John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee’s First progress report—reforms to Australia’s military justice system. I would commend to the Senate this very important report. This is a very important issue, as I know all senators in this chamber understand.

I believe that the military justice system has been deeply flawed. There has been the perception that military justice has been about protecting the ADF from criticism rather than resolving problems and rather than fairness. If the committee’s unanimous recommendations had been implemented, criminal investigations would have been handed to the civilian police in the first instance and the matters dealt with in civilian courts, giving our service people access to the same principles of justice that are available to every other Australian.

The government’s response to the committee’s report was not to follow those recommendations. As the report of the committee reviewing progress has since found:

... many of the problems that were identified in the military justice report were manifestations of a deeply entrenched culture. Improvements in process will not of themselves change the culture.

I note that this happens at a time when the government is seeking to see a significant increase in the amount of recruitment in our Australian Defence Force. I also note the real and genuine concerns that are held about the high level of commitment of our armed services in overseas deployments. The government’s answer to this problem shows how out of touch it really is. What is it going to do? It is going to relax recruiting standards.

Recruiting standards ought to be regularly reviewed. Standards that are arbitrary and unrelated to capacity ought to be changed. But reviews and changes ought not to be based on some sort of desperate attempt to bolster numbers in the defence forces by lowering standards. When the Australian Defence Force has trouble meeting recruitment targets we ought to ask why that has occurred—what is the reason for it. We should ask that question and try to get some answers to that very important question before we have a headlong rush into lower standards.

One of the reasons why that has occurred was contained in the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee’s report into the military justice system in 2005. It is alluded to again in this progress report of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee. There is, and there is known to be, a deeply entrenched culture in the ADF that leads to bullying and the covert or overt endorsement of bullying by responsible officers. As we know, that leads to physical and sexual harassment and to the covering up of that harassment by abuse of process and attempts to blame the victim. That leads to the victimisation of those perceived to be weak—people who might be injured in training and the like or people who might be different because of perhaps their ethnic background or personal temperament. These are real issues. We also know that those who report wrongdoing—in other words, those living up to the best traditions of the ADF—are too often stigmatised and too often informally punished.

The references committee report demonstrated a mindset in the ADF that viewed making a complaint as seeking to subvert authority. The progress report notes that procedural changes are not in and of themselves enough to change a deeply entrenched culture—a mindset, if you like—that permeates an organisation. They are just not enough. We need the government to act to change the culture, to take initiatives. Until such a change can be demonstrated, the ADF is going to find it hard to persuade young men and women to join up.

We all know—we all acknowledge—that young people join the ADF because they want to serve their country. They join the ADF for the right reasons. We have a responsibility to ensure that when these young men and women do join the ADF they are treated fairly, decently and with respect. That is our responsibility—the responsibility of government, of parliamentarians and, of course, of the ADF itself.

This is a problem—a real issue, in my view—that the government must address. I think that the minister and the government have to do an awful lot more than just pay lip service to the ADF’s recruitment crisis.