Health fund chief sought veterans' medical records

Not a lecture and definitely no condsecension intended. I am aware of your circumstances. I am also conscious and deeply appreciative of your work on the 3/4 committee prior to your resignation. It was a pure statement of fact as to the effects on people's lives that I have seen as an Advocate in 24yrs and was a good-faith attempt to explain that this is a subject with more shades of grey than the average (non military-trained), person in the street can appreciate.
Forgive me for breathing. No further discussion. Subject closed.

G'day Max,

Good to hear from you. You and Sandi are well, I hope?

Thank you and also to Tom, for your brutally honest comments.

I have also had a private email discussion with another major contributor to this site on this topic.
I can only commend the 3 of you for your courage in stating what you have.

Yes...vets do travel when they finally get thrown on to the rocks.
The desire to travel is to my mind, deeply embedded in many vets - primarily due to the fact that there is still within them, what I describe to both vets and the system as, "a sense of mental disclocation". It seems to keep some a bit resltess and itchy-footed.

The travelling keeps their minds occupied and allows them to be very comfortable with their own company and in many cases, just content to be with their long-suffering and ever-loving wives/partners. There is a lot of difference between enjoying being alone with one's self; and being lonely. When I go out for a run, I run inside a mental bubble of 3 feet of space. So too I believe, do vets travel and live in their own 3 feet of space. Nothing wrong with that at all. Absolutely nothing.

If that is one way to stave off the horrors and keep the doors in the memory banks firmly shut on things that should be left shut away - so much the better. In my view, the travelling is therapeutic, and personally and as an Advocate, I'd support that any time. Family support is definitely critical - it has kepy many of us sane.

At the same time, I despair at the still apparent lack of understanding of the psychological effects of active service.
As it was described in another post somewhere else, veterans who do not display evidence of physical trauma - wounds, but who have been traumatised by their experiences, are just as courageous as those who sustain honourable wounds in battle. That is a fair comment.

How many blokes have forced themselves top get up in the morning, after a night of horrors, ruined sweat-soaked sheets - wired for light, sound and motion pictures - to get shaved, showered and ready for work, and put on their happy face knowing they're falling apart at the seams? Then, to get to work and have to listen to some prick griping about not being consulted about the rearranging of the office furniture? It is a difficult thing to do and it takes a huge amount of internal discipline to do that.

Just as a veteran with severe wounds and PTSD as well has the catastrophic double-whammy effect of physical/psychological trauma to overcome. It's a vicious circle.

When you fnd yourself sitting outside on the front patio of your house on a July morning and its minus 3C with a full RAN Commander (EMU Pilot) who is so paranoid he wouldn't sit inside, you get a real sense of what the psych effects are like - even though he also had his his VVCS Counsellor present - he would not sit inside, and I remember Anne bringing us many brews to keep us warm as I took instructions from him.

Or the anger, grief and sense of loss from both a wounded vet and his beloved wife - unable to understand what has happened to her man.

Or the war widow who had to be told by me the reason her husband drank himself to death, was because in New Guinea, he put his .303 to his best mate's head after his mate was gut -shot in new Guniea - it was when the Japs were cannibalising our blokes - and after his mate begged him, he pulled the trigger. A mercy killing.
He was a strict Catholic and a teetotaller before that. Came back from the war a drunk. Never, ever, spoke about it and it took some serious investigating to get to the bottom of why he turned from being a real decent bloke into a complete and utter waste of rations.

When I told the widow we had found the causal link and described what had happened, she said to me,
"Oh Noel, if only XXXXX had told me, I'd have understood. I never stopped loving him, you know."
It remains without doubt, the most difficult case emotionally and personally, I have handled to date and the satisfaction of seeing that original decision overturned and that lovely lady getting natural justice was sweeter than wine. Legacy's pensions committee said the case was unwinnable. They said the same about Bushy Cootes' widows appeal as well. Ha!! They didn't reckon with me.

Mate, I think that the comments below regarding living the good life were not made with any malice, but more along the lines of not understanding the true nature of what blokes have suffered and the permanent damage done to them.
I hope that the post I did put up, goes some way to explaining to Hans (whom I know well from my posting up to 3 Cav in '77-'79), what does, has, and will, continue to go on as long as men are sent off to do their country's bidding; due entirely to the abject faiure of their elected Governments to succeed at diplomacy.

Cheers,
Noel

In my almost 24 years as an Advocate, I have yet to see any ex-service member who is granted a TPI, actually gain financially. The only thing gained is some - albeit small - peace of mind and a profound sense of relief that his disabilities have now got to the stage where he cannot work any more and that the Govt has recognised this fact.

The benefits that attach thereto - few as they are - are very hard-fought and not to be trifled with. Tragically, for some of these terribly damaged men, once they achieve this level of pension, they commit suicide - such is the trauma they have endured in fighting for natural justice. They're just plain worn out. That breaks my heart.

Yet, on the other side of the coin, you get bastards like Kevin Lionel Quick who lied and cheated and scammed his way on the backs of Dave Chalk and Tony Forbes (May God rest his soul) and on my back, through 2 very hard-fought VRB appeals to get his disability accepted and then fight for an appropriate level of General Rate Pension which he later upgraded to TPI (it was obtained for him by some other organisation - who, I've never found out and don't want to) and he was a compete fake. But I digress...

It is not possible, unless one has DFRDB or some other form of income such as private superannuation which both become means and assets-tested once a veteran receives a Service Pension, to supplement the meagre stipend if a TPI pension. It’s no fun going from, say, $80,000pa down to whatever the annual rate for TPI is – something around $21,000pa.

Just calculate the difference between substantive salary and TPI from the time an applicant gets a TPI, and that will clearly demonstrate the financial loss a veteran incurs, not to say the profound effect that that loss has on the quality of life for himself and his family, and possibly his credit rating. Add to that, any financial loss incurred by the wife giving up work and having to care for her husband, and we are talking serious dollars. I know someone in this situation. He and his wife’s combined income loss based, on date of effect of grant of TPI is something in the region of $500,000. That's no joke and I’ve seen the maths.

The debilitating effects of accepted war-caused disabilities, in particular the demotivating and debilitating effects of psychological insult to a veteran’s system – i.e. PTSD, have been laid out before me time and again and it is truly
heart-rending when I have to lay bare in writing, before the vet, his wife, and some dipstick within the Repatriation Commission, the actual effects of for example, PTSD on a veteran claimant’s life and that of his family. I have yet to see anyone on a TPI pension, living the life of Reilly. The fact that veterans try and get some sort of farm going –or whatever - is commendable but is symptomatic of the condition, withdrawal from society, the ability to say, “ahh...stuff it, I don’t want to play today” and taking themselves out of situations where personal interaction for these blokes is fraught. Below is a a very heavily edited and very rough-as-guts example, of the closing Contentions of a Lifestyle Statement when a client is applying for a disability pension or even an AFI to say, 100%. It is based on a huge range of similar statements submitted on behalf of clients. The real deals can run to over 36 paragraphs and based on the number of disabilities claimed for a GR pension or for an AFI, they can run to over 30 pages.

I have deleted names and changed some contentions for obvious reasons, to demonstrate the Lifestyle effects on a veteran who is attempting to receive an increase in pension. The effects on a veteran of their war service worsens - it never gets better; and this is particularly the case in situations where a veteran elects to lodge an AFI to TPI level.
I can assure members - TPI recipients or otherwise - that it is no walk in the park putting these documents together as this level of detail is required to convince and educate these boneheads in the Repat Commission, of the terrible damage - physical or psychological or both - suffered by veterans in the service of their country:

1. “The veteran had imbued into him from his first day in the Army at 1 RTB Kapooka, throughout his career in the RAAC, subsequent promotion to XXXXXXX and appointment as a Troop XXXXXXXXXXX in Vietnam, that he is expected to be strong, lead by example, never fail and never complain.

2. I aminstructed that Mr XXXXXXXXX lived by that code as do all Officers, Warrant Officers, Senior NCOs and Junior NCOs, in the Australian Regular Army. Mr XXXXXXXXX retained that ethos, which was drilled into him in the Army and on his discharge from the Army, he applied it in all he did in his civilian career with XXXX.

3. Mr XXXXXXXXXXX soon found that any acts or signs of weakness or personal problems were guaranteed to be highly damaging to his career,his integrity and his continued employability as a XXXX with XXXXXXXXXXXXX.

4. The veteran lived and worked as a XXXX for many years in deep fear of others knowing of how he felt and lived with the very real fear of incurring the wrath and derision of his peers and supervisors, with its consequential effects on future promotion or job retention, resulting in his disguising his problems and bottling everything up.

5. The work ethos imbued into the veteran throughout his military career, (to work through your problems, bottle it up and don’t complain), has remained with him to this very day and he was not ready or wishing to give up work.

6. The brutal reality though, is that Mr XXXXXXXXX's accepted disabilities take a lot out of the veteran and put him under a great deal of stress to remain working.

7. The effects of these accepted disabilities have operated to the effect that his effectiveness in his work was so profoundly affected, he has now been forced to give up work.

8. The veteran had come to the realisation that the effects of his accepted war-caused disabilities which manifested themselves, including an inability to concentrate on tasks, persistent and intrusive thoughts, constant pain and discomfort, operated to the extent that serious safety problems arose when he was operating machinery. He became dangerous to himself and others.

9. He now finds he is no longer able to follow through on tasks that require completion, as noted by his Psychiatrist, (XXXXXXXX). The veteran was acutely aware of the need to maintain safety in his work environment having had safety drilled into him during his Army career, and further reinforced in his civilian job. The hard reality is that the veteran is a danger to himself and others.

10. Because he is now unable to work, I am instructed that the veteran describes feeling a tremendous sense of failure, inadequacy and shame. Even if Mr XXXXXXXXXXX continues to seek employment, his chances of doing so are non-existent. This is due to the requirement for job applicants to declare in the questionnaires they are required to complete, any disabilities that a person may have.

11. Whenever Mr XXXXXX lodges an application for employment, he is required to disclose his accepted disabilities, as a failure to do so, may have implications for any compensation issues in the workplace. Consequently, his potential for employment is severely hampered.

12. The veteran now finds that any attempts at living a happy, healthy and rewarding life as a husband, father and friend have been completely ruined, due to his accepted disabilities.

13. In order to try and cope with the effects of his PTSD, Mr XXXXXXXXX developed an attitude of mind that by immersing himself in his work, he would be able to control the debilitating effects of his PTSD through using his work as a distraction and as a tool to help him cope with the extremely unpleasant effects of his PTSD.

14. Unfortunately, the effects of Mr XXXXXXXX’s PTSD operated to the effect that he failed to succeed in this regard, due to the catastrophic effects of his accepted war-caused disability.

15. The veteran admits to having a drinking problem from the time of his return from active service in Vietnam. This was further contributed to by his attempts to relax and erase memories of his active service in that conflict.
Although Mr XXXXXXXX has a history of psychoactive substance (alcohol) abuse, and has been successful in his attempts to moderate his alcohol intake, he now has an extremely low tolerance to alcohol and becomes affected by alcohol more rapidly and severely.

16. He still self-medicates with alcohol in order to relax.

17. Mr XXXXXXXXXXXX's accepted war-caused disabilities have now impacted so hugely on his life that each time he has a bad time through his PTSD for which he now requires anti-depressant (psychotropic) medication or feels the effects of his other accepted disabilities, he is reminded of the circumstances of his service to Australia and how he ended up with these disabilities. The very pervasive and insidious effects of his accepted war-caused disabilities have operated to the extent that they now affect every facet of his life.

18. Mr XXXXXXXXX surrendered very reluctantly, to taking psychotropic medication for his chronic PTSD when he was faced with the total destruction of his marriage, family relations and what is left of his very limited social life. This surrender has come at great personal cost, in that the veteran, who is a very proud man and proud of his ability to cope with any situation, now finds himself under the control of prescribed drugs because of his inability to cope, leaving him feeling completely unmanned and suffering a tremendous loss of self-esteem.

19. Additionally, Mr XXXXXXXX’s poor concentration, short-term memory loss, withdrawal, emotinal numbing and explosive outbursts, all well-known manifestations of PTSD, have also operated to prevent Mr XXXXXXXX’s continued active participation in work-related activities. In that environment, the effects of Mr XXXXXX’s PTSD is so profound it has crippled his use of interpersonal skills at a high level. it has also damaged his capacity or ability to maintain concentration. It has also seriously impinged any attempt to maintain harmonious interpersonal relationships with his workplace colleagues, managers, family and friends.

20. While Mr XXXXXXX exerted tremendous willpower to try and stay in the workforce, the nature of PTSD itself prevents him from ever fully utilising that willpower with the consequential effect that he has been forced by virtue of his accepted disability to leave the workforce.

21. The deterioration in his condition and the complete and utter destruction of his quality of life is quite evident and has been reported on in some detail in the attached report by his psychiatrist, (Dr XXX XXXXXXXXX).

In view of the facts as enunciated, it is submitted on behalf of Mr XXXXXXXXXX, that the effects of his PTSD incurred during his Army service, have had a catastrophic effect on his quality of life. It has operated to the extent that it has destroyed any future employment prospects he may have had.

This is consistent with the opinion of Dr XXXXXXXXXXXXX that the veteran is completely incapable of performing any form of remunerative work ever again by virtue of his accepted war-caused disabilities."

In esence there is nothing crash-hot about going on a TPI.
I can assure those who may be a tad cynical of diggers who receive this level of pension, that it is no fun and games.
It is no joke for me as an Advocate, or for that matter, my very great mate and fellow Advocate Happy Kirk, to have to sit down and peel open the thought layers of a veteran who feels so totally unmanned, he is incapable of rational or logical thought. Its no joke having to sit with his wife and hear her thoughts on things, and to see the tremendous effort she exerts in trying to be the glue that holds the fabric of the marriage and family together, and to try and stop her man from disintegrating completely. To hear of the damage this has done to his relationship with his kids as well. Oh man.

It makes you feel like an intruder and it further erodes the veteran's self-esteem and dignity have to go through this process just to obtain natural justice. No...definitely no fun and games - farms or caravans notwithstanding.

I cannot think of one veteran client whom I have represented, who would not rather have continued working instead of prematurely ending up on the scrapheap.