MOTIONS

Senator SHOEBRIDGE (New South Wales) (10:59): I rise on behalf of my party, the Greens, to support this motion by Senator Lambie and again thank Senator Lambie for ensuring that veterans and protection and support for veterans are not forgotten in this place. It has been two years since the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide handed down its final report, and yet we know that despite some actions from the government many veterans and their families continue to face those real barriers to get the support they need and the services they need.

I'm not going to pretend that the government has done nothing, because that wouldn't be fair. The government has gone some way to implement elements of the royal commission report. There's another bill, implementation bill No. 2, that is waiting for this parliament to pass it.

We've been having productive conversations with the government, and we would like to see that passed with improvements as soon as we can. This is true. I've also seen the coalition come in here and One Nation come in here and rant about this issue, and some of the complaints are legitimate.

But I don't recall One Nation ever testing the coalition on the coalition's appalling failure to deal with veterans in the previous parliaments. They just seemed to be completely silent. This outrage that we hear—some genuine, some confected—suggesting that this is all the Labor Party's failure is just historically false.

The coalition were appalling in their treatment of veterans. They left tens of thousands of veterans waiting for years to get a basic determination about liability. They refused to fund the department, and because of this people in the department were having a meltdown—incredible stress, incredible pressure, big staff turnover.

That meant veterans weren't getting the services they needed. That's the coalition's record in this space. For them to come in here as though they're some white knights concerned about veterans is such a false narrative.

And I say again, while that was happening to veterans, I saw Senator Lambie challenge it. I saw Senator Lambie take it on and raise the issues, but I never once heard One Nation do it. I never once heard them do it.

They come in here now and say they've always been on the side of veterans. Well, actually, there is something called truth, and there is something called history. What they now say is just not true.

It's convenient for them because they now realise that there's some political point to be made, and I think some of their motivations are genuine. But look at the history. When veterans needed support, when the coalition was dudding them—basic silence.

I'm going to highlight again that Senator Lambie was the one. I'm sick of this ahistorical view from the coalition and One Nation. Veterans watching this are working with whoever they can work with to try and get this sorted.

That's what veterans are doing. They'll work with whoever will be in their corner in this moment. I'm sure veterans must feel this.

They know that they were betrayed by the coalition for years. They know that One Nation didn't give a rat's about them for years, never even saw them. The reason veterans are working with these parties is not because there's some kind of natural affinity; it's just because Labor has been hopeless on this cap thing and damaging veterans.

Veterans are not political pawns. Their needs, their rights and their family's rights should be a rock-solid space. It shouldn't be about whether it's politically convenient or not to support veterans.

I'll be quite frank about it as the Greens spokesperson for veterans; we don't do this because we think there are a whole raft of veterans who are suddenly going to be voting for the Greens. We do a lot of work in my office for veterans. I want to really call out the work of my team who are doing work that none of us see, that none of you see: responding to emails, responding to complaints, getting veterans the healthcare they need, responding to it in bulk.

We don't do that because we think it's some kind of convenient political play. All of that work is happening with my team, and I'm going to give a shout out to Gigi and my team—amazing work—because this stuff matters and because veterans matter. Their health matters.

Responding to them and getting them timely treatment matters. To see the way the politics plays out on this—I understand why veterans are doing this, because how else do you get heard in this place? How else do you get seen?

How else do you get protected? With that said, I want to be clear that the Greens are supporting this motion because the guts of it is to respond to the royal commission—implement the royal commission. It's the right thing to do.

It's just the right thing to do. When that royal commission handed down its final report documenting the deep cultural issues within Defence and the devastating impact they had on veterans and families, and I remember the discussion here, I thought that maybe we kind of collectively got it—that, when you read the report that found that an average of 78 serving or former ADF members have died by suicide each year for the 10 years leading up to that report, maybe this place got it.

Maybe we don't have to keep revisiting the toxic politics. Maybe it's actually just core support for veterans—like there should be core support for people on the NDIS and core support for people who need mental health treatment in Medicare. That core support thing I thought was the new bedrock.

The royal commission said that's it's not all just Labor's fault. It's not all just the government of the day's fault. It also spoke about what's happening inside the ADF—that code of silence, military values, shutting down, silence.

The royal commission found that that was directly linked to suicide risk inside the ADF, and it said that Defence leadership should be held to account. Two years on, can you point to a single senior member of Defence leadership who's been held to account—anyone who's been marched out because they haven't got it? We keep getting the reports because the kind of toxic leadership that was identified by the royal commission is still there.

It's absolutely still there. If the government was true to the royal commission, they would have marched some of this toxic leadership out of their offices and they would have said, 'You don't have a job anymore because you don't get it and you're putting serving members of the ADF at risk.' The royal commission said that there needs to be systemic cultural change and there needs to be things to deal with trauma, the inevitable trauma that comes from service.

There's literally no other job that I'm aware of where, when you take on board the job, your employer is willing to kill you. That is the thing about Defence. There is no other job that has that associated with it.

And, when you have that as a job, you're going to inevitably have trauma associated with it, and you're going to have to have rules and controls that make that an acceptable thing inside an organisation. And what we found from the royal commission is that actually creates harm and creates trauma and that there should be changes in how that trauma is dealt with.

Let's be frank. If that's always going to be a part of working for the ADF—your employer is always going to be willing to kill you—and that's always going to create trauma, is it any wonder that veterans need help and support? And what does Labor do in that place?

I'll tell you what Labor does. Having said that they get it, having put that first recommendation through, they then come and want to get a three-quarters of a billion dollars budget saving by removing existing support from veterans in allied and health care. How do these two things sit together?

The royal commission says veterans need more support—they need more timely support—and their families need support, and Labor now says, 'Well, actually, once you hit $5,000 of physio or once you hit $5,000 of psych, we're going to put you through some torturous internal process in veterans' affairs where you may get further service, and we're going to structure this process in such a way that we're going to have three-quarters of a billion dollars in budget savings.' And that's now apparently good for veterans.

Again, it's no secret that my party, the Greens, thinks we should not be spending 47 billion dollars on building six under-gunned useless frigates that are already out of date and will be even more out of date by the time they're launched in the mid-2030s. It's no secret that we think that that is a crooked, corrupt, rotten deal and it should end now. What we would say is: 'Why don't you cancel Nos 3, 4 and 5 of those useless frigates and pay for veterans' physios?

Why don't you just cancel one of the bloody frigates, the $9 billion white elephants?' Do white elephants float? I don't know if white elephants float. Why don't we just cancel one of those useless frigates that we know won't work and pay for veterans' psych and physio and the needs there?

I can tell you, it would cover the entire bloody allied health bill between now and forever—for one of these useless things. Thank you, Senator Lambie, for bringing the motion. That's why we support the motion, not for the shitty politics but because actually, if you ask veterans, if you ask people to serve and do this, you have this rock-solid obligation to support them.