Continuing the story from our last newsletter by Bob Brumm and his VEA experience. It was fascinating work for the broad range of military fields covered. I saw only one or two WW2 veterans but plenty of their widows applying for a war widow’s pension - about two or three every week (more on that below); can’t recall any Korean war veterans but again, some of their widows; heaps of Vietnam veterans of course; plenty of East Timor veterans; small numbers of Somalia, Rwanda, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and a few Peacekeeping veterans from various missions. And there were many non-veterans, exservicemen whose medical conditions were claimed as defence-caused rather than warcaused. They were entitled to the same repatriation benefits - that was a surprise for me - but their claims were subject to a harder standard of proof. And there was the one bizarre case - the applicant vehemently claimed he was a former member of an elite special forces’ unit conducting secret and dangerous missions around the world, the unit so secret and sensitive that not a single record of it existed for Defence, DVA or himself to produce to verify its existence. It was a chilling hearing. He later went to jail over the matter. One of the first things I learned - had to learn very quickly - was that at the personal level everyone’s war experience was different and so not to judge claims through the prejudices of my own narrow military experience. You needed to have an open-mind and read and listen closely. I certainly learned a lot about what others got up to in their wars and service generally, and the breadth of experiences was an eye-opener and very interesting. Given the aim in every case involved a financial benefit, you also needed a dose of healthy scepticism; had to be prepared to do the extra research where necessary and to ask the right questions. It wasn’t essential for the job, but I read widely on the very interesting history of Repatriation in Australia, including comparisons with the systems in other countries. I’m no expert but I think it’s fair to say ours is one of the most generous, deservedly so. For every claim to have an injury, disease, medical condition or death accepted as warcaused (or defence-caused for non-veterans) it was an essential first step for the Board to be reasonably satisfied as to the correct diagnosis. This could be one of the hardest and most frustrating aspects of claims. It wasn’t for the Board to make a diagnosis - it wasn’t medically qualified for that - but to decide on the appropriate diagnosis from the medical reports in the case files. So it was necessary to read, interpret and understand a lot of highly technical medical and psychiatric reports. This could be particularly challenging with psychiatric cases as it was common to have two, three or even four reports from different psychiatrists all giving different opinions and diagnoses. The Board’s decision on appropriate diagnosis was also critical to the applicant’s chance of success. For example, and for reasons I won’t go into but involving the medical Statements of Principles you may be familiar with, it was easier to have PTSD accepted than say, Anxiety Disorder or Depressive Disorder. I soon learned there was a lot of grey areas in the evidence presented by applicants to support their case; that was understandable but always challenging to sort out. Psychiatric cases - which formed a reasonably high percentage of cases before the Board - could be particularly difficult. By their very nature, and when there were differing opinions and diagnoses involved, these hearings could be harrowing, both for the applicant, of course, and lesser so for the Board. We would always do our best to attempt to defuse any rising anxiety or agitation at these hearings. It’s sad to relate, but has to be said, that the grey areas at their worst often involved a considerable amount of dodgy business - false claims, fraud. This is understandable given human nature and the attractiveness of repatriation benefits generally: and of course it is not confined to the repatriation world. In our system, and in my experience, the dodgy
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