The Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide

The Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide has been running for two years. It has produced and interim report and a final report will be released to government in June 2024.

As part of the Royal Commissions investigations a number of studies and research reports have been commissioned and published. Open Door: Understanding and Supporting Veterans and their Families published a report entitled Mapping Service and Transition to SelfHarm and Suicidality. The report adds to current orthodox understandings that mental health is a principal driver of veteran self-harm and suicidality.

Open Door adopts what is known as a biopsychosocial approach to researching veteran health and wellbeing. In Australia the biological and psychological are the dominant approach and there is dearth of research that adequately addresses the social health issues of veteran health and wellbeing. Over the past decade Director of Open Door, Professor Ben Wadham, who is an Australian Army veteran has built his research around the social health issues of veterans covering the effects of the Australian Defence Force culture and systems upon service and transition and trauma and wellbeing. There are three key pillars to ADF culture. It is martial (prepared for war and the use of violence), fraternal (heavily shaped around camaraderie and esprit de corps) and exceptional (the ADF sees itself has having a very special role in Australian society). These three pillars are also heavily gendered, that is, militaries generally, and the ADF specifically is heavily masculinised. We refer to this as martial masculinities.

These three pillars, when executed professionally sit behind the ADFs high levels of military effectiveness and tactical dominance. When they are inappropriately exercised they create trauma and injury for service members. The Mapping Service and Transition report addresses this concern by looking at veterans who have considered or attempted suicide or have taken their lives (interviews with family members or mates on these cases. The report identifies that overwhelming young Australians are excited and positive about enlisting and initial service, but that exuberance is damaged when they experience the dark side of ADF culture and systems. We identified seven key areas of military institutional abuse: physical violence, sexual harassment and assault, reputational damage, sabotage, extreme endurance training as punishment, hazing and bastardisation and administrative violence. Administrative violence is when a commander uses their rank and command discretion to target, harass, disadvantage, and abuse their subordinates. This is perpetrated through command discretion authorised in the Defence Force Discipline Act (DFDA). Both men and women were subject to all of these forms of military institutional abuse although men were principal perpetrators and victims of hazing and bastardisation and women of sexual assault. Although hazing often involved sexual violence

The principal finding from this research is that violence within the ranks is an inherent and systematic part of any military and the ADF. This occurs because the ADF trains people in the use of violence against an enemy but fails to recognise the potential is creates among its own people. Because the ADF wants to optimise the potential for violence it is shy of taming it within the ADF workforce. The result is that the bright eyed recruit or cadet is traumatised and morally injured or betrayed by the institution they had respected and given so much service and loyalty to. This source of trauma leads to self-medication and substance abuse, leading to suicidal thoughts, attempts or the actual taking of one’s life. The report highlights the paradox of military service, that the training in and use of violence is double edged and when abuse it leads to poor morale and damage to the ADFs most previous resource – people.