Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I previously advised the Senate in my explanation on 4 July 2024, the advice I have is that report sought by this order remains under consideration by the government. It is the usual practice in receiving independent reviews for government to take the necessary time to work through them and develop a response to the recommendations. As part of that, this government is consulting widely across stakeholders, including Defence, other agencies and the family of ADF personnel who have lost their lives while serving. The government believes it is important that this consultation be finalised to enable completion of the government's response to the report. I'm advised that further time is needed to undertake that work. The government intends to respond to the order once that process is complete.

The government understands, and I, personally, am very aware of, Senator Lambie's deep personal commitment to serving members of the ADF, to veterans and to transparency. I, again, reaffirm to Senator Lambie that the government is ready and willing to brief her on this matter at a time suitable to her. The Deputy Prime Minister and his office would be glad to do so whilst the government continues to conduct consultations ahead of finalising the government response. In particular, I emphasise the Deputy Prime Minister is happy to work with Senator Lambie on mutually agreeable arrangements for this briefing, noting concerns she has previously raised in the chamber that the durations of the previously scheduled briefing was insufficient. I do invite Senator Lambie to take up the offer of a briefing. I hope she can see that the government is seeking to provide her with as much information as possible prior to the formal response to the review being completed.

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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

Sometimes I worry that I do sound like a broken record in here, but that's actually not my fault. It's the fault of defence and the minister for not getting stuff done. The Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force is defence's legal oversight system. They are the agency that is supposed to make sure that, when veterans are placed under investigation, they get a fair go. But that hasn't happened.

I know it, and the veterans know it. I've known about problems with the IGADF for years. There have been so many cases of weaponised administration against defence members over the years. The chain of command has misused and abused the legal processes to target members, and the IGADF signed off on the abuses while apparently still reviewing the cases. It was only after lawyers, often acting pro bono, managed to have the IGADF cases reviewed that the cases were found to be an abuse of process and an attack on the ADF victims.

What happened to the IGADF officers who did the initial reviews and found there was nothing to see here? They were promoted and given medals. What's new? What about current IGADF investigations into what is clearly systemic abuse? They drag on with no end in sight, and the victims simply expect that it will be just another 'nothing to see here' outcome. What about the former ADF lawyer who tried to complain about the defence abuse response process? The fact-finding didn't speak to any witnesses; it ignored relevant evidence and decided this lawyer was lying, based on irrelevant material.

Last year I wrote to the Attorney-General requesting an urgent audit for three reasons. Firstly, the office of the IGADF had never been audited—not once—in the 20 years since its establishment. Secondly, the office of the IGADF has increased its staff by 85 per cent, at the expense of taxpayers. Third and finally, the IGADF has been called out, by the royal commission, for its poor leadership and lack of accountability and transparency on numerous occasions over the last three years. Even though the IGADF and the Australian National Audit Office are separate agencies and are supposed to be independent and impartial, the secretary of Defence, Greg Moriarty, met with the IGADF to discuss the scope of a potential audit. My, my, my—not so independent anymore, are we? Naughty, naughty!

In September last year, Justice Duncan Kerr was commissioned to review the office of the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force. This review was handed down to the secretary and the Chief of Defence Force five months ago, but none of us have yet seen it. I asked former senator Rex Patrick to get an FOI organised, but the minister's office say they won't comply because they are still considering the report. This is offensive to the objectives of the act. Australians paid for this report, and it concerns matters of public interest—let alone the veterans' lives that are on the line. It sounds like the report probably reflects what veterans have been telling me for years, which is that the IGADF is broken. In my opinion, the way it operates is hurting veterans and, in some cases, is leading them to take their own lives. The FOI has been appealed to the Information Commissioner, but, sadly, that could take years. But watch this space because I'm not going away. We're thinking about having it shifted to the Australian review tribunal.

I got another letter from Mr Marles last week, and apparently the government needs more time to complete consultations as part of this consideration to finalise the government response. That's government speak for: 'Hello. We're working on the spin here.' It took three months to do the 20-year review, but they are still sitting on it five months later—what an absolute joke. Diggers have put their lives on the line for this country, only for the IGADF to protect the top brass, not them. Remember it was the IGADF report by Paul Brereton that gave the senior command a free pass on their role in the alleged war crimes in Afghanistan. A free pass—that's right.

The role of the IGADF is very important to, as they say on their website, 'oversee the quality and fairness of Australia's military justice system'. But the IGADF's importance relies on the job being done fairly, impartially and independently. The minister needs to release this report right now, and, when he has done that, he should make the IGADF an independent agency, completely independent from defence. I'm sure that will be one of the recommendations to come out of the royal commission; otherwise, we will just keep losing our veterans and defence will keep policing itself, which is the problem here. It's been 20 years, and they've done absolutely nothing but bring shame upon themselves.

But what throws me around even more is that you still have the same inspector-general sitting there and you have not sacked him, because I can assure you there are enough reasons, I would think, in that report, let alone what has gone through the royal commission. You should've removed him, shown some leadership and said you're not going to tolerate this behaviour from one of the highest officers in our defence forces. You lack the courage to do so, and, in the meantime, you are still leaving veterans out there wondering whether or not to take their own lives because of the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force and the way it acts.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can hear the layers of frustration in Senator Lambie's contribution, and the reason is that this is a repeated story from defence. They sometimes even pretend that they're transparent and they occasionally say, 'The ADF is incredibly transparent.' They're about as transparent as a brick.

In this regard we're talking about an independent review that, by all means, government can have a look at, but is the government going to sit on this independent review for as long as it's sat on the non-independent review into the former CDF and his medals? Remember that one? I think that was kicked off 2½ years ago—the CDF marking his own homework about whether he should keep his own medals. That's been sitting on Minister Marles's desk for five seasons, I think. Winters have come and gone, and entire crops have been sown, grown to their potential and harvested while that report has been sitting on Minister Marles's desk. It's about something straightforward, I would have thought: whether or not the CDF should have kept the medal he gave himself when he extended the criteria and credentials for getting a medal. Is the same thing going to happen to this absolutely critical 20-year review?

When we get the answer from the government and the minister of, 'We're still considering it'—still considering it? Defence couldn't make a rapid decision to save their lives. Defence couldn't make a rapid decision, from my observations, to save the country. Defence could just for once release something—just once. And maybe even just once they could proactively release something.

Do we agree with the contribution and the level of frustration that we heard from Senator Lambie? Absolutely, the Australian Greens do. I can tell you now that there are people all across the country who are now closely watching a department that wants to spend three-quarters of trillion dollars of public money over the next decade and are asking: how could both the government and the opposition allow them to get away with such appalling responses to basic transparency, such appalling responses to misuse of public money and such appalling responses to major public interest issues like this? Show us the report.

Question agreed to.