View from Canberra: Abuse in the ADF: What now? | ADM September 2012

Many years ago when this correspondent was a member of his school cadet unit, he was roundly abused by a cadet sergeant whose raised and belittling language sure hurt his feelings.

Should the government relent to the urgings of the legal fraternity and implement a compensation system for victims of past abuse within defence, your correspondent reckons he could parlay his teen cadet experiences into perhaps $25,000 towards the mortgage or a maybe an overseas holiday.

Your correspondent of course has no plans to milk the Australian taxpayer in this manner. In any case the government has yet to say how it will respond to the detailed review of past abuses within the defence force conducted by law firm DL A Piper.

But the reality is that grievances produce demands for compensation and compensation schemes tend to get much bigger and cost far more than their initiators ever envisaged. And as well as those with genuine complaints deserving of compensation, they bring out the chancers quite willing to embellish or fabricate to take home some easy cash.

Quick bit of history: In the media furore in the wake of the Australian Defence Force Academy “Skype scandal” early last year, many current and former servicemen contacted the media and even the minister’s office to reveal their own particular experience of abuse within the defence force.

Stephen Smith commissioned law firm DL A Piper to collate all this information and suggest a way forward, with their lengthy preliminary report released in early July. That cited a breathtaking 1,095 allegations of abuse raised by 775 people dating back to the 1950s. Having let the genie out of the bottle, the government now just doesn’t seem to have any quick, easy or cheap options.

Perhaps the simplest would be an apology to those affected by past abuse, in the same manner than Kevin Rudd apologised to Aboriginal people and to child migrants for past abuses. That’s become something of a growth practice with Western Australia and South Australia both apologising for past practices of forced adoption.

According to DL A Piper, many seek nothing more than a sincere sorry for past wrongs. But for others that acknowledgement of a wrong perpetrated by the Commonwealth of Australia opens the door for litigation to achieve compensation.

Perhaps the best past examples relates to the 1964 Voyager-Melbourne disaster which launched decades of legal action. The Commonwealth did not cover itself in glory, initially fighting tooth and nail against payment of compensation to Voyager survivors. That went all the way to the High Court which in 1992 found against the Commonwealth and the then Labor government subsequently devised a settlement scheme.

As the cases involving Voyager personnel diminished, more appeared involving those aboard Melbourne who claimed they too were traumatised. More than 200 claims were eventually lodged, not all with merit.

In his book “The Cruel Legacy” historian Tom Frame cites the case of one sailor who claimed his traumatic experiences on Melbourne gave him PTSD and made him an alcoholic. It turned out he was actually at home ashore recuperating from a car accident when Melbourne ran over Voyager.

The final Melbourne-Voyager case was resolved in 2009. Throughout, the Commonwealth was roundly criticised for failing to behave like the model litigant it purports to be. Against that, it’s hard to argue that the Commonwealth has a responsibility to ensure the legitimacy of claims on the public purse.

Any compensation is still some distance away. The DL A Piper report proposes a number of possible courses of action - going through existing processes or procedures including the justice system, a capped compensation scheme and even a further legal or judicial inquiry up to a full Royal Commission.

The prospect of a Royal Commission excited much interest and has been advocated by among others the Australia Defence Association. This would certainly have the effect of clearing the air, allowing all with a grievance to come forward and have their moment in the spotlight and producing an authoritative report.

But royal commissions cost a fortune and tend to run for years. The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody lasted four years (1987-91) at a cost of more than $50 million. It’s hard to envisage a Royal Commission into historical abuses in the defence force being shorter or cheaper.

Royal commissions also don’t always come up with the results their proponents might have desired. A good example is the Agent Orange Royal Commission, launched in 1983, following pressure from the newly vocal Vietnam veteran groups.

They believed a full judicial inquiry was the only way to confirm that exposure to the chemical herbicide Agent Orange was really responsible for a range of health problems suffered by veterans. The Fraser government believed an epidemiological study was the best approach.

The veterans eventually got their way, with the new Hawke Labor government appointing Justice Philip Evatt as Royal Commissioner. They still aren’t happy with what eventuated. In July 1985 Evatt released his report, proclaiming: “There is no reliable evidence that the chemicals in Agent Orange cause cancer in humans.”

A succession of health and mortality studies have since found elevated rates of some cancers and other health problems in Vietnam veterans and their families, a far more useful outcome.

The Australia Defence Association’s Neil James says a royal commission is needed to test the many allegations and to correct the view of many Australians that sexual misconduct and other abuse remains pervasive throughout the defence force which remains riddled with sexual and other abusers.

Many in the community, bombarded with media reporting of defence misconduct, clearly believe this to be the case. That’s not that surprising, since defence has fielded allegations of misconduct for a good part of the last four decades and probably much longer.

That has included allegations of bastardisation at Royal Military College, Duntroon, first aired in 1969 and resulting in successive inquiries plus more recent inquiries into ADFA and misconduct aboard warships including HMAS Swan and, most recently HMAS Success.

The minister, a lawyer, might reasonably conclude a royal commission is the way to go, if only to firmly draw a line under a problem that has beset his predecessors and would likely continue to dog his successors.