Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to be able to make a contribution to this discussion and want to commend the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee for its comprehensive report and the recommendations it made within it. As a former Minister for Veterans' Affairs, I'm all too well aware of the issues that this report deals with, and it's quite confronting. We know that the suicide rate for defence members in service is a lot lower than it is in the broader population. Sadly, though, with the effluxion of time after people separate from the Defence Force, the incidence of self-harm and suicide increase quite dramatically. That needs to be understood from a number of points of view, and I think this committee did a pretty good job in bringing out into the public domain many of the issues which are confronting us. It makes a series of recommendations around how the Department of Veterans' Affairs, in particular, might change the way it operates to service and support the needs of veterans, including the development of specific suicide prevention programs for veterans identified as at-risk.

My colleague who will be speaking next, the member for Solomon, is a veteran himself, and I'm sure he will have some observations to make, but one of the things that concerned me as a minister is this. When we had people in uniform and in service we had visibility of them. When we have visibility of them, and their mates have visibility of them, there are ways of intervening and providing support. This means, as a result of esprit de corps and a whole range of things that come with being in the services, that you are able to look after people in a way that does not happen in the broader community. What we suffer from, I think, occurs when Defence Force members separate. This is a young person's game. We have lifers, people who become generals, but I think the average length of service is something short of eight years. That means people by their mid-20s have done their service, and over recent years they would have had a number of tours of duty overseas. No doubt that will have brought complications with it—we know that as a result of the instances of PTSD and other issues around mental health that have been reported upon. What concerns me is that there will be young people who leave the defence forces—it doesn't matter what service—and think, 'It's all over, I've had enough of it, I'm gone, I'm moving on' and then sadly, some time later, it could be some years later, they become sick. They don't have the support structures around them, they've lost contact with their service colleagues—some of them are doing that quite deliberately—and they're not part of any group which can monitor them. As a result I think we've seen the sad outcomes which are reported upon in this report.

The difficulty is trying to make sure that everyone who signs up in the Defence Force understands that the day they walk in to Kapooka they are potentially a client of the Department of Veteran Affairs for the rest of their lives and they have entitlements as a result of that that they should use. Too sadly, many just don't know—and when they don't know, they don't do. That is a real problem. So, trying to find a way to keep connection with people once they have done their service and separated is a real challenge, and I note that the Department of Veterans' Affairs, the defence department and the three services are all aware of this and are trying to look at creative ways of sustaining people. There is a real issue about relevance and we have to make sure the defence service organisations are seen as relevant by today's soldiers, Navy personnel and Air Force people. They have got to be seen as relevant so that they can provide additional support. You might be a part-timer who has been sent overseas. You don't go back to a unit, necessarily. You may not go back to Darwin or to Enoggera in Brisbane; you might go back to where you live, which might be Shepparton, for example. You don't have a unit. You are one-out. You may not have the contacts within that community to give you the support that you properly need.

Some of the recommendations in this report make a great deal of common sense. Recommendation 5, that Defence and Department of Veterans' Affairs align arrangements for the provision of mental health care, is a no-brainer. It is something I know has been in the minds of Defence and Veterans' Affairs for some time—making sure there is consistency of treatment and that when people do move from one part of the organisation to another, from being a full-time member serving in the Navy, Air Force or Army to becoming part of the veteran community, there is a seamless transition and their care is provided in a seamless way and is properly monitored. It is important, understanding the tragedy of suicide, that we do establish a national veteran suicide register to be maintained by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. It is important so we know precisely what is going on. There are a lot of unknowns in this space and we have to get that knowledge and make sure that we put in place the interventions that will properly address the needs of these young men and women—not all young men and women, but mostly young—and ensure those needs are met. There is a recommendation that the Department of Veterans' Affairs:

I think many of them do that already. I think one of the issues we've got now is that we have a lot of people who have done three, four, five, six, seven tours of duty overseas, and when they come back they need real care. The problem is not that the departmental officials don't understand them; it is, I think, that the broader community doesn't understand them. Making sure the department services them, though, is a priority which we all ought to make sure happens.

I think, when commending the committee for this work, that there is a need to address and continue to support the veterans-centric reform program within the Department of Veterans' Affairs. We're talking about people who will be in the care of these agencies for the rest of their lives, effectively. They have entitlements and rights which need to be respected. But what is most important is that we do things that will intervene and make well again those who are unwell, and drive them away from the challenge and the threats of self-harm and suicide. I commend the report.

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