COMMITTEES

Senator SHOEBRIDGE (New South Wales) (15:50): I'd like to associate myself with the chair's remarks and comments. I won't repeat the detail of this report, but I will commend the report and the thoroughness of the report to all senators who are concerned about ensuring that defence personnel, as far as possible, are kept safe, respected and protected when they go about their work and their duties.

This was a pretty tough inquiry to sit on. It was tough to come to terms with the complexity of the material, but I think the hardest thing was to hear from the families of the four defence personnel who lost their lives on the night of 28 July in 2023. I'll say their names: Captain Danniel Lyon, Lieutenant Maxwell Nugent, Warrant Officer Class 2 Joseph Laycock and Corporal Alexander Naggs.

They all lost their lives instantly when the Taipan helicopter they were in crashed at speed, on a dark night in a dangerous exercise, into the waters off the Whitsundays in Queensland. There had been so many warnings about the dangers, particularly of what was happening that night. A very loud warning had been delivered in March of 2023, when 10 ADF personnel, including special forces soldiers who were hanging off the back of a Taipan helicopter on a rope ladder, were forced to ditch into Jervis Bay.

Eyewitnesses said they saw sparks at the top of the rotor blades and an explosion before the helicopter went, in a somewhat controlled emergency ditch, into Jervis Bay. The special forces team, who were hanging off the back on their rope ladder, came within a whisker of losing their lives and being dragged under and killed. That was in March of 2023.

It turns out that, in the 12 months before and the 12 months that followed—throughout that whole period and, indeed, even before that—a whole series of people inside Defence and Army Aviation, who are the experts that you rely upon to keep platforms and any additions on platforms safe, had been ringing alarm bells with Defence about the Taipan helicopter. This was not about the core helicopter itself but about a bunch of mod cons that Defence had added to it—the TopOwl system—concerning the images that were being fed to the pilot and the co-pilot, particularly during low-light scenarios.

What the experts, the ones who tested the equipment, said was that, particularly in low-light situations where you're relying entirely on the visual because you can't see what's in front of you, the information that's fed to the pilot through the TopOwl could totally flip your orientation. Up might be down and down might be up. They highlighted that this equipment shouldn't be on the Taipans.

You shouldn't put on equipment that, in the most stressful moments—the moments you most need to be relying upon the instrumentation—is potentially flipping it upside down. What they said was that, if Defence proceeded to allow this equipment in and allow it to be used—particularly in low-light situations, in stressful situations like that—it could lead to multiple deaths in a controlled flight into terrain.

Then, on 28 July 2023, that's exactly what happened. Bushman 83, with those four defence personnel and an incredibly experienced pilot was in a low-light situation where we know they'd have been relying on looking at their instrumentation. We know it was instrumentation that, particularly when looking out left or right, could be flipping everything upside down.

Tragically, they went into the water at speed in a controlled flight. They hit it like hitting concrete, and their lives were lost instantly. As we started unpicking what Defence knew, when they knew it and how they responded to the reports, the story just got worse and worse.

Warnings were not heeded. Once the warnings were in place and it looked like there might be significant restrictions on the Taipan, particularly when they were engaged in joint exercises with the United States, where Australia wanted to show off its stuff and its ability to insert special forces—those situations where they wanted that to happen—people inside Army aviation tried multiple workarounds to get around these safety complaints and reports about how dangerous it was.

They brought in individuals and experts. They looked at German reports. they did this and that and whatever. They said, 'Keep flying.

Keep doing it'—even in these dangerous situations. And we know what happened. I particularly want to thank some of those really brave people inside Defence who put their careers and their professional experience on the line to try and make that safety call.

I'm particularly thinking here of retired majors David Lamb and Ian Wilson, people of genuine integrity and enormous experience. If only they'd been listened to and heard. I won't repeat every one of the recommendations.

There are 15 recommendations in this committee report. They go to questioning whether or not Army aviation should operate as it does. They recommend that the Defence Aviation Safety Authority review Army aviation's compliance with the Defence Aviation Safety Regulation and related Defence safety standards.

The recommendations proposed that the Department of Defence conduct an urgent review to consider placing the Army Aviation Test and Evaluation Section outside the Army and under the command of the Air Force, where the best flight experience exists. I've got to tell you that that recommendation alone to not let Army aviation be judge, jury and executioner but to actually ensure that the best airworthiness experts—the best experts in the space, who are, it won't surprise you, within the Air Force—have some kind of direct oversight is critical.

Recommendation 7 says: The committee recommends that the Department of Defence strengthen the Australian Defence Force's internal policies and procedures to: promote safe reporting pathways, whereby personnel can raise concerns about safety, including fatigue, within and outside of the chain of command, and strengthen training at all levels to promote a positive reporting and safety culture and to raise awareness of reporting pathways.

That's essential. I said before that incredibly experienced test pilots, people with enormous experience and integrity, kept blowing the whistle and kept being ignored, and Defence kept looking for workarounds. Recommendation 9 recommends: … the Australian Government examine the effectiveness of the framework designed to ensure the Defence Flight Safety Bureau's independence from the military's chain of command and reconsider the appropriateness of situating the Defence Flight Safety Bureau within the department that it is tasked with independently investigating.

The evidence I heard had a very disturbing taint to it, where those in the chain of command who just wanted this platform to keep operating and wanted it to operate in the very conditions in which these fatalities happened seemed to have some kind of power over the notionally independent safety experts—the people setting the standards and doing the testing. They need to be completely separated.

Then there is a series of recommendations—11, 12, 13, 14 and 15—which go to providing things like an acute support package to the families of veterans who lose their lives in situations like this and making sure that no-one's widow has to beg just to have the rent paid, that there's actually leniency there and that you understand the incredible loss and provide support, because we did hear about that.

We heard about widows that, whilst they had some extensions and whilst there's been gradual improvement in some of this, were literally begging to get the support so that they could keep a roof over their heads of their kids, who've lost their dad. That shouldn't happen. The final recommendation I'll reference is recommendation 15.

This recommends the Department of Defence and the Australian War Memorial continue to consider the eligibility of Captain Daniel Lyon, Lieutenant Maxwell Nugent, Warrant Officer Class Two Joseph Laycock and Corporal Alexander Naggs for the roll of honour at the Australian War Memorial. If, for some bureaucratic reason I can't comprehend, that can't happen, then the committee recommends a dedicated memorial be created along Anzac Parade to honour their and other training deaths, because they died in service, and there should be some place to honour and respect that.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned.