RARA’s RESPONSE TO APPVA’S PUBLIC CRITICISM OF ADSO/RARA
25 January 2016
The APPVA has sought a Royal Commission into The Department of Veterans’ Affairs due to their claims of gross mismanagement, time delays, removal of treatment paths and adversarial practises and claiming DVA is now causing increased numbers of homeless Veterans, increased suicides and family breakdowns.
The APPVA has sought support from the ESOs and has been publicly critical of those ESOs who have not, particularly the RSL and ADSO. RARA is a member organisation of ADSO.
RARA’s policy is not to decide to support or reject any matter proposed by any person or group until our due diligence of all relevant facts has been undertaken.
RARA has declined to support the APPVA’s request for two reasons.
Firstly, our request to APPVA for details of the substance of the matter and reasons was rejected supposedly on advice from their legal representatives.
Secondly, APPVA has failed to raise its concerns through the well established DVA/ESO consultative process, namely The ESO Round Table (ESORT) and The Younger Veterans – Contemporary Needs Forum (YVF) at which it is a member and has representation.
We believe the APPVA matters may centre on a number of individual case complaints against DVA regarding: Repatriation claims and processes; perceptions of systemic failures in DVA’s culture of care and responsibility; and a specific failure in its handling of younger veteran clients.
Before the RARA will decide on any matter it needs to be made aware of the nature of the complaints and what efforts by APPVA have been made to address these issues with DVA. The accusations put forth by APPVA that the RARA doesn’t care, consider or aware of problems experienced by young contemporary veterans is baseless and very disappointing and not supported by the outcomes and results to date.
Michael von Berg
Chairman
RARC Board and
President RARA
ADSO’S COMMENT ON THE PROPOSED ROYAL COMMISSION INTO DVA is here
