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

The Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide was forced to extend its inquiry by 12 months in April, partly because it had trouble getting important information out of the Department of Veterans' Affairs and the Department of Defence. Commissioner Nick Kaldas was asked about it in an ABC interview with Patricia Karvelas last month, and it's worth documenting his response. Patricia referenced the DVA and Defence delays and asked, 'Has information been more forthcoming over the past few months since the inquiry was extended?' Commissioner Kaldas replied: 'Not as yet. We're still waiting for some things to be resolved.' Patricia Karvelas said: 'I consider that—please correct me if I'm wrong—quite alarming. You're a royal commission. Does it concern you that you're a royal commission with royal commission powers and that you've found it so difficult?' The commissioner told it to her straight: 'Yes, it does.'

The Parliamentary Privileges Amendment (Royal Commission Response) Bill 2022 addresses one of the biggest barriers stopping the royal commission from doing its job: parliamentary privilege. I don't move it lightly. Parliamentary privilege has protected the same witnesses and whistleblowers who fought so hard to get this royal commission established in the first place. It protects people who have come to me and told me the most horrific things going on in Defence. It gave me the power to fight for them. But the Parliamentary Privileges Act isn't working well when it comes to the royal commissions. It gets in the way when those royal commissions need to examine the actions of government. Instead of protecting people with no power, it's shielding people in power from scrutiny. That's why the veteran suicide royal commissions hit road blocks. They royal commission wants to ask the hard questions. They want to bring in Defence officials and officials from the Department of Veterans' Affairs and drill down on them. And so they should. That is why we are having a royal commission: to find answers. It's what we set them up to do, but they don't do it. Don't take it from me; take it from the royal commission itself. The interim report says that privilege:

… impedes transparency surrounding government decisions and acts as a shield for the executive from accountability for their commitments and actions taken to implement matters subject to privilege.

That's because parliamentary privilege prevents courts and tribunals, including royal commissions, from drawing inferences or conclusions from a report or inquiry that is subject to its protection. That's why the royal commission says it can't inquire into work and outcomes of prior Senate inquiries and Auditor-General reports—of all things!—even though its terms of reference require it to do so.

The royal commission can't tender documents subject to privilege and draw conclusions from them. This is ridiculous. It can't ask witnesses who worked on audits of Defence and DVA programs to give evidence about their investigation—not if it wants to use that evidence to make any meaningful findings, anyway. If it wants to use evidence that's subject to privilege in its findings, the only way to do that is to redraw that evidence from witnesses. It has to redo the work that is already done, and it has to rerun the inquiry. That is absolutely pointless. Why would we put people through this again and again? It has to tiptoe around everything we've done in parliament up to this point. All that work that's come before, all the work we did in the Senate—the royal commission can't use it to come to any conclusion about what the government has been up to all these years. It's such a terrible waste.

Take what happened with the 2021 Auditor-General report into the successes and failures of culture reform strategies in Defence. The report matters to the royal commission. It made a number of recommendations on how to improve the health, wellbeing and safety of Australian Defence Force members. Defence's response to the audit is relevant to the terms of reference of the royal commission's inquiry. It's publicly available on ANAO's website and has probably been downloaded thousands and thousands of times. But the royal commission, of all things, hasn't been able to use the report in any meaningful way. Counsel assisting the royal commission found that parliamentary privilege prevents them from asking Defence representatives questions about the report, because they can't make any kind of finding or conclusion from evidence that's subject to privilege. They wanted to show parts of the report on screens at one of the royal commission's public hearings. They wanted to tender it and refer to it in questioning, but parliamentary privilege prevented them from doing so. The risk of being accused of making findings from protected information was too great. They had to make clear that the royal commissioners should not make any conclusions or findings based on the Auditor-General's work—all that work, and it's absolutely useless to them. The counsel assisting the royal commission make it through by looking for official documents that were published outside the parliament and that reference the findings and outcomes of inquiry reports. How ridiculous. What a waste of time, when the reports are sitting there ready to go in their hot little hands.

In one case, they were lucky enough to find an official document outlining the recommendations and government responses to the 2017 Senate inquiry report The constant battle: Suicide by veterans. They use this document instead of the report itself. They had to, to get people into the witness box and to look at what the Australian Government did in response to the inquiry's recommendations. It worked then, but it's not sustainable—not by a long shot. We've had 17 reviews in 17 years in the Department of Veterans' Affairs itself. I don't know how many times Defence has been through the audit office on different things associated with their personnel. This is absolutely ridiculous. All this work has been done up here, and they are prevented from using it. It is as simple as that. Instead, they've got to go through it paper by paper to see what's in that. That is not a good way of doing an investigation and it is not sustainable—not by a long shot. We can't have a situation where it comes down to pure luck as to whether the royal commission can get to the evidence it needs to meet its terms of reference.

This royal commission has been a hard won by thousands of veterans and their families. They knew it was our only shot to call out the terrible phase of government that led to hundreds of veterans taking their lives. There is nothing higher than a royal commission. We have nowhere else to go. This is the pinnacle for us. Even here, in an inquiry with the strongest investigative powers you can imagine, we see how far executive government will go to avoid transparency and accountability. It just goes to show how hard it is to get to the bottom of the terrible problems at Defence and Veterans' Affairs.

That's why we are moving to enact recommendation 7 of the royal commission's interim report. The provisions of this bill follow the royal commission's recommendation precisely to exempt royal commissions from section 16(3)(c) of the Parliamentary Privileges Act where their terms of reference require examination of government—exactly what the royal commission asked for. I know it's a serious thing to open up an exemption to privilege, but, seriously, there is no other way around this. Trust me, we are pulling our hair out in my office. If royal commissions say they have a problem, then they have a problem, and we need to fix it so they can get on with the job. I thought that's what we're here to do, not to stand here as obstructionists so they can't get their job done. We certainly can't ignore what they are telling us. We have got to find a way to make sure Commissioner Kaldas and the other commissioners can turn over every stone, every rock, and get to the bottom of what is going so terribly wrong in Defence and Veterans' Affairs, and why we have so many suicides in our military. It's not a hard ask.

Senator Tyrrell and I will talk to anyone and everyone about how to fix the problems the royal commission has found. This is why I hope to send this bill to an inquiry. It will be a quick inquiry because it will need the best legal minds out there to be there so we can thrash out the issues the royal commission has raised. We've got to act now and we've got to act fast. Time is not on a veteran's side, I can assure you, when it comes to the royal commission. The sooner the royal commission can get its job done, the sooner we can get it wrapped up and the sooner, hopefully, we will have fewer people out there who have served their country trying to take their lives. That is the whole purpose of having the royal commission.

The royal commission has been too hard won for us to stuff it up now. All those people who rocked up on cold mornings to protest; the mums who came to parliament to tell the PM about their sons they had lost; the brave soldiers and veterans who have stood up and given evidence, even though it hurts and even though it takes them back to a dark place; everyone we have lost; our veterans and our Defence personnel are relying on making this royal commission a success and to find the answers that we need. This has to be our last inquiry into veteran suicides. It has to be. Like I said, after 17 inquiries in 17 years, we can't go through any more. We can't keep reliving our stories and watching the failure of future governments to fix these issues.

I call on Labor today to take this seriously. Come to the table and help us figure this out. You helped us win this fight, and veterans haven't forgotten that, but now you're in government and you're responsible for making sure this inquiry, hopefully the last inquiry we will ever have, works. You are now in government. Yes, that means hard decisions, and yes, that means upsetting some of the applecart here. I am asking you to be brave because sometimes we have to be that way in life to get things done. It is up to Labor now to make this happen, but, like I said, it is extremely time sensitive. There is nothing else I have up my sleeve and nothing anybody else can tell me that is higher than a royal commission to slow down these veteran suicides. I am very clear that we can never stop veteran suicides. But, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, if we do this properly we can sure as hell reduce them. We have one chance at this. This is our last one. I'm asking you: give the royal commission everything it needs, because I need somebody else to come up with the answers because I've run out.