‘We are not getting it right’
THERE IS STILL WORK TO DO TO PREVENT
DEFENCE has a “lot of work to do” to protect its workforce from service-related suicide.
“We are not getting it right,” Chief of the Defence Force General Angus Campbell told the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide in Townsville.
General Campbell made the forthright concession and said the organisation was trying, but it was “not there yet”. Other high ranking Defence officials made similar concessions, but the admission from the leader of Australia’s armed forces was a significant moment.
The most harrowing revelation from the nine days of public hearings in Townsville was that it took until April 2022 for Defence to order an examination of the 59 deaths by suicide of ADF members since 2016.
In April this year General Campbell also invited a number of organisations, including DVA, to partner with Defence to research military suicides.
General Campbell said he ordered the 59 internal reports on suicide deaths go under the microscope and told the commission it was the only “longitudinal analysis” of suicide deaths that he was aware of.
In the same month, four serving members took their own lives in the span of just five days.
Counsel Assisting the royal commission Peter Grey said there was “no apparent reason” why Defence did not take these steps earlier in his closing address in Townsville.
He said, based on General Campbell’s evidence, the compilation of suicide data was a relatively recent development and that work was still needed to build robust and reliable data that recorded suicide and self-harm incidents.
As the commission probed the systemic and cultural failures which were contributing to high rates of suicide, it heard from a number of Defence witnesses, support or
ganisation representatives who have their own experiences serving in the ADF, as well as clinicians, researchers and academics.
Wide-ranging evidence covered the lengthy delays soldiers faced getting medical appointments at Lavarack Barracks, where just a single part-time psychiatrist works two days a week, to the specific challenges faced by Indigenous ADF members.
Between January 2000 and May 12, 2022, the internal Defence Suicide Database recorded 159 confirmed or suicide deaths of full-time serving members.
Townsville’s most senior army officer, 3rd Brigade commander Brigadier Kahlil Fegan, was the first to give evidence and offered a frank assessment of the services available to troops in Townsville and how these might disincentivise people from seeking treatment for mental or physical injuries.
He told the royal commission that troops of Townsville’s 3rd Combat Brigade might be motivated to hide their health problems to secure deployments and said months-long waits for appointments also discouraged soldiers seeking early intervention for mental or physical health issues.
Serving witnesses said the stigma around speaking up about mental health problems was internal and personal, rather than rooted in the organisation’s culture.
In contrast, one veteran who spent 20 years in the army and climbed to the rank of warrant officer said there was a strong stigma for “being weak”.
Kylie James told the commission that army training instilled that it was weak to ask for help and described seeking mental health support as a “career killer”. While it sat in Townsville the royal commission recorded a boost in submissions, with more than 150 people sharing their experiences of military and veteran suicide with the inquiry.
In his closing address, Mr Grey said evidence presented to the commission raised “serious issues” about army’s performance review and promotion system.
He said the system had, and may still have, systemic flaws which allowed people with patterns of unacceptable behaviour to continue their careers and climb the ranks.
The commission was told this eroded trust in an organisation and had an impact on capability.
Mr Grey said the performance review and promotion of officers who make up the chain of command and led the army was critical in instilling good culture.
He was highly critical of the government’s response to problems plaguing the veteran community, which were raised as the commission grilled the two former ministers for veterans’ affairs and defence personnel Darren Chester and Andrew Gee.
Mr Gee was frank with the commission and said the current DVA system did not work in the best interest of veterans.
Mr Chester faced questioning about the government’s three year delay in responding to critical recommendations made in the 2019 Productivity Commission report, which Mr Chester said was the most important report he ever received in the job.
The report recommended reform of the complex legislation that governs the veterans’ compensation scheme, which was identified as a trigger for stress, poor mental health and suicide.
Mr Grey said there was an issue with the timing and adequacy of the previous government’s response to this and the growing Department of Veterans’ Affairs claims backlog.
The commission was told that even in May this year, when the government changed, three years after the report was released no decision had been made to adopt the recommendations to reform the law.
Other startling evidence presented to the commission came from Mr Gee who revealed that when he stepped into the Veterans’ Affairs portfolio he was tasked with finding hundreds of millions of dollars of cuts behind closed doors.
He said the department won “hundreds of millions of dollars” in the 2020-21 budget but that he was told to offset the win with more than $430m in cuts.
Mr Gee said his office was successful in reversing the proposal and that no cuts were made but described the situation, which he said came from the Morrison government and not the department, as “one step forward and two steps back”.
The royal commission ended its nine days of public hearings in Townsville and will next visit Hobart in August before heading to Darwin in October.
An interim report will be published in August focusing on issues requiring urgent or immediate action.
Help is available, contact:
> Lifeline 13 11 14
> Beyond Blue 1300 659 467 > Open Arms – Veterans & Families Counselling 1800 011 046