Today’s announcement of a Royal Commission into Veteran and Serving Defence Personnel Suicides is not only a huge win for the community, who have been calling for greater support and for government to address the mental health crisis that is facing our veterans, but also a relief to the families\u00a0who have been searching for answers.
\nAustralian Greens Veterans spokesperson Senator Jordon Steele-John said that it had been a hard slog to get to this point\u00a0and that a lot more work needed to be done to ensure that the terms of reference for the Royal Commission met the needs of the community.
\n“Anybody who has spoken with a family that has been touched by suicide will know the pain that they feel and the desperate, urgent need for answers they all share about why so many of our veterans are being driven to take these actions,” Steele-John said.
\n“Understandably there are still many in to the community who are suspicious of today’s announcement as they have been cast aside and ignored by the Morrison government for so long.
\n“It is incumbent\u00a0on the Morrison government to earn the trust of the veteran community and not simply assume that they now have it.
\n“We know from a\u00a0report into Veteran suicides, released last year,\u00a0that our veteran community is in crisis.\u00a0Ex-serving men are 21% more likely to die by suicide and ex-serving women were more than twice as likely to die by suicide than the rest of the community.
\n“We must do better by the people who have served, and continue to serve, in our defence forces. We continue to spend\u00a0hundreds of billions of dollars on new weapons\u00a0yet we ignore the long lasting\u00a0trauma and impact that war\u00a0has on the people who have served in our name.
\n“I would like to acknowledge the strength and commitment of\u00a0advocates around the country, like Julie-Ann Finney, and\u00a0my Senate colleague,\u00a0Jacqui Lambie, for her dedication to this cause.
\n“This is a win for you, for your family and for every single Australian who has sadly lost a family member or a friend to suicide.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today’s announcement of a Royal Commission into Veteran and Serving Defence Personnel Suicides is not only a huge win for the community, who have been calling for greater support and for government to address the mental health crisis that is facing our veterans, but also a relief to the families\u00a0who have been searching for answers. … Continue reading “OUR VETERANS DESERVE BETTER: GREENS”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11069\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}