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A
PERSONAL COMMENT
People who have no idea what
it is like to put your life on the line every day for your country.
People perhaps who's idea of stress was that the air conditioning
was not working? People who absolutely have no idea what a Digger
in Vietnam went through. Or for that matter what modern day
Diggers have to face in Iraq and Afghanistan. Or even having any empathy for the Veteran's
present day health and condition and their way of life. At times
filled with thoughts of ending it all. It is my belief that
the department charged to helping the Veterans and the ex service people; are
their greatest adversary.
Here
we are in the eighth year of the 21st Century; the 90th anniversary of the end of the Great War and this Country's
Government continues to send our young men and women out to fight.
Yet at the same time they stab them in the back by eroding the safe
guards put in place all those years ago so that anyone who did Serve
this Nation as a soldier, airman or sailor could rely on getting
the best help they deserve when and if they were wounded on the
Battlefield or fell ill because of that service.
However
thanks perhaps to those who advise the John Howard Government, he having no Members of Parliament who have served at the sharp
end. Or understand what it is like to wear this Country's Uniform
with Pride and be in danger every day of their deployment,
our sick and ill Service and ex-Service members are treated with
contempt. Except on ANZAC Day perhaps when all those who would spit
on our warriors, seek to rub shoulders with them so that some of
the respect might fall their way? This year sees a new Government
only time will tell if the past practices are to be continued?
How
contemptuous it is of these people, who work on the floor of
Parliament and back rooms; denying our warriors of the
support and help that this Nation rightly owes them for their sacrifice.
Yet at the same time, think they have a right to share the limelight on such an important
day like ANZAC DAY. It totally beggars belief that these people
would sink so low. Do you know that the important distinction of
being 'wounded in action' has been removed from the modern description
of a soldier hurt by the enemy? That it is relegated to an innocuous
'injured'. Just as if a soldier was like any other employee who
might twist an ankle at work.
Believe
me being wounded by a mine blast is a lot different than twisting
an ankle at work? To remove such titles from the lexicon of war
fare, trying to convince people that life on the Battle Field is
like any other work place is ridiculous and obscene! The people
who made submissions to the government to this end should be named,
exposed and shamed.
Veteran
Entitlement Act
To give those who do not know about
the Repatriation system in Australia some background to its
formation, I quote
Prime Minister Billy Hughes from the time of World War One.
"You go and fight", he said "and when you come
back we will look after your welfare". He added, "We
have entered into a bargain with the soldiers and we (the Australian
people) must keep it".
This contract unique anywhere in the
world, these days is formalised by an ACT called the Veteran
Entitlement Act. However these days the DVA staffed
by people who have never served their country in any capacity.
Who work very hard to prevent ill and disabled Veterans getting their entitlements.
Even to the extent of trying to change the law to favour the
DVA against the Veteran.
A
TIME LONG PAST OR BACK TO THE FUTURE?
"Some,
indeed, came out of this inferno of war apparently unscathed; the
bounding vitality of youth for the time triumphed over the fearful
shocks and strain of war. As the honourable member for Reid, and
others, have said, when the war was over, they made haste to throw
off their soldiers tunic and put on the jacket of a civilian, thanking
God they had been spared, and resolved to put all thoughts of the
horrors they had endured behind them.
For
three, five or perhaps ten years, they pursued their various civilian
vocations, apparently hale and strong and then with startling abruptness
comes the end. Their strength oozes from them, their youth passes,
they are broken men. The expectation of life at the age of twenty-four
years, which we assume was the average age men of the Australian
Imperial Force, is forty-three and a half. The average death rate
at thirty-five, that is eleven years after the Armistice- is forty-five
per-thousand; but the men of the AIF are dying at the rate of seventy-five
per thousand. The war is still doing its deadly work, but then again,
how many of them are below par? They are still far from old but
they are getting toward middle-age.
Disease
takes a thousand shapes, some of the men develop Locomotor Ataxia;
some tubercular trouble, but these maladies are due to one thing
- a lowering of vitality. The nervous force has been reduced until
the men no longer have the power to resist disease. Their war service
has prematurely aged them.
If
a civilian, subjected to a similar strain in the course of his employment,
sued his employer, no doctor in Australia would say other than that
the ills from which the man was suffering were due to that cause.
The onus of proof is placed on the unfortunate ex-soldier, although
it takes the best of us, in the days of vigorous health, to prove
anything before a Court of Law or other Tribunal.
These
poor men, suffering the effects of the great strain of war service,
goes before a Tribunal and because he cannot prove what no doctor
on earth can prove, or disprove, REDRESS IS DENIED HIM.
This
is a speech made by the Prime Minister, Billy Hughes (the Little
Digger) in the House of Representatives, on 21st March 1929.
(Hansard) His speech refers to Veterans of the Great War
(WW1) but he could easily have been describing the condition of
the many World War Two, Korea, Malaya, Borneo, Vietnam, Gulf War,
Iraq, Afghanistan and Peacekeeping Veterans that have served this
Nation. This article was first published in the Newsletter of the
Vietnam Veterans Federation.
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