Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The legislation before us today includes a range of measures to improve the provision of assistance to veterans receiving rehabilitation or compensation under the Veterans' Entitlements Act 1986 and under the Australian Participants in British Nuclear Tests (Treatment) Act 2006. The result of these amendments will be a speedier and more efficient process for providing special assistance to veterans, members, former members and their dependants. By continuing to review and improve the mechanisms by which we compensate our veterans, we pay due deference to the ongoing debt that is owed to our service personnel. We owe it to them not only to recognise and remedy the damage they have suffered but to make sure the means by which we do this are efficient and easily navigated.

In particular the bill will clarify the arrangements that assist those affected by British nuclear tests to get the treatment they need. Those who need to travel for treatment face significant transport costs, they need to feed themselves away from home, they need somewhere to stay, and often they need somebody to travel with them. As we learned during discussions around the bill in 2012-13, the department processed over 165,000 claims for reimbursement for travel expenses for treatment purposes. The bill will enable Australian participants in the testing to better understand the support which they can draw on in dealing with the ongoing effects of exposure.

The history of British nuclear testing in Australia offers a case study in the ongoing evolution in the way we make reparations to Australians who have suffered through extreme circumstances in the name of their country. Both Australian and British governments have made mistakes and we aim here to learn from past wrongs. Naturally those mistakes do not undermine the current strong relationship that Australia shares with friends in the United Kingdom. In recounting the events of the British nuclear test, I acknowledge the help of Hariharan Thirunavukkarasu, who worked in my office and helped prepare these remarks.

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the deadliest conflict in human history. But the arrival of the nuclear age changed the world for other reasons. The balance of power in the world was up-ended and the United States emerged as the undisputed global hegemon. Predictably, the other great powers scrambled to join the nuclear club and redress the new imbalance. Within two decades of Enola Gay's fateful flight, the current permanent members of the UN Security Council had all successfully deployed nuclear weapons. For Britain, the motivation to acquire nuclear weapons was as much about prestige and clinging to the days of its imperial glory as it was about national security. As Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin eloquently told Whitehall officials:

We have got to have this thing over here whatever it costs, and with a bloody Union Jack flying on top of it.

Australia's role in the rush to nuclear came through Britain's race to acquire the bomb. Initially, the British government sought to obtain a transfer of nuclear technology from the United States. After all, the British assumed their collaboration with the Americans and the Canadians on the Manhattan Project entitled them to the technology. But in 1946 congress passed the McMahon act, which prohibited the transfer of nuclear technology to foreign governments. This was at least partially driven by a mistrust of the nuclear security of their allies. Presaging the plethora of British defectors that would emerge during the Cold War, the British physicist Alan Nunn May was caught in 1945 passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. Spurned by their great wartime allies, the British tried to obtain permission to conduct nuclear testing in the Nevada desert but were again refused. So they turned to Australia.

When the then British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, proposed conducting nuclear tests on Australian territory, Prime Minister Menzies agreed immediately, without consulting his cabinet colleagues. This was not an anomalous event. It reflected the tenor of the time. British interests were seen as synonymous with Australian interests, and Australian sovereignty was subordinate to Britain. Indeed, the British government told Menzies which Australian ministers could be informed of the operation, and, as the Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia found, 'the Australian news media reported only what the UK government wished'. The extraordinary secrecy was a legacy of the war. As Margaret Gowing has noted:

Wartime secrecy produced a distortion of constitutional government in countries such as Britain where atomic matters were never discussed within the small War Cabinet, and Mr Attlee, as Deputy Prime Minister, the Service Ministers and the Chiefs of Staff knew almost nothing about it.

The culture of secrecy was so ingrained that Menzies even misled the public, in a newspaper interview, about the possibility of nuclear testing in Australia. It is a lesson for the current generation about the risks of excessive secrecy. With the benefit of hindsight, it may be a mistake to keep secret even those things that seem worth keeping secret at the time.

After the tests were made public in the early fifties, there was minimal public dissent. When opposition was voiced, critics were denigrated as:

… Communists and … fellow travellers who wanted our tests to stop while Russia continued with hers.

A Gallup poll in 1954 found that Australians were among the most enthusiastic—even compared with Americans—towards their allies' development of nuclear weapons as a deterrent against communist aggression. An equally sanguine perspective was apparent in the media, with atomic bombs expected to, as The Sun-Herald put it, 'eventually become the Australian Army's hardest hitting weapon'.

Beginning in the 1950s, the British, with Australian assistance, started testing nuclear weapons in Australia. Between 1952 and 1957, 12 major nuclear tests were conducted. The majority took place at Maralinga and Emu Field in the South Australian desert, while some also occurred at Montebello Islands, off the north-west coast of Western Australia. The Maralinga tests continued up to 1963 and included hundreds of so-called 'minor trials', which were anything but. The minor trials seemed to have been drawn from Hollywood scripts. They included experiments such as crashing planes with nuclear weapons on board, setting fire to atom bombs and placing them in conventional explosions. Ironically, it was the radioactive materials dispersed from the minor trials, not the atomic bombs, which have left the legacy of plutonium contamination at Maralinga today.

In the vernacular of the Pitjantjatjara people, Maralinga translates as 'field of thunder'. This originally referred to the dry lightning strikes that occur in the climate of the Central Australian desert, but 'field of thunder' came to take on a new, more insidious meaning. Don Martin, an Aboriginal man, was in the area for one of the tests. He said:

When the bomb was fired, you [would] get the sight of every shadow in front of you from the flash, and you [would] turn around and [you'd be] watching the mushroom cloud forming, just like a big, boiling oil-fire …

It's that technicolour effect inside the bomb that makes it so magnificent.

But you're not thinking, because it's so far away …

And there's no noise.

And then suddenly you can see this wall coming towards you.

And as it comes towards you … it picks up more and more dust.

And then … the shock hits you.

Karina Lester's father was there, too. She says:

He describes it like a black mist that rolled through, along the ground, through the tops of the trees, and … silently it moved.

It totally confused the animals.

Animals were so used to dust storms, and the noise that [a] dust storm brings … but this was a black mist that came silently across the land.

Karina's father was Yami Lester, of whom Paul Kelly sings:

My name is Yami Lester / I hear I talk I touch but I am blind / my story comes from darkness / listen to my story now unwind.

Following the findings of the McClelland royal commission in 1985, the Keating government paid $13.5 million in compensation to the local Maralinga Tjarutja people.

Currently, the number of Australian participants in the British nuclear test program, according to information obtained from the Parliamentary Library, is a bit under 17,000, almost evenly split between military personnel and civilians. In addition, thousands of British soldiers, mostly men completing their compulsory national service, were involved. Lance-Corporal Johnny Hutton was one of these men. Hours after an atomic bomb was detonated, the 19-year-old would drive out to near ground zero and unearth instruments that were buried to monitor the blasts. For their job, the Army gave them shovels—and steaks for a good meal afterwards. But the Army did not provide anything to cook the steaks with. So, Corporal Hutton says, he and his squad just washed the dirt off the shovels and cooked their steak and eggs on them, over a fire.

Most of the time the men wore shorts and boots, but they were given protective gear to wear when they drove out to the crater to collect the instruments. After doing strenuous work, the heat built up inside the suits and the masks fogged up so that they could not see what they were doing. So, Corporal Hutton says, they took them off for some relief, breathing in the dust and radiation.

A more malevolent plan, codenamed Operation Lighthouse, was scheduled for 1959 but thankfully was never implemented. This was because Britain had gained access to testing facilities in the Nevada desert and because of a temporary international moratorium on nuclear testing. But the intent was chilling: the plan for the experiment, so secret that the Americans were not permitted to see it, was to expose nearly 2,000 soldiers, including 560 Australian troops, to a series of atomic explosions. While those tests did not proceed, other deliberate testing did.

In May 2001 the British government admitted that Australian troops had been ordered to run, walk and crawl across contaminated nuclear test sites. However, it denied negligence, insisting that the troops were only exposed to low levels of radiation and were not at risk. The British Ministry of Defence claimed that the testing was to gauge the effects of radiation fallout on clothing, not on personnel.

History is essentially a process of revision and revisiting. We revisit the past and assign meaning to it from our perspective here in the present. It gives us an opportunity to take pride in elements of the past which once shamed us, like our convict history. But it also allows us to recognise our past mistakes, like our treatment of Indigenous Australians. This ability, nurtured in Australia over our century as a nation, reflects our maturity as a society and our coming of age as a nation.

In the case of British nuclear testing in Australia, we can acknowledge the inadequate role of both governments' handling of the tests and their aftermath. We can make amends by supporting those individuals who were wronged, as this bill helps to do. A local man, Canberran Alan Batchelor, spent six months at the Maralinga site. He was a lieutenant in charge of an engineer group. Most of his comrades from that group are dead now. The tests have had long-term effects on Mr Batchelor and his children. After he returned from Maralinga, his wife fell pregnant then miscarried a badly deformed foetus. He was then sterile for nine years. He was later able to have two more children, one is healthy but the other suffers from intestinal difficulties and deformed teeth.

Recognising the kind of debt we owe to men like Alan Batchelor involves recognising an obligation that is ongoing. It encompasses the damage done to Mr Batchelor's life and the damage done to his family. Service, as other speakers in this debate have noted, can extract severe costs from veterans and their families. The story of Maralinga touches on a broad range of those costs.

The spirit of the amendments recognises that our commitment to compensate our veterans and service personnel includes an obligation to shape protocols and procedures that place as light a burden as possible on recipients. By compressing and streamlining the mechanisms through which we administer compensation to veterans, we will be better placed to meet the pressing needs of those who have been damaged by their service. This bill is a step in that direction and I commend it to the House.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in relation to the Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2013. As we have heard, the bill will clarify the approval and authorisation arrangements for travel for treatment for eligible persons and attendants under the Veterans' Entitlements Act and the Australian Participants in British Nuclear Tests (Treatment) Act. In 2012-13, the department processed over 165,000 claims for reimbursement for travel expenses for treatment purposes. These travel expenses can include costs for transport, meals and accommodation for eligible persons and, when necessary, an attendant to accompany the eligible person. Rather than repeat all the details of the bill before the House—I refer those listening tonight to the comments from the Assistant Minister for Defence—I would like to refer briefly to a veterans related activity which I am sure enjoys bipartisan support in this place.

On Saturday night I had the opportunity to join with the Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, the Chief of the Defence Force, David Hurley, the War Memorial Director, Brendan Nelson, the Chief of Navy, Ray Griggs, and several other people of significance within the defence industry at a presentation of what can only be described as a unique and inspiring theatre production called The Long Way Home. The Long Way Home is part of a performing arts program to assist the rehabilitation and recovery of men and women in the ADF who have been wounded or injured or have become ill in service. This is an extraordinary production and I would urge those listening to the broadcast tonight to look out for opportunities to see it in their own city when The Long Way Home tours throughout Australia.

The moving and personal stories of the Australian Defence Force personnel who performed on Saturday night reflect a very recent Australian experience of time at war. The Long Way Home builds on other Defence programs and treatment options for ADF personnel who have been wounded or injured or become ill in service. The ADF members that were cast in this play have had direct access to specialised health support as well. It is hard for people who have not seen the production to actually understand what is involved, but there are 13 service men and women who have been working directly with the Sydney Theatre Company and who have shared personal and compelling stories with the playwright and been mentored by some of Australia's finest theatrical talent. It is a unique collaboration of Defence Force personnel who have been either injured physically or suffered from post-traumatic stress and have worked with talented actors and the resources of the Sydney Theatre Company to bring their stories to the stage. It is a remarkable collaboration and an Australian first. I give great credit first of all to these very brave men and women who are performing this inspirational play on stage. It is an incredibly raw experience for them to tell their stories through the script, which was prepared by the writer Daniel Keene and directed by Stephen Rayne from the Sydney Theatre Company.

As Saturday was the opening night, I suppose it was even more raw and emotional for the young actors involved. They were supported by their family and friends and their Defence Force colleagues. It was an emotional night for all involved. I would have to say that there would not have been a dry eye in the house during the course of the evening as they told their experiences. Great credit needs to go to our Chief of the Defence Forces, David Hurley, for having the courage to bring this concept to Australia. As General Hurley pointed out on the night, he had seen a similar program in the UK and wanted to bring it to Australia, but wanted to give it a uniquely Australian flavour. It certainly has that.

The Long Way Home is also supported by some particularly high-profile patrons, again crossing the boundaries between the arts and Defence. Australian actor Jack Thompson, who is no stranger to anyone in this place, and the Victoria Cross recipient Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith are the two patrons. It is part of the official Centenary of Anzac program as well.

This is a new and different approach for the ADF to assist with the rehabilitation and the recovery of wounded, injured or ill personnel. It builds on the more mainstream Defence support programs which are in place. It is an opportunity, I think, which Defence will probably explore even further in the future, because it is giving the participants the chance to improve their movement, their speech and their attention span, to build their self-confidence and to take their ailments out into the public eye and explain what they have gone through, through their own eyes and through their own words.

From Sydney, The Long Way Home production will tour to Darwin, then to Brisbane, Wollongong, Townsville, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, and that will occur over the next two months. Tickets—I will give a free plug—are on sale now, and I would encourage anyone in those areas to seriously consider purchasing tickets, supporting our ADF personnel and also gaining a better understanding of the trauma that they have been through.

I think it is fair to say that, while some of the participants obviously have suffered physical injuries, the focus of the play is the issue of post-traumatic stress disorder. There are a whole range of services which are available to our personnel who are suffering from PTSD. In addition to this activity, Defence will continue to implement programs and initiatives to reduce the stigma and the barriers, to improve access to treatments and encourage ADF personnel and their families to seek help as early as possible. I think The Long Way Home is going to be very successful in breaking down one of those barriers and breaking down those stigmas for personnel who may be suffering from mental health issues.

As I said earlier, it is very raw. It is an emotional event. It gives some real-life experiences. I think it will be of great benefit to Defence and also to the broader community to understand that these young men and women who we put in harm's way, who take up the uniform of our nation and put themselves in harm's way, are not robots, and they can be hurt. They can be hurt physically and mentally. I think this play brings it home very strongly to the viewing public. Their families and friends have already known about it. I think that, for us who have not had that direct experience of seeing the outcomes of severe physical or mental injuries, to see the personnel live their lives on stage is extraordinarily compelling. So I congratulate everyone who has been involved in the project.

The ADF will continue to support members with post-traumatic stress disorder and ensure that they have the full range of services available to them through both Defence and the Department of Veterans' Affairs. I would like to end my contribution tonight by commending the Australian Defence Force for taking the health and wellbeing of its veterans very seriously. I commend the writer of this production, Daniel Keene, who I mentioned previously; the director, Stephen Rayne; and everyone involved in the Sydney Theatre Company. Finally, I would like to commend Brigadier Alison Creagh, who was the project director, coordinator and commander of the ADF personnel involved in this project. I should not assume, but I do not think Alison has ever been so nervous as she was on the night, having her personnel up on stage. It was a whole different theatre of combat for her. Alison was very excited and relieved, I think, at the end, as was General Hurley. They were very proud to see their personnel up on stage reliving their stories. Of course, the greatest congratulations of all have to go to the ADF personnel who took to the stage, alongside only a couple of professional actors, and delivered a commanding performance which deserved and received a standing ovation.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2013. This bill is similar, although not identical, to a bill introduced by the previous government, by the member for Lingiari, the Hon. Warren Snowdon, who at the time was the Minister for Veterans' Affairs. That bill, as the member for Batman has pointed out to the House, lapsed in the Senate when parliament was prorogued in 2013. It is therefore legislation that is well overdue.

The legislation provides improved arrangements for the payment of travel expenses for treatment under the Veterans' Entitlements Act and the Australian Participants in British Nuclear Tests (Treatment) Act, otherwise referred to as the BNT(T) act. Participants eligible under the BNT(T) act include Defence personnel, public servants and civil contractors.

British atomic weapons testing, as the member for Fraser quite properly pointed out, was carried out between 1952 and 1963 at the Montebello Islands, off the west coast of Western Australia, and at Emu Field and Maralinga, in South Australia. Many Australians at the time were exposed to radiation from the testing, not only Defence personnel but scientists and public servants, who were also at the time in close proximity to or in the vicinity of the test sites, and other people who entered the contaminated sites at a later date.

In 1985, the McClelland royal commission into the British atomic testing found that significant radiation hazard still existed at many sites many years later. Amongst its seven recommendations, the commission recommended another clean-up of the areas concerned. That clean-up was completed in the year 2000 at a cost of $108 million. In addition, in 1994—again as the member for Fraser has quite rightly pointed out—the Australian government paid $13.5 million in compensation to the local Maralinga Tjarutja people, and that was also a recommendation of the commission. So the effects of the nuclear testing have been well documented and should not be dismissed, diminished or denied.

I want to focus my remarks on Defence personnel in particular who were affected by the atomic testing both at Montebello and in South Australia at Emu Field and at Maralinga. Often in this place and outside it we praise the service given to our nation by our Defence personnel. That praise, however, is not always matched by the level of support given to them after their service has ended, the kind of support that I believe we would all expect for ourselves and which we would consider to be fair and reasonable if we were in their shoes.

Instead, there seems to exist a culture of denying legitimate claims, avoiding government obligations or making it as difficult as possible to access government assistance even when it does exist. Since being elected to this place I have been made representations on behalf of several veterans who from my observations were denied legitimate assistance, or recognition, arising from their defence service. Just before Christmas I met with a resident of my area who discussed with me his experience of the British atomic testing and the injustice related to the testing that he and others have endured. On the same subject, late last year I received an email from Mr Reuben Lette, the national president of the Atomic Ex-Serviceman's Association, relating to the British atomic testing. I understand that the email was sent to all members of this place. Today I spoke with Mr Lette and I take this opportunity to quote excerpts of his seven-page email. He writes:

We didn't ask our Government to poison us with radiation many years ago.

We didn't ask to roll around in the nuclear fallout dust from the bomb blast that settled onto the ground, we were ordered to do so. Nor did we ask to be lined up with our backs to the nuclear bomb as it went off and then again to turn around and face it. This was done in an unsafe area with no protection at all. We did as we were ordered to. It was as though the British treated us like toast, they wanted both sides done to find out which side got the most radiation poisoning from the bomb blast or the fallout and after-effects. The powers that be needed to know what would happen to us by doing so. We were the guinea pigs used so to keep safe their own personnel.

Well, we died, that is what happened to us, or we got very sick, then and for many years later with many different cancers or attacks to our bones of our bodies.

He goes on to say:

While at all times the British were fully aware as they equipped their own men with all protection that they could issue at the time, the Australians had none.

We didn't ask to fly our planes through the clouds of nuclear radiation caused by the explosion of the atom bomb. We did our ordered duties to fly through the cloud to get samples for testing.

We didn't ask to unload trucks and to carry in our bare hands with no protective clothing or masks highly contaminated with radiation material directly from the nuclear bomb sites into the British scientists' building at the RAAF base Edinburgh in South Australia, we were ordered to.

One of the Air Force servicemen carrying that contaminated material in his bare hands now has bones growing out of each disc in his back, top and bottom, front and back, which are joining up to each other and fusing all his spine together. This is not normal. No doctor can help him nor wants to. He is a too hard basket case to the medical profession.

We didn't ask to get onto the back of the truck and sit on the contaminated material but were ordered to by the officer in charge. We choked on the desert dirt and dust which was full of contaminated particles as the truck raced along the runway over to where the British scientists were. At every bump we would go up in the air with the contaminated materials but when we came down we were covered again in the dirt and dust that came off the contaminated materials. Our clothes, only a pair of overalls, were completely covered in the contaminated desert dirt and dust which had come directly from the nuclear bomb sites.

Nor were we allowed to change our clothes immediately on returning to our normal duties or have a shower from the period from early in the morning until 6.30 pm that night. We were once again ordered that we could not shower or change but to continue on with our daily work.

As Navy servicemen, we were ordered up on deck to witness the nuclear explosion at Monte Bello Islands. We were ordered to turn our backs to the blast, take off our glasses, close our eyes and cover them with our hands. This turned out to be useless as when the blast from the nuclear bomb happened we could see straight through our eyelids, through our hands past the bones, exactly the same as looking at an X-ray of our hands.

Mr Lette states that out of the veterans involved in the testing less than 700 remain today. Amongst the things that the Atomic Ex-Servicemen's Association are seeking is recognition of their service by way of a full TPI pension, a gold card so that all of their medical expenses are covered and a medal in acknowledgement of their service.

This legislation does not go that far but it does introduce important and welcome changes. In particular, the legislation allows for the payment of travel expenses for treatment to be approved by the Repatriation Commission before or after the travel has been undertaken. It also recommends that the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004 and the Veterans' Entitlements Act allow for special assistance or benefits under these acts to be extended to those who would not otherwise be eligible, by way of a legislative instrument made by the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Commission or Repatriation Commission respectively, rather than by regulation.

I welcome any processes which make the lodgement of claims simpler and less stressful for veterans and others who may already be suffering. Over the years since I have been in this place representing the people of Makin I have had the privilege of associating with many of the veterans in my area. In fact, just over a week ago I attended a National Servicemen's Day memorial service in my electorate, again listening to and speaking to some of the veterans who continue to be active within the area. I have seen them first-hand and have spoken to them on many occasions about the difficulties that many of them have endured since leaving their service. About a year ago I spoke to a young veteran, and I say young because he was only about 40 years old. Both he and his wife had been Defence personnel for Australia. Both of them are now out of their service. Both of them are going through their troubles right now. Both of them argue very strongly that as a government we need to do more for our veterans, particularly after they leave the service.

I make this point very strongly because many of the Defence veterans whom I refer to, and particularly those who might have been affected by the British atomic testing, are now elderly people who cannot and do not have the ability to any longer continue to stand up for themselves. So, in turn, they come to members of parliament like myself and others in the community to make representations for them. This legislation, I believe, goes part of the way to doing that. It is good legislation and I commend it to the House.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In quickly summing up prior to the third reading, the legislation will clarify, improve and update veterans' affairs and related legislation as part of the coalition's commitment to cutting red tape and removing redundant legislation. The bill takes another step towards fulfilling the coalition government's four-pillar election commitment to veterans and their families.

Debate interrupted.