Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be able to participate in this discussion with so many great contributions by members on either side and, in particular, it is great to have my friend and colleague the member for Solomon here and to listen to the member for Paterson, who I know really takes these issues to heart. We've heard a lot of reflections on our electorates from those of us who have a significant defence personnel or veterans presence, and Eden-Monaro has a very solid representation in that respect. There are about 3,182 DVA clients and of course their families in our region. We have about 587 ADF personnel who are actually employed in Eden-Monaro, with the headquarters, JOC, in our backyard. But we have many, many more members than that who are actually living in Eden-Monaro, in, effectively, the dormitory suburbs around Jerrabomberra, Queanbeyan and Bungendore.

It's a solid defence region, with fine traditions of service. The areas you visit in Tumut and Tumbarumba, for example, have the highest voluntary participation rates in the nation. Over there you will see the Union Jack Memorial. It is really interesting because it is not a monument to the flag. There used to be a town there called Union Jack, and that town doesn't exist anymore. If you look at that memorial you'll see the names of every fighting-age male from that town who was killed in the First World War. As a result of that loss, the town disappeared and the surviving families drifted away to other locations. So 12,000 kilometres from the war there's a town that was destroyed by it. In all of our country towns you see those cenotaphs—you walk past them every day—that have our family names on them. It is something that country people, in particular, reflect on a great deal.

I have talked before in this place about my own family experiences. Every generation has served—going back to the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, the Afghan war, the First World War, the Second World War and my own service. I grew up with my grandfathers, my aunts, my uncles and my father where this culture of service was something I couldn't ignore—and I obviously wanted to follow in those footsteps. But I also learned of the downsides that veterans experience. Some of them did it particularly tough. I have always reflected on the service of my grandfather on my father's side. He was a sergeant in the 2nd/3rd Machine Gun Battalion and served in the Middle East and in Java. He was eventually captured by the Japanese and ended up on the Burma-Thai railway. None of us can ever really imagine what those veterans went through. He barely survived. He was evacuated out by air in September of '45. He was emaciated and on his last legs but was resuscitated and brought around in Heidelberg, at the veterans' hospital there, and fortunately was with us until 1984. He was a very resilient chap who had a lot of tales to tell as well of surviving the Depression. He cut off one of his fingers to get compensation so he could feed the family. We can only try to imagine the things that this generation lived through and the sacrifices they made for us. I still have my grandfather's loincloth from the Burma-Thai railway. It is the most treasured thing and useful thing I have in my possession. Whenever I think I'm doing it tough or I've had a hard day at the office here, I pull that out and say, 'Harden up, sunshine!'

We talk about the veterans and it's right that we do, and I know my colleague the member for Solomon knows that we are also talking about the ex-service people and the current serving people. Unfortunately, we lose quite a lot of people just in training in the ADF. In my time there were quite a few and I remember some very vividly, such as the range practice tragedies. I remember one situation where the grenades went off in the pouch of one of our diggers, and effectively body parts were strewn all over the grenade practice range. You can imagine how traumatic that was for the people involved in those circumstances. So we have a day-to-day issue of managing the stress of our soldiers, sailors and airmen. Even just your training and serving wears you down. I know I live on a daily diet of Panadol Osteo and Mobic. I know my friend the member for Solomon tends to have a little bit of a limp in his walk as well these days. A lot of care is required to look after the people who have gone through that experience, quite happily in the service of their nation.

We've reflected on that difference in culture, and it is such a significant jump. We have that team atmosphere and ethos, and the really important shared experience aspect of that, where it's so easy to talk to each other and decompress with each other. It is also an entirely different language to the civilian world. One of the things that really confronted me when I first got out was that I would say things or use expressions that nobody had heard of before. So I felt a little alienated in that respect. It is something we do have to work towards. I've got a lot of constituents coming to me now who are really struggling. We have talked about this DVA experience and there are particular issues around the entry-point experience. We have to do a better job of that. It's so confronting. It is so adversarial and there's so much paperwork, and there are so many hoops to jump through that they really struggle to meet the threshold tests. Quite often they feel better in how they are being treated by the department once they've met those threshold tests, but there is still a lot of improvement to do there.

I'm really pleased that when we were in government we were able to take spending on veterans affairs to a record level of $12.5 billion. We haven't managed to hit that target since then. I think we do need to make that commitment. As much as we've said that we're going to have a two per cent target for overall Defence spending, we need to understand the commitment that we need to maintain in this space. These younger veterans coming to me now are having some real cross-bureaucracy issues as well. Things like the confusion that we've had over superannuation and compensation payments, and the taxation arrangements have caused quite a bit of grief and anxiety in relation to advice and counteradvice that they have received. One really distressed veteran came to see me about how certain circumstances for him had counted against his wife's access to things. The financial circumstances that they are in are having a big impact on their lives. We have to do a better job of untangling these bureaucratic silos and the advice these veterans are getting.

As the member for Solomon has pointed out, it is the responsibility of everyone in the community to reach out and deal with some of these issues and to provide that shoulder to cry on and that support. We often talk about how it takes a village to raise a child. Well, it takes a village to do a lot of things. We have to have villages take responsibility for each other across the spectrum, and that includes people like our ambos and police officers, who often experience similar things.

I'm glad we're committed to the first principles review to see what we can do to streamline and make DVA even better. I'm glad that we've moved away from any talk of getting rid of the department, as was certainly floated in my predecessor's paper that he published when he was head of ACCI. We were really worried about that. I'm really worried, though, about the automation of services. A lot of veterans who are talking to me are really upset that they don't have a human to go to and that we're trying to force too much online. Human Services really should have humans in it. The trick is in the title there. There is a lot of stress and anxiety out there, even in the general community, about being forced to do all of this stuff online at the same time as we're losing personnel. That is one of the issues in DVA—the personnel issue.

It is an issue even for the minister. His heart is definitely in this job, and I support him 100 per cent, but, as the Australian Defence Association's Neil James has pointed out, we've had fewer people in this portfolio than ever in our history. Dan is being asked to do too much. His portfolio responsibilities cover too much of a breadth. We need a dedicated veterans affairs minister. I salute 100 per cent the combination of that with defence personnel issues. We do have to create that seamless management of personnel through their lives effectively. That really takes a full-time minister to do. So, on behalf of the minister, I urge the government to really look at that again and look at how they structure the executive.

What we do need to do is make sure that we take notice of what the Senate inquiry has handed down overnight and look to create that whole seamless management regime. We need to put a better effort into career managing and transitioning members, as we've heard. We need formal mechanisms to do that and real substance behind it. I salute the comments that have been made in this debate. I urge the government to work with us further on this matter.

See this speech in context