The government has granted another three months to the defence and veteran suicide royal commission following several requests from the commissioners and calls from advocates to handle the volume of evidence and consider the complex issues before it.
The slow cooperation from departments and agencies, as well as bureaucratic delays in handing over documents to the royal commission is one of the biggest challenges the inquiry has faced to date. Now, it has until 2 September 2 2024 to report on its findings.
Commissioners Nick Kaldas, Peggy Brown and James Douglas shared their concerns about the timeline they were required to work toward in a letter to the attorney-general in October.
Around that same time, commissioner Kaldas, who is the chair of the inquiry, told the National Press Club that he understood and accepted why the government had been pushing back on his requests for more time.
“We felt there were some issues we could have looked at in more depth. But we also accept that it’s important for government to begin to implement major reform — and it’s difficult to do that — not impossible, but difficult to do if [the royal commission] exists,” Kaldas said.
“We’ve got a plan and we will get the job done.”
In their letter to A-G Mark Dreyfus, the commissioners argued the original timeframe to deliver a final report by 17 June 2024, “continued to impact” any opportunities for the royal commission to make long-lasting improvements in the interests of Australia’s Defence and veteran communities.
In particular, commonwealth agencies’ slow response to requests for information had frustrated the royal commission. Other reasons stalling the progress of the inquiry included procedural or technical roadblocks such as claims of confidentiality, parliamentary privilege and public interest immunity.
Julie-Anne Finney, the mother of a Navy veteran the late David Stafford Finney, who died by suicide in 2019, sent another letter to prime minister Anthony Albanese earlier this week appealing for more time to be given to the royal commission.
Ms Finney’s advocacy helped to agitate for the royal commission under the former Coalition government. She also recently launched a change.org petition to rally public support for the time extension, which has garnered more than 2,300 signatures.
In a statement shared on X, Ms Finney said she wanted a defence and veterans’ minister who would make a change to address the rates of suicide among serving ADF personnel and veterans.
“My son is dead, and the ADF continues to hide. Enough,” she said, adding that she did not trust the current ministers to hold the bureaucracy to account.
“Decades of fighting for a royal commission that is now set to end, denying the commission’s request for more time. Many Australians aren’t even aware there is an RC.
“The government wants it all to go away. It won’t. I’ll fight until it’s fixed.”
The government granted the royal commission a three-month stay on Thursday.
Kaldas welcomed the news but stressed the royal commission must be regarded by political leaders as a “call to action”.
“Regrettably, the latest AIHW data released last month confirms there has been no
improvement in the high rates of suicide in our Defence and veteran community,” Kaldas said.
“We, as a nation, can no longer allow the preventable deaths of our serving and ex-serving Defence personnel to continue.
In Kaldas’ view, working to the original June timeline to produce the royal commission report was affecting procedural fairness for the parties involved, and limited the chance to test recommendations with key stakeholders, including the Australian Defence Force, Departments of Defence and Veterans’ Affairs, and Defence and veterans’ groups, including ex-service organisations.
Ultimately, being able to effectively test the final recommendations was an important way to ensure the royal commission was proposing changes that the government could implement, he said.
“This short, three-month extension will help to ensure our final report is robust,evidence-based and fair to all parties, and contains recommendations that are realistic, fit-for-purpose and implementable — to ensure government is well equipped to address what is a national crisis once and for all,” he said.
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