Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also acknowledge those on the opposite side and on our side who've served. It is an amazing thing that you have done, and your service isn't forgotten. I have Richmond and Glenbrook RAAF bases in my electorate, and there's hardly a visit there where the issue of veteran suicide doesn't come up. Cautiously, people have shared with me their insights into the mental health challenges of mates during and after service. I've also got many former defence personnel living in the electorate, or their parents or partners. They're from Army, Navy and Air Force, and they talk to me about what they see their child or their partner, or their husband or wife, go through. They sometimes try to describe for me their own experience of making the transition from the Defence Force to the civilian world.

I'll never forget one young man who brought me the paperwork for his DVA claim. His so far unsuccessful DVA claim was three folders deep. This was a man struggling with mental illness and battling to be able to establish a new post-defence life, and yet he was expected to work through stacks of paperwork. Given what I know about mental illness and what I've seen, I was just horrified at what people were being asked to do. That has to change.

Where I've had the greatest insight though into the challenges that Defence Force personnel face when they leave the military is from my two attachments as part of the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program—one to the RAAF Base Amberley and the other, last year, to Iraq and the Middle East operations. I was only part of Camp Taji in the Middle East base for a week or so, but I got a glimpse into the way defence wraps itself around you: you train together, you laugh at work health and safety PowerPoints together while still heeding the message of what to do or not to do if you're injured, you eat together, you exercise together and the little free time you have is spent together. The people you are with become like your family for that time. Your own family feels a really long way away, and even I felt a disconnect as I got wrapped up in the single focus that the operation has, learning new things and working to be part of a team, albeit, in my case, a very temporary one. I can see that when this is for real, when this is the life you've chosen for years, there's no time to daydream; peoples' lives really are at stake. There's a place for everyone in defence, and everyone knows their role and works as a team.

What my time with defence did for me was crystallise the understanding of why it's so hard to transition from defence to civilian life for some people. Between 2001 and 2017, 419 serving and ex-serving ADF personnel died by suicide. But while the suicide rate for men still serving was 48 per cent lower than the general population, the rate is 18 per cent higher for those who had left the military. For women, it's similar. There's no question that we must do better than this.

Researchers have found that while the camaraderie, discipline and respect can make the military life-changing for someone, the sudden end to it can be lethal. I was moved by a quote from the research of Kellie Toole of Adelaide University and Elaine Waddell of Flinders University. They were told by one veteran,

I actually went back and asked if I could mow the lawns for free, just so I could be around them still. They wouldn't allow it.

As the researchers wrote in their article in The Conversation:

If ex-service men could maintain contact with the Australian Defence Force through peer support and informal networks, their identity and sense of purpose could be maintained …

I hope we see innovative approaches to supporting ex-service men and women.

The new independent National Commissioner for Defence and Veteran Suicide Prevention is a start, but of course we would have liked to have seen a full royal commission, with the full powers of a royal commission, as was called for by the family of Jesse Bird. The inquest into his tragic death was scathing and found significant systemic failures in the Department of Veterans' Affairs' treatment of Jesse before he took his own life. The report found that DVA had acted contrary to its own policy and legislation and that it handled Jesse's permanent impairment claim without compassion or empathy. That is an indictment, a sad reality, that cannot be repeated.

The jury's out on whether the steps the government's taken will be enough, but the new Veteran Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy hopefully will go some way and prove some effectiveness. We do need to be creative. We need to look at how we support family and friends, how we help people understand the transportability of the skills that defence personnel have. There's so much we can do, and we want to do it with the government.

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