The landmark inquiry found current and former service personnel are 20 times more likely to take their own lives than to die in combat.
Australian military personnel will continue to take their lives at staggeringly high rates without systemic change to the Australian Defence Force, according to a landmark inquiry into veteran suicide that found 3000 service personnel likely died unnecessarily over the past three decades.
The commissioners, led by former NSW deputy police chief Nick Kaldas, made 122 recommendations, including the creation of a national register of suicides among current and former ADF personnel and urgent action to stamp out bullying and sexual assault within the military. “It is certainly a misconception to associate suicide with the experience of alone coming from combat experiences,” Brown told reporters outside Parliament House.“What we’re finding is that there is a lot of trauma and a lot of exposure to trauma, but it’s trauma through the cumulative effects of what they experience day in and day out through service, and into their post-service life.
“We’re only getting all the little rich kids there with no life experience and they’re the ones that end up in charge in the long run and that’s becoming a real problem.” Julie-Ann Finney, whose navy petty officer son David took his life in 2019,wants the government to urgently implement the recommendations and for an independent commissioner to hold the bureaucracy accountable.
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