Ex-ADF boss Sir Peter Cosgrove responds to Defence and Veteran Suicide Royal Commission report

The former boss of the Australian Defence Force has called for tighter screening of new recruits to ensure they don’t have a predisposition to mental health problems.

The former head of the ADF says senior defence force personnel should not be asked to become “amateur psychiatrists” to help their juniors get through tough times.

Speaking amid the release of the interim report of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, Sir Peter Cosgrove has also said new recruits need to be more tightly screened to ensure they are not predisposed to mental health problems.

“Do we need to do different things, more discriminating things in terms of recruiting so that we obvi­ously look keenly to see if we have people with incipient ­issues that would put them at odds with a life in the defence force?” the former governor-general said.

“That sounds a little bit, I don’t know, selective or elitist; but I think we’ll all agree that life in the defence force is ­always going to be stressful.

“That’s the nature of it when you put on your ­nation’s military uniform — navy, army or air force.

Former defence chief General Sir Peter Cosgrove says senior ADF staff should not need to become amateur psychologists.

“So you need to be careful and clear as you can be about who you are recruiting.

“I’m not going to stigmatise any person who’s subsequently proved to be damaged and in need,” Sir Peter added. “I’m not stigmatising to say: ‘Oh, they were always like that’.”

On Thursday the Royal Commission made 13 urgent recommendations.

These included clearing the backlog of Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) claims, simplifying and harmonising complex and confusing veteran compensation and rehabilitation laws, and increasing legal protections for serving and ex-serving ADF members to engage with the Royal Commission.

Sir Peter, a former soldier, was speaking after a sod-turning on a $65 million expansion of the St John of God Richmond Hospital, which delivers contemporary mental health care for first responders and veterans.

The hospital made a submission to the royal commission, calling for the establishment of a national research centre to ensure that specialist expertise for veterans and first responders was ­co-ordinated and focused.

Sir Peter said there needed to be proper training for ­recruits.

“I think we have to have a more modern, more pervasive monitoring of people’s mental wellbeing,” he said.

“I’m not expecting corporals and their equivalent in the navy and the air force to become amateur psychiatrists.

“I’m expecting, though, that we do have, at levels of leadership, more awareness that if Bill Smith or Sally Jones looks troubled, it could just be part of the rough and tumble of a place of employment.

“But equally, it could point at something more ­profound and more serious.”

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