Government struggled to respond to impact of herbicide on veterans

CONTROVERSY over the impact of the herbicide Agent Orange on Vietnam veterans and their children left the Fraser government struggling.

CONTROVERSY over the impact of the herbicide Agent Orange on Vietnam veterans and their children left the Fraser government struggling.

Records from 1980 reveal cabinet discussed a range of options to deal with the emotive topic of whether exposure to the defoliant during the Vietnam War was responsible for illness in Australian veterans and genetic deformities in their children.

By 1980, the issue was receiving prominent media attention and the Fraser cabinet conceded there was no option but to take action.

"Consideration of all these matters is influenced by the emotive nature of the extensive coverage by the media, by the militancy of the Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia (VVAA) and the deep concern of the RSL, the concern of individual veterans about the future health of themselves, wives and children and the alleged possibilities of malformed or aborted children - the issues involved are all capable of political exploitation," veterans affairs minister Evan Adermann wrote in a cabinet submission in March 1980.

But cabinet conceded there were no easy options and the health impact of Agent Orange might never be scientifically proven and, even if it were, it would be hard to prove which soldiers had been exposed to it.

The documents show cabinet flirted with the idea of relying on US studies, but decided this would be unpopular in Australia.

It also rejected the VVAA's call for a judicial inquiry because the association was demanding the terms of the inquiry be that the government must prove Agent Orange did not harm veterans.

Cabinet was told this would require the government to prove the negative. "Proof of such negative association is not medically possible in the circumstances," Adermann's submission stated.

Instead, the government opted to conduct a major epidemiological study because "it is the only means by which a scientifically valid, but not necessarily accepted, result can be obtained".

Even so, cabinet was told such a study would take at least two years and the initial estimated cost of $2 million had ballooned by the end of 1980 to at least $4.6m.

It also feared the study would prove inconclusive. "It would be too much to expect spectacular results from the projected study," Adermann told cabinet in January 1980. "My department and I have adopted a public posture of 'keeping an open mind'."

He said the government would consider only questions of liability and compensation if a causal link between Agent Orange and veteran disabilities could be made.

In 1983, the government finally established a royal commission. Its 1985 report admitted the existence of health problems but found no causal link to the use of defoliants in Vietnam.