Thank you.
Good morning, everyone.
I'm Professor Ben Wadham. I'm the director of the Open Door research initiative for improving the well-being of veterans, public safety personnel, and their families in South Australia.
I am a veteran. I served in the Australian Defence Force from 1987 to 1995. I had a very good career, obviously with some absolutely brilliant experiences and some difficult experiences, as you do in the military. I began really researching the military very strongly in 2003, so I've been doing that for 20 years. I've focused on some issues that really address veteran suicidality.
I'm currently conducting an Australian Research Council discovery project called “Veteran Suicide: Investigating the Social and Historical Dimensions”. The main focus of our research is not only to encapsulate the biopsychological elements of the research, but also to provide a different perspective or a more holistic perspective by looking at the social implications of veteran suicidality.
We know that when people come out of deployment, or even while in service, they have experiences that may have exposed them to trauma, but we can increase our preventative efforts by focusing on some really key issues. Transition is one of them, which is a key point of opportunity and challenge. We need to ensure that we have the right systems and services in place to do that. We recently had a royal commission in Australia, and that certainly has been one of their main recommendations—to produce a very strong transition element.
The research I've done has looked at veterans who have been overseas or in service. There are a number of reasons they are led to contemplate taking their own lives. There are two issues. There is the deployment and service side of things, but there is also the institutional side of things. I think that's a main point, and it's one that, when we testified to the royal commission, was an absolutely central point. We have to look at systems and cultures as much as we look at the more accepted issues around deployment.
Issues of system and culture mean that we have to look at the way in which the military justice system is used. Recently in Australia, we had an inquiry into the weaponization of the military justice system, which I sat on. The key point there was that in any military, there is significant command discretion. There's a strong class system between commissioned and non-commissioned officers, and if that is not regulated effectively, it can lead to the exploitation of that power and then lead to bad outcomes for our veterans. While PTSD is a very significant issue for veterans, particularly if they're exposed to trauma, the other side of things is institutional betrayal and moral injury.
Another big focus of the royal commission—and one that we brought to them—was that we not only have to look at what we expect when we join the military—that is the cost of war—but also incorporate an understanding of the costs of service.
The royal commission had 122 recommendations. They focused on things such as a national study into military sexual assault and the establishment of an independent body—that's recommendation 122—to oversee the recommendations, the rolling out, and also to hear other issues that come forth at the time.
We've looked at moving transition away from defence and into the DVA. We've looked at a well-being work group that will oversee well-being. We have also looked at the reconstruction of the veterans sector, and we're looking at developing a peak body to oversee that.
There's a whole range of other issues, as well. For example, veteran employment is a big piece. That's the focus we bring to this area. There may be mental health issues, but if we can get employment, education, housing, mobility, identity, purpose and belonging right, then those are major preventative issues for veteran suicidality.
I would say that, in my research, with over 300 interviews now, social disconnection is, for me, the overwhelming issue. That is an issue that we can prevent really effectively just by wrapping services, knowledge, wisdom, experience and empathy around veterans when they're in service, when they leave service and even years after their service when they're out, well into their civilian lives.
Thank you.