Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I associate my remarks with those of the member for Moreton, the member for Solomon earlier and other speakers on this motion. If there's one thing in this House the brings us all together it's our admiration and respect for the work that our service men and women do to protect our country. But they not only protect our country; they try to help other countries in far-flung parts of the world make their societies safer and better. Each and every day, our ADF members protect our borders and our natural resources, and provide humanitarian and disaster relief, as we've seen over the past couple of years. They assist in recovery efforts and they contribute to our regional stability.

As we've seen in the past week, we now have members of the ADF on the ground in the Solomon Islands again. It's a very sad state of affairs to see that. I was there six or seven years ago on an election monitoring trip, when we saw the success of RAMSI prior to that. Now we are seeing our troops on the ground again. I wish the Solomon Islands every success in getting things back in order.

Their mission to defend our nation's interest is underpinned by the quality of training in a range of areas that are not, I think, replicated in the civilian workforce. When we look at the contemporary role that our Australian ADF personnel play, the variety of jobs and occupations on offer, the incredible array of high-tech, innovative and challenging part-time and full-time roles, it's no wonder that people with a background in the ADF should be well and truly recognised for their efforts once they leave service They bring with them a broad range of backgrounds, a broad range of skill levels and expertise, a broad range of interests and, I would say, given their roles, a much broader view of society and the world maybe than many others in our community.

They are a wide range of reasons as to why somebody should choose an ADF career. But more importantly, to me—and, sadly, as we will see over the coming months with the royal commission—there are many instances where, once people leave service, they find it difficult to reintegrate into society and they find it particularly difficult to transfer the skills that they acquired in the Defence Force to civilian roles. One of the weaknesses is certainly an area we can improve on as a nation, and that is to ensure that the skills and the qualifications that those leaving the defence forces have acquired—whether they're mechanics, electricians, carpenters or engineers, or logisticians, who are logistics experts—are recognised in the civilian world. The standards required in undertaking those roles in Defence are at such a high level in many cases that I think there should be a much better transition in that space.

I look at returned service men and women at the Beenleigh RSL, for example, and I look at people like Roger Freeman, David Draper, Cameron Murphy and many others. When they came back, they transitioned the skills that they acquired from their service—some more recently, some many years ago in Vietnam—into the civilian sphere. There were businesses they built as a result of those skills that they acquired, or careers that they had, and there was an ability for them to transfer those skills to a new generation of trades men and women. I want to thank all of our serving men and women and those who have served, and commend them on the wonderful work they do each and every day to make our country a better place.

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