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

Do you know what happened to that Lieutenant Colonel? I'll tell you what happened. He got scurried out in the middle of the night. Three months later he showed up and he was promoted to colonel. What's new? Who's being done over here? That's what's going on. The power imbalances are terribly wrong in the ADF, and that's a recipe for disaster. I can assure you that this thing is only going to make it worse.

I served in the military police. We all know that. I'm going to tell you some little stories about that today while I have the time. I'm going to tell you how well we are trained out there. They'd been promising—certainly since I was in there—that they were going to train us up to the level of expertise so that when we walked out we were pretty much trained like civilian police. We are trained to take a simple statement, how to use a speed camera and pretty much how to warn people if they haven't got a beret on. That's what the taxpayer pays for, for the eight or nine weeks we were sitting there. That's what you train us with. It is getting that bad in there right now that you have investigations going on where you're not even using the military police. They're not even using the military police, with the little bit of expertise that they have, to do those written statements of fact to be used as evidence for any court proceedings that are going on. They're using what they call 'fact-finds.' You'll hear about these fact-finds from the royal commission. I imagine it won't take the royal commission long before they say, 'Get rid of them.' These fact-finds are doing enormous damage. You have sergeants, warrant officers and lieutenants with no experience whatsoever in how to write a statement, let alone how to correlate evidence and write that. That fact-find, which has no central records, goes nowhere. Basically it goes up to whoever is in that commanding officer spot, and he puts it through the shredder and says, 'Nothing to see here.' That's where we're at in our Defence Force.

I have seen in my time some really great officers be officers in command and, because they were too close to their diggers, commanding officers of units say, 'Hey, big boy, this is what I want you to do: go and charge a couple of your diggers and show them who's boss.' This is not a legal system; this is a system of abuse. Sometimes there will be 30 or 40 people in that unit. That's all there is. That gives one person all that power to be judge and jury. That one person, if they don't like the digger, the digger's gone. They're absolutely gone. If you are lucky and your commanding officer likes you or you're extremely valuable because you're the only one who has that experience, you're safe; you're good to go, you stay. This is how the system works. It is not a legal system; it is a system of abuse and that's all it is.

There are ways to fix this. For example, when I was a corporal in the military police, I accessed all the computers. I tell you, I could determine, even at my level, who was going to be charged and who was not. I could remove those statements if I didn't like them. I could remove them if I believe their regimental sergeant majors in their units will take care of their own men so they don't walk around with black marks near their name. Back then we used to get extra duties. We didn't charge every digger. That's how it worked. Even at corporal level, I could put in or remove whatever I wanted out of the computer. I decided the fate at a corporate level. This is your legal system. This is really, really bad.

But what is worse, which really annoys me, is there is a royal commission going on. Seriously, there is a royal commission going on. Do you not want to wait? All you're doing is passing over more power to the abusers. If you put this through then, after that first suicide out of this, I will be back in here. I want you to think really carefully about this because, quite frankly, I want you to delay it. If you really want to do something about the suicides in Defence at this point in time before the royal commission starts putting its recommendations in, then I'm begging you not to put this bill through.

Once again, on 7.30 last Monday night, we saw a young fella gagged up, taped up, gaffer tape all over him, being abused. Your Defence Force, your military, knew about that for months and tried to shove it under the carpet. That's what happened to that poor young fella. That's your high-ranking officers doing that. That's the harm they're bringing to these people. It's not a system of war. It doesn't work. You cannot have these people who you are working closely with decide your fate. They cannot be judge and jury. It is a disaster, an absolute disaster. If you put this third tier in, if you put these infringement notices in, then all you are doing is slapping a digger around more. As soon as we take a complaint higher up—hey, see you later—there goes your career and, by the way, we will make sure we charge you on the way out. Just for taking us on, we will stick our chests out at you. That's how it is. We have problems with the leadership in our military and a very, very big part is the legal system that does not work. It's like I said: this is a system of bastardisation and abuse. That is all this legal system has become. So I'm asking you, before you make any moves you need to halt. Trust me, if you just get through to March and April when you start hearing those stories coming out of the royal commission thick and fast, you will regret this move. All you will do is take more diggers' lives through suicide. That's all this bill is going to do: give more power to the abusers and do over more diggers.

It's not a legal system. You cannot lead a legal system internally. You need an independent legal system that's on the outside. You need better trained military police out there. They were actually promised—what we should have got—25 or 30 years ago, so we could walk out with a qualification that doesn't just say, 'Here's one for "security guard".' That's ripping a digger off—what else is new!—when it comes to them being educated. I'm just asking you: don't vote for this bill. Just put it on hold, because you're getting it really, really wrong, and you will bring more suicides. It is the system that is in a mess.

It is a shame the diggers can't come forward and that they couldn't have stood in front of us, even behind camera, because they're too scared to. I'm running around like there's no tomorrow trying to convince them to at least come in camera with the royal commission and trust that process. I'm begging them. I'm not asking them to just do it for themselves but for their mates that they've lost, because if they don't come forward, the system will never change. And it certainly hasn't got better since I was in there. I've seen it with my own eyes. These big commanding officers up there have got no idea how to deal with females in combat units and infantry units, no idea whatsoever, let alone with any psychological issues. I'm trying to say this politely, but most men aren't good at that anyway, and the military men are even worse. We have massive culture problems in there that are going to come out. But one of the big reasons we are losing diggers and they're taking their lives is that they've been bullied and abused by their commanders, through what you call in here a 'legal system'. It's a legal system of abuse. You go ahead and vote for it, because I'll be standing up here, not so long in the future, saying: 'I told you so.

You're getting it wrong. And unless you've served in there, unless you've been in the military police, unless you've been other on the other side of it—and seen that it's still happening, and they're all coming to you—you have no idea what you are voting on today. I'll tell you what you're voting for: more bastardisation and more abuse to every digger that serves our military. That's what you are voting on today. You should be ashamed of yourselves. You've got a royal commission out there looking into this, and you're going straight over the top of it without even hearing what's coming through. Seriously! Don't vote for this. You're getting it wrong.