacrifice. But I worry about the wounded soldiers and their families. One hundred and fifty-six of our best and bravest have been wounded in Afghanistan, and this figure does not include those with psychological wounds. We need to look after them and we need to look after their families; to be true to our returning veterans we need to look after their families as well. Over and over again we need to ask: what can we do for their children, what can we do for the partner of those who have been wounded, those who now have a disability? These families can do it very hard. Yet the cornerstone of care for veterans is families. Governments help, and we have an obligation to help, but those with the primary emotional relationship to our demobilised soldiers have to do the most work. We do not want their children and their grandchildren to suffer damage. When dad comes home a hero but shocked and hurt by battle, it is his family who are the unsung healers. Yet they are also suffering. We venerate the soldier, appropriately, but what about the families? They have to deal with the emotional trauma and I do not believe that the damage and pressure on families is sufficiently appreciated. Support mechanism for defence families can be overlooked.

There are unique features of this current conflict. I have said it is not Vietnam all over again, and I certainly do not believe it to be so in terms of our domestic politics. There is by and large bipartisan support. We have a complete volunteer and professional force, unlike Vietnam. The modern serviceman by and large does not get ridiculed by the public but receives public support. Again, and thankfully, this is acutely unlike the unfair treatment experienced by returning Vietnam veterans. I note, however, reports that through the internet the lunatic fringe has been able to denigrate with irresponsible criticism our returned servicemen. I believe that another difference is that since Timor our army reservists can be signed on full time as formed units, mainly in peacekeeping but now in Afghanistan and serving with distinction. From infantry to commandos and beyond, our army reservists deploy with the regulars. They go overseas, they return and come back to normal civilian jobs. Although the same system of decompression exists for reservists as it does for regulars, it is possible for some to miss the regulars’ debriefs. Reservists need support services too because they are not immune from having a bagful of problems. There is a real possibility of post-traumatic stress disorder. There can be drug-taking to mask the anguish and then sometimes we have rebuild our wounded veterans from scratch.

Another difference between today’s diggers and those before them are the multiple rotations for our professional soldiers. Young men 26 or 27 years old may have served twice in Afghanistan, twice in Iraq and once in Timor or the Solomon Islands. Our special forces are doing even more rotations in Afghanistan. We are talking about several rotations with the constant pressure in war zones where there are no safe places on deployment. This increase in operational tempo will be the source of burgeoning challenge.

I recognise our soldiers are great professionals. When they are home they do the exercises and the training and then there is the deployment, all at the price of increasing separation from the lives of their families. After this, our service personnel can do it hard when they enter civilian life. These dedicated diggers do not always seek the help they need, despite their needs. We need to engage their families in the transition to civilian life and the future. It is not just a question of transitioning soldiers but also their families, including of course their partners.

In military life our service personnel are treated separate, as professional soldiers who are highly accomplished. The change to civilian life is a massive identity change. They discover that sometimes the things that they have used to measure themselves in the forces do not matter as much in civilian life, or that some civilians are simply just not interested.

We need to appreciate that when our troops come home they may have spent extended periods in a Third World country, places where life can be cheap and where poverty, sickness and disease can be prevalent. When our people come to civilian life they perhaps find the conversations in our suburbs unreal—the retirement age, the latest model Monaro, the PlayStation or the interest rates. It does take time to adjust. It is a big journey to go from a war zone in southern Afghanistan to a family home in suburban Australia. The soldier has had life- and personality-changing experiences. I am told that we witness too much marriage breakdown after deployment. I am told that after Cambodia, for instance, there was a 60 per cent divorce rate in the first 12 months. Households can fall apart and sometimes they fall apart slowly. Even if an injured soldier remains in service after deployment they can be moved from their unit, reallocated somewhere else, and they can feel dumped and isolated. Sadly, some service people still fall through the cracks of the system.

It is the case that after the First World War over 264,000 men returned. The sheer weight on our systems meant that some people were missed and overlooked, even if we regret what happened to those ANZAC diggers. But in 2010 it is just too difficult to either understand or accept that people can fall through the system. Let me be clear and on the record. The ADF and the government have and continue to take significant steps to ensure our system of support becomes one without cracks. Ministers Smith and Snowdon and other esteemed parliamentarians like the member for Bruce, the member for Eden-Monaro, the member for Dunkley and Senator Faulkner are passionately seized of these challenges. Good work was done by the member for Bruce and the member for Dunkley in ensuring there was a single medical discharge test rather than the two that used to happen prior to their intervention.

But I wish to use this important debate as an opportunity to remind all that promises must be kept. We do need effective transitional case management with switched-on empathetic and appropriate case managers. We need a focus on our invisible families and carers that has to be far greater and far more effective. Veterans with disabilities need access to services despite their impairment. Disabled veterans need assistance finding work. There is still too much discrimination in Australian society against people with a disability, generally. Veterans’ counselling services, which are doing a good job catering to pre-1975 veterans also need to understand that, increasingly, they will be dealing with younger veterans, young widows, people who have performed as peacekeepers through to fighting in high-intensity, multiple-rotation conflict zones. I recognise that the Department of Veterans’ Affairs does do a very fine job, but more will need to be done in the next 50 years. We need to remove any misplaced stigma in the minds of our diggers that interaction with government services is somehow a second-class outcome.

I said at the outset that the war in which we are engaged is a long war. Our men and women who fight it will have an even longer journey ahead when they return home. Let us use all these fine words about Afghanistan and our debate about our role there as a signpost that for the next 50 years we will maintain the same level of interest and commitment to our returned servicemen, who will number more in the future than those who served in Vietnam. Our practical resolve to honour their duty for the rest of their days should always match our spoken gratitude for our diggers’ duty, honourably served.

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