Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to speak in relation to the need for greater support for our frontline emergency personnel. This is something I spoke about in my maiden speech. I will read a short excerpt. I said:

… I spoke of the difficulties of the job. I'm lucky that I came out relatively unscarred. This is not the case for so many emergency personnel. Year after year, I have seen my former colleagues fall by the wayside with post-traumatic stress disorder, simply to be forgotten or discarded—made to fight the system to receive the care they require, not to move on but simply to survive. Many do not. As much as 20 per cent of emergency workers are impacted by PTSD. Between 2001 and today, 68 serving police officers across the country have died by suicide. This does not take into account those who have left the force; nor does it take into account any other emergency service organisation, past or present. These are the people who serve and protect us. We as a government must do much more to serve and protect them. This cannot be passed off as a state issue. We must work collaboratively as a government to do all we can for those who put themselves in harm's way for us.

Over the past three years the member for Wide Bay, the member for Fisher, the member for Herbert and I have worked with a fellow by the name of John Bale. Many of you would know John; he was the co-founder of Soldier On, which provides support services and programs for returned veterans. He identified that, in some circumstances, veterans weren't comfortable going to the services provided by the ADF. We worked with John over three years to secure funding for another organisation which he co-founded called Fortem. Fortem was a mirror image of Soldier On but for emergency service personnel.

In my experience, police will often leave the police force and have no support at all. Many of them are institutionalised; they've been in the job for 20 or 30 years and have seen the most horrendous things. The same applies to emergency service personnel. Whether they're volunteers or paid is irrelevant. Many of them don't feel comfortable going to the services provided to them, and many leave their employment angry. We can't explain how PTSD affects rational thinking. So I was very, very pleased that, over the past three years, we were able to obtain substantial funding and were successful for Fortem.

We have a Fortem in Port Macquarie, and it works really well. When we had the drought, then the bushfires, which were significant—we lost hundreds of homes in my electorate—and then the floods, where we lost more homes, and businesses were inundated, people needed support from an agency that understood and from people who had had lived experience, and it was working well. We were overjoyed that Fortem received funding of $10 million in the last budget. That was to go not only to opening further offices or branches around Australia in Townsville, Ballina, Albury-Wodonga, Gippsland, Dubbo, Nowra, Newcastle, Sunshine Coast, Darwin, Launceston and Perth but also for the upkeep of those services in the places they were already established. It was an amazing thing.

So you can imagine the disappointment, not only of Mr Bale but of all the 50 employees around Australia and of those of us who had worked so hard, to find out that $8 million of the $10 million had been ripped away from the funding over the next two years. That will mean that 50 people who are supporting our emergency service personnel will no longer have a job. More significantly, those people who fight our fires and those people who go to work and put their lives on the line will not have that support there—not only them but their families.

I can tell you the effect that dragging a body out of the water or consoling a mother whose child has died has on you, and, if their support services are not there, we'll continue to see deaths. We'll continue to see people struggle with mental health. We'll continue to see the breakdown of families. This decision makes no sense, and this is above politics. I'm not pointing my finger at the other side. Some of these officers that will miss out live in Labor seats. The people in your seats will miss out. So I'm urging the members on the other side to speak to their powers that be and ask why this has happened.

Fortem went through a competitive tender and was successful in the competitive tender, and now they're being told: 'No, sorry, you're not going to get the $8 million. You now have to go through another competitive tender,' when they've already put everything in process, everything in plan. They have the infrastructure. It was working. Please speak to the Prime Minister—I've written to the Prime Minister—and ask him to reinstate that for the people who fight your fires, who get in those boats during floods, and that's in times of disaster. Every single day they come out. They go to car accidents. They operate the jaws of life to get people out of their cars. They scrape people off the road. They go to suicide sites. They are the people who do and see the things that we don't want to do and see. So please go back to your party room and ask the question: why can't you reinstate that $8 million? It is a drop in the bucket for what those people do for us.

I will talk, just in the last couple of minutes, about veterans. There is a lot of great work that has been done for veterans to support veterans, and one of those things are the veterans' hubs around Australia. I have the largest cohort of veterans in my electorate in New South Wales: 9,000 veterans. We have one advocacy place, and that is in Coffs Harbour. It is a room that is stacked to the ceiling with boxes full of DVA claims that they're trying to process. I worked with veterans advocates over the last three years—Richard Calloway, Justin Poppleton, Louise Freeman and Sean Berkwitz—on a hub-and-spoke model that would service the whole of the Mid North Coast: Grafton, Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie and Taree. That's four centres for the same price as one centre of $5 million allocated to other seats.

That money was announced after the last budget last year. Unfortunately, in this budget, that $5 million was redirected. It was absolutely devastating for my veterans. They had been told they had the money, and now we have to start again. The veterans won't travel to Tweed Heads, three hours away from Coffs Harbour. They simply won't seek the services that they need. So, again, this has to be above politics. I'm asking the Prime Minister. I've written to you: please, $5 million is a drop in the bucket to service and support those people who served for us, who served for Australia. Please reinstate the $5 million for our hub-and-spoke model. Make sure our veterans have the services they require. Please do the right thing.