Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to begin the debate today on my private member's bill that I introduced to parliament last year on Remembrance Day. It is called the Veterans' Entitlements Amendment (Expanded Gold Card Access) Bill 2015. As the name implies, it gives our veterans—including peacemakers and peacekeepers as well as federal police who have served in war or war like conditions—automatic access to the best medical care Australia can offer, through the gold card system.

Unfortunately, it is my suspicion, after informal and formal talks with the Liberal and Labor parties, that neither will be supporting this legislation. This makes me feel very sad, frustrated and angry, because, if passed, this bill would force this parliament to make simple changes to our laws, which would meaningfully limit the numbers of Australia's veterans who commit suicide. I have to congratulate the Greens on supporting my legislation. We may disagree on other matters, but it is only right to congratulate and thank the Greens for supporting me on this issue.

It comes as no shock that if I were granted one wish and given a choice of having one bill passed by this parliament—while there are many that would tempt me—this would be the bill that I would choose. I would choose this bill because I believe in every fibre of my being that this bill—with its provision which automatically expands gold health card access to all veterans—will save the lives of hundreds of Australian soldiers, peacemakers, peacekeepers and Federal Police officers who have placed themselves in war or warlike conditions for this country.

If this bill does not pass this house, I am convinced that we will continue to lose hundreds of veterans to suicide—at a frightening, alarming rate. The unofficial number of veterans who committed suicide over the last decade and a half is about 241. When you reflect on the fact that the total of those Australians who died in combat overseas over the last 15 years is approximately 49 and the total number of Australian former diggers who committed suicide is 241, the enormity and weight of the tragedy sinks in and causes in me a terrible dread. These deaths are avoidable, because a bureaucratic fight with the Department of Veterans' Affairs to obtain the benefits and services of a health gold card is responsible for killing our very own veterans and carving a trail of destruction through their families and friends.

Few people understand the physical and psychological pressures that a professional soldier is placed under, let alone the psychological and physical cost of serving in war or warlike conditions. Perhaps professional athletes who are pushed to their psychological and physical breaking limits daily for years have an appreciation for the strength and endurance a soldier in our modern Army requires. The average Army grunt's body is ruined after about six to eight years of carrying packs, arms and ammunition.

There is a quote attributed to George Orwell which reads:

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

Well the only change I would make to that statement to keep it from breaching sexual discrimination rules of 2016 is to say, 'People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men and women stand ready to do violence on their behalf.' Acting Deputy President Ketter, put simply, and using Orwellian words, if you and I are to keep sleeping peacefully in our beds then our ADF will need to take Australian men and women, train them in the dark arts of combat and roughen them up a bit. I understand this reality because I have been through the official roughening up process, starting with basic training at Kapooka. But most Australians probably do not understand the ADF's training process, which, if not managed properly, can lead to learned helplessness and injuries just as severe and horrific as war.

The Australian Defence Force is damaging its members, discharging them, wiping their hands of them, failing to care for them, and passing them over to the Department of Veterans' Affairs where the bureaucratic nightmare and further harm and damage happens. This is not a lie. This is a fact borne by the evidence that, to date, 241 veterans have killed themselves in the space of 15 years, and that shameful fact has been officially covered up by successive governments, who refuse to acknowledge this awful truth. The fact is proved by the hundreds of homeless veterans sleeping rough every night in this country. The fact is proved by the broken veterans who end up in our jails in this country.

The Department of Veterans' Affairs is a very dangerous place for our diggers, especially those who have served overseas in war or warlike conditions. Why do those diggers have to fight for the best medical care that this country has to offer? Put aside the petty legal arguments and the misleading financial arguments the government and Labor party will offer in this debate. Doesn't Australia have a moral duty to provide the best medical care to its citizens who signed an agreement to die for their country in its defence? Why can't those diggers who have been to war for us ring up or email the Department of Veterans' Affairs and say, 'G'day, Veterans' Affairs, I'm Stan Smith. I served in a peacekeeping mission. Here's my official service number. I'll email you my discharge certificate. Now I'd like my health gold card in a week's time because I've got some serious health issues that me and my family have to deal with very quickly, because I can't afford financially, psychologically or physically to go on a waiting list or to go into battle with my own'? Why would you even contemplate making a veteran who put themselves in harm's way on multiple tours fight to obtain a gold card?

It takes a special kind of sadistic, callous and ungrateful bastard to put a veteran through a paperwork hell just so they can access proper, timely and affordable health treatment. And the really disappointing fact is that within the walls of this building there seems to be an unending supply of those kinds of people, who have made their way to positions of power and influence.

That is why we need this law passed which will put in our law the automatic right for you, our vets, to access the best medical care Australia has to offer if you have served in war or warlike conditions. You will not have to submit to the degrading assessment process where untrained and unqualified bureaucrats interpret complex medical reports, play God and decide whether your injury warrants enough points to make the grade. And then, if they do not like you, they will hire investigators—private eyes—to follow you and secretly film you, and drag out your appeals in courts and tribunals for as long as possible and at as much cost as possible to you, the veteran or discharged digger.

I speak with some authority when I describe the incompetent actions of the Department of Veterans' Affairs. I fought a long legal battle, which I won—but only after huge financial, physical and psychological cost to me, my sons, my family and my mates. I should congratulate the department, because if it were not for their predatory, callous, unfair, unjust and unreasonable behaviour towards me then I would never have found the strength, the courage and good fortune to have won a seat in this place.

I will not go into the detail of my battle with DVA. I will leave that to another time, because it would distract from the bill's main purpose: to help those who have served in war or warlike conditions. I did not serve in those conditions.

However, one important consequence of passing this bill will be that veterans will spend less time in places like the Administrative Appeals Tribunal fighting appeals with the Department of Veterans' Affairs. The bill may help some veterans avoid one very nasty side-effect of exercising your right to appeal a DVA decision in the AAT, which is this: because the Administrative Appeals Tribunal is a court, when information is presented to a court it then becomes public property and is available for public scrutiny. That is to be expected in a democratic system. However, what I found is that, if the tribunal chair takes a very broad, liberal view on what personal medical information should and should not be made public, veterans could find themselves—as I recently found myself—fighting a major media organisation which did not only want to see the medical information directly relevant to my medical injuries associated with my claim, but used a loophole in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal laws to go on a fishing expedition, helped by extraordinary rulings by Deputy President of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal Greg Melick, who is also a very senior officer, a major general, in order to access just about every private medical record I have.

I have made known, publicly, my battles with depression and mental illness during my journey with the Department of Veterans' Affairs—a battle which was largely caused by the dysfunction and corruption in that department. I have been very open about my past medical conditions, which I have managed to get on top of. But I have just had to spend $30,000 in legal fees fighting Rupert Murdoch, who exploited a loophole in our DVA appeal system so that he could sell newspapers with all my private medical records splashed across their pages. And, under the current Veterans' Affairs appeal system, it did not cost Rupert's reporter a cent to carry out that legal action—not one cent.

I have recovered, with new medical treatment, and have become more much more resilient, compared with the dark days where depression and chronic pain became unbearable. I never had any faith in or respect for Rupert Murdoch's ethics or morals, which have always floated along in the gutter of Australian political and cultural life—so that belief has remained unshaken. However, my fight to keep some privacy for my medical records has deeply shaken my faith in the Department of Veterans' Affairs appeals system. I would hate for any unsuspecting veteran who may be targeted by a media organisation or entity to have to go through the fight I had to go through to keep medical records, non-relevant to an AAT decision, private.

I also find it incredible that the Administrative Appeals Tribunal commissioners can also be part-time Australian Defence Force legal officers. How can serving senior military officers, as is Deputy President and Major General Melick, be involved in judicial decision-making about former members of the military? This is, at the very least, a very clear conflict of interest and, therefore, possible corruption, which I hope the Attorney-General will address. Given my high-profile campaign against senior officers of the Australian military who have stood by for decades and allowed paedophiles and rapists to remain in the ranks while sacking others for just receiving, not opening, emails with dirty pictures attached, any reasonable person can see there is the distinct possibility that a motive exists for a still-serving, elite, Australian Defence Force senior legal officer, Major General Melick, to be involved with a biased decision when it comes to the release of all my most private medical records to the media.

This is what my lawyer had to say, in part, about this extraordinary chain of events put in place by a Murdoch media reporter and the Australian Defence Force senior legal officer Major General Melick:

Background.

1.1 The application was made by Mr Owen, journalist with the "Australian" Newspaper pursuant to section 35 of the AAT Act that, essentially allowed for him (i.e. a non-party to access all material regarding your previous AAT case that was the subject of a written decision on the 13th of April 2006.

1.2 The application was made under section 35 of the AAT Act that essentially allowed for the journalist to obtain all the documents including the evidence that was given before the AAT including documents lodged that may or may not have been referred to in the decision.

1.3 When the Application was made by Mr Owen, the AATs' initial response on the 1st of December 2014 was:

"Please find enclosed for your information, a request by a non- party for access to Tribunal documents. The request has been referred to Deputy President (DP) Melick for his consideration and DP Melick has indicated that his preliminary view is that as there was a substantive hearing with respect to these applications, the non-party is entitled to access the following documents;

> any document received in evidence by the Tribunal

DP Melick has indicated that before he makes a decision on this request, he will seek the views of the parties involved and in particular whether the documents contain information that they believe should be protected by a confidentiality order.

1.4 By letter dated 10th December 2014 (Attached) we outlined to the AAT why the proposed release of all of the above documents was clearly a response to an ambit claim i.e. for your whole file including all documents and exhibits as it would allow someone who was not a party to your case to receive documents that were not within the public domain, documents covered by legal professional privilege, full medical reports and medical records, evidence that had been disallowed by the tribunal and the substantial breach of your privacy.

1.6 We outlined our concerns to the AAT by letter dated 5th of February 2015 (Attached) in respect to not releasing documents on grounds of personal information and that we objected to the release of all information as it was obviously was medical in confidence, legal professional privilege and an unreasonable disclosure of personal information and so forth.

1.8 Additionally we outlined in writing that using the AAT’s own Privacy Policy that it would not disclose or use personal information unless you had consented, it was reasonable to expect and of the AAT to not use or disclose the information for that other purpose i.e. to give it to a journalist which was not relevant or any of the other grounds contained within the AAT's privacy policy.

3. AAT Outcome

3.1 The attempt by a non-party i.e. a journalist to go on a fishing expedition for the documents exposed a substantial anomaly that exists between your right as an individual to have information that would otherwise have not been disclosed pursuant to the Freedom of information act and the Privacy act that was not exempt from those privacy position provisions because of the operation of the AAT Act as the AAT is exempt by the FOI act.

3.2 The AAT however has its own Privacy Policy that purports to protect personal information; however it has been at a substantial experience to you that, in all the circumstances was unreasonable for you to incur.

3.3 We confirm that, counsel's fees totalled $16,912.50 and our fees including our attendance at the first day's hearing in Hobart and 12 hours of preparation and attendance with counsel totalled $12,462.00.

3.4 You were therefore liable to pay approximately $30,000 for an AAT application by journalist that, if made pursuant to the FOI act would not have required you to incur any expenses as, in all probability all of the information that the AAT agreed should not be released, would not have been available in any event through FOI.

You can image what fun Mr Murdoch would have at my expense if my legal team had not been able to redact a large portion of my personal medical records after Major General Melick authorised their release. I suppose the balance of power of the Australian Senate is a matter of high stakes and all is fair in love and war to some people. I would like to know what political affiliations and connections Major General Melick has. They could be relevant in this matter given his extraordinary ruling which would have led to the public release of all my private medical records. All of them!

Successful passage of the Veterans’ Entitlement Amendment (Expanded Gold Card Access) Bill 2015 will mean that significantly fewer veterans will have to submit themselves to a dysfunctional, dishonest and corrupt Veterans' Affairs appeals process, which clearly contributes to the harm the veterans have already suffered. It lessens the chance that vets, or injured former diggers, will have to spend thousands of dollars fighting to keep their personal medical records private should a reporter or anyone else decide to dig dirt with the help of a compliant AAT commissioner.

If we send them and bend them, whatever the cost, we should mend them. We will always honour the dead, but I can tell you now, we will always fight like hell for the living. There are military members over there in the chamber and you know who you are, and if you are not on my side fighting for this bill, then all that crap that you said in your first speeches means absolutely nothing to those who have served. It means absolutely nothing! And they will not forget!