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

I don't support the Defence Legislation Amendment (Discipline Reform) Bill 2021. It's a shame that we couldn't have had all those diggers come forward and listen to what sort of legal system we have in our Defence Force. I can tell you: it's not a legal system; it's a bastardised abuse system, and that is half the reason that we are losing diggers to suicide. This is absolute abuse. The DFDA, and the power it gives those officers out there, does nothing but give the power to abuse diggers. We have a royal commission for this. I thought this was the whole point of hitting veteran suicide. The royal commission is going to go in and examine what is going on in our defence forces, and I can tell you now: you are going to see a lot of abuse matters coming up and a lot of cover-up. It's still going through the Royal Military College. Four females who have been through there in the last five years came forward to me yesterday in tears, saying, 'We've been raped and abused.' I've now sent them to a lawyer so they can get their submissions ready to go to the royal commissioner. That is where we are at.

The Defence Force Discipline Act does enormous damage to serving members, and that's the reality. It is used to bully people. People are getting charged for things they never did, and they're too scared to take it to a tribunal because they know, as I do, their careers are over; it is finished for them. Not only will they get discharged; it'll say, 'Administrative discharge; see you later.' Imagine trying to get a job once you say: 'I was wronged in the military. I was accused of doing this, but I actually didn't do it.' Imagine trying to explain that to an employer. It ruins a digger's life.

I wish you would not do this today, because what you are doing here is making the situation worse. You are giving more control to the people who are doing the bullying and the bastardisation. I'd love to see you give that sort of load to the diggers. I tell you what: there's some karma to come at those high-ranking officers. When someone has an injury and they're looking like they could get a medical discharge, it is not uncommon to see them getting picked up for things they should never get charged for. All of a sudden they end up fired up with, like I said, an admin discharge. There's no medical discharge for the abuse that they've had to go through in this process. This Defence Force Discipline Act—she's been gone for a long time. I'll get into some more stories, very shortly, about when I was serving and what's being been going on since then.

This bill won't fix it. In fact, it will actually make things worse. You will see more suicides because you're just giving more control to the abusers. All these new offences will do is open it up to more abuse. Take the new offence 'failure to perform a duty'. It's a strict liability offence, which means it doesn't matter if someone had a good reason for failing to carry out their duty. The punishment is dismissal from the Defence Force. If you're too sick to do what you're told, or if you're injured, or if you're given an order that you can't possibly comply with, you could get the boot from the Defence Force through no fault of your own.

Let's use an example that's been going on at 7RAR, which I brought up last year and again this year, with Lieutenant Colonel Gower. There were diggers over there that were on a medical chit to say that they were so psychologically damaged that there was no way should they have a weapon in their hands, let alone go to a range practice. Do you know what that little bugger did? That little bugger made them sign waivers. When I reported that to the very top of our Defence Force, do you know what they did—