Army veteran Mick Quinn nominated for the Pride of Australia award

AN army veteran with no law degree working from a cluttered office behind an op shop has become a powerful voice for ex-service men and women fighting for their entitlements.

Australian Peacekeepers and Peacemakers Veterans Association Victorian president Mick Quinn advocates for veterans dealing with the Veterans’ Affairs Department. Picture: David Smith

AN army veteran with no law degree working from a cluttered office behind an op shop has become a powerful voice for ex-service men and women fighting for their entitlements.

Australian Peacekeepers and Peacemakers Veterans Association Victorian president Mick Quinn advocates for veterans dealing with the Veterans’ Affairs Department.

The Pride of Australia nominee only takes on “harder end cases”, often those incapacitated by psychological harm.

One of his worst examples was a man who served in infantry, then intelligence, then after discharge went on operations under contract.

“He came back from Iraq and had a breakdown,” Mr Quinn said. The man suffered trauma watching a ground operation relayed from a camera on a drone.

His job was to tell those on the ground — including a close friend — what he could see. On the monitor he saw his friend blown up by an improvised explosive device. But Veterans’ Affairs said he did not qualify for payments because he didn’t witness the death in person.

“He viewed this on the screen and it had an absolutely detrimental effect,” he said.

Mr Quinn argued for a year and the man was awarded incapacity payments and compensation. He said the system lacked trust, goodwill and was adversarial and bureaucratic.

“It just goes on and on in terms of these ridiculous roadblocks that you just have to knock over as they’re thrown at you as the case goes on,” he said from his office behind the Aussie Veteran Op Shop in Boronia, which wife Fiona runs.

Mr Quinn served 21 years in army communications, including in Cambodia. He was “medically invalided out of the workplace” four years ago due to post traumatic stress disorder.