Veterans charity criticises usual suspects guest list at health summit
A mental health summit called by veterans affairs minister Darren Chester yesterday has been slammed by veteran groups as yet another talkfest of bodies on his department’s payroll.
NSW
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A mental health summit called by veterans affairs minister Darren Chester yesterday has been slammed by veteran groups as yet another talkfest of bodies on his department’s payroll.
The Daily Telegraph can reveal that more than half the 28 people in the room were from the Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Defence or worked for the government.
And every other body in the room either receives funding or works closely with Mr Chester’s department.
“It is the same people, in the same room, telling the same story — a story that is at odds with those they argue to represent,” Griffith University Critical Military Researcher Deborah Morris said.
“Many of the non-governmental organisations present are dependent on government funding for operation. Receiving funding from the government undermines their positions as independent actors,” she said.
Among those attending were representatives from the Black Dog Institute, the RSL and Phoenix Australia, which has received more than $25 million in funding from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs since 2010 and nearly $1.5 million from the Australian Defence Force between 2009 and 2012.
Mr Chester said that although there were no dissenting voices in the room “there was a pretty robust conversation on a whole range of issues regarding how we work constructively to achieve good things for the veterans community.”
He dismissed suggestions it was a meeting of talking heads and said the “conversation has given us the chance to really set the agenda for this term of government.”
The meeting had agreed to work “very constructively with the veterans community … to develop a national action plan.
Opposition veterans affairs spokesman Shayne Neumann said it was a disappointing outcome when “what they are doing is not working.
“I think you need to be on the ground talking to people who are dealing with these issues first hand,” he said.
One of those frontline helpers was V360 charity chief Jay Devereux, who was yesterday driving from Perth to Sydney to help a veteran in hospital. He said the summit was “another meeting that’s taxpayer-funded for their flights, accommodation and food for those who will hobnob with each other.
“How many times do we need these people to keep coming together for the same thing,” Mr Devereux said.
“These organisations receive millions of dollars in funding from the government to research and look into ways of dealing with things, while we actually deal with the problem at the coal face.”
RSL NSW president James Brown said yesterday’s meeting had no clear plan for how the wellbeing of veterans and their families was going to be improved.
“The department points to its ongoing veteran centric reform program as the solution, but as well-intentioned and progressed as this is, it is largely a revamp of IT systems, staff culture, and bureaucratic processes,” Mr Brown said.
Originally published as Veterans charity criticises usual suspects guest list at health summit
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