As I write this I am in the outback of this beautiful country. It's been a difficult few weeks - recently, we nearly lost another hero to veteran suicide. Thankfully, he is still with us.
But we are still losing veterans to this crisis...and still, we have no royal commission.
I am privileged to have been picked up by “The Cameleers”, a veteran group comprised of a few of Australia’s bravest. They have brought me into the outback for respite and recovery and they are giving real help to some of our most damaged. Along with the media and everyday Australians, The Cameleers back our calls for a Royal Commission. Their motto is “recovery through discovery.”
They are taking very good care of me, and with their support, I visited the cemetery where David rests. Now, we're on the road, meeting other veterans and building our national coalition of veterans and veterans families.
All of us need this royal commission, and we won't stop until we get it. Soon, I will return to Canberra to deliver this petition and speak with any MP who will listen to me.
As we get closer to the Remembrance Day Rally for Veterans Suicides on 11/11, I will need each and every one of us to step up and show our veterans that we have their back.
The good news is, Adelaide City Council have been notified for my hometown Remembrance Day Rally for a Royal Commission. Can you head to the “Veterans Rally for a Royal Commission” Facebook page and follow along for more updates about events in your city or town?
Never giving up,
Julie-Ann Finney, proud mother of Dave Stafford Finney.
PS Justin Smith from 3AW wrote this powerful opinion piece in the Herald Sun. He sums up perfectly why we need a royal commission (read it below).
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A silent killer is stalking veterans
Justin Smith, Herald Sun 24.9.19
On the weekend before last - during the clock’s loneliest hours. - two former members of the Australian Defence Force tried to kill themselves.
The first was just after 2am on Saturday. A young father wrote a final post on Facebook, telling his family and friends that he loved them.
“But I’m broken,” he wrote. He told them that he couldn’t be fixed or saved and that he was sorry. And he asked them not to be sad, but to celebrate his life instead.
Then he began to die. Thankfully, yet horrifically, his wife found him and saved him. And incredibly, on the other side of the country, Julie-Ann Finney was awake and saw the post as it appeared.
Julie-Ann’s son, David, and her facebook friend had served together in the navy. But David is already gone - he killed himself in February of this year after he asked the Department of Veterans’ Affairs for counselling and was told he would need to wait six months for help. He lasted only three.
Since his death, Julie-Ann has been loudly trying to get the Morrison government to have a royal commission into veteran suicides. The pain, and her determination to stop others from killing themselves, keeps her awake through the night. So when she saw the Facebook post from her son’s old comrade, she called local police, who were there in minutes and helped the wife save him.
A couple of hours later, and also on Facebook, another former defence member posted a terrifying picture of her harming herself. “I’m done,” she wrote. But a friend was awake and saw the post. She called her and kept her on the phone until the paramedics arrived.
These two incidents are nightmares. They show the desperation and the loneliness - with much of it playing out through the veterans’ social media communities. And no one is getting much sleep.
They are both still alive because of luck and love and impressive work from police and paramedics. They’re now being supported by their families. And I reached out to both of them to get permission to write this column.
But as terrible as it is, these are the success stories. Hundreds of others have killed themselves without a note or a rescuer - just death and then immeasurable pain for parents, children, spouses and friends.
Scott Morrison, and his Veterans’ Affairs Minister, Darren Chester, have resisted calls for a royal commission into the hundreds of veteran suicides. A couple of months ago, the minister said: “I don’t want to spend 100-odd million dollars paying lawyers when that money could be spent on medical assistance, mental health specialists providing on-the-ground support for our veterans.”
He might be right, in part, but he admitted that there’s no true figure on the number of suicides, because the department doesn’t know how many veterans we have. It hasn’t been fully researched.
That was an astonishing admission. But what we do know is that we’re losing veterans to suicide at a staggering rate and what is obvious is that our current plans simply aren’t working.
We need a royal commission - not to pass around blame, not to get ministers and bureaucrats sacked and not just to show that we’re doing something. But we must understand why so many people who serve in the defence force can’t stand to live anymore.
Is the process of getting help too complicated? Is it bad bureaucracy? Does the DVA need more funding? Is it a lack of understanding in PTSD? Is the problem worse, or has it always been this bad and just seems like a sudden crisis because we’re more open to talking about suicide?
I don’t know. But the message I hear consistently is of poor communication between the DVA and veterans. Soldiers are trained to believe that they’re fighting for this country and when they become broken fragile and broken, they ask their country for help. And if they’re told to wait, or they call a helline and get put on hold for five minutes, to them, it’s like their country telling them to piss off.
Bureaucrat responses and delays, that may seem annoying but normal to the rest of us, are multiplied into a crisis for people suffering from PTSD.
It’s a big moment when they finally ask for help and if the help is not immediately provided, it becomes very personal and very damaging.
If you or someone you know needs help, please phone Lifeline on 131 114, Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636.