The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse established the National Redress Scheme. Approximately 60,000 survivors of child sexual abuse are eligible for support as a result.

The banking Royal Commission secured over $10 billion in customer remediation from the banks.

The 1995 Wood Royal Commission investigated the corruption of the New South Wales police force. It saw seven police officers jailed.

Since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, the mortality rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in custody has halved. Indigenous people are now less likely than non- Indigenous people to die in prison custody.

People have high expectations for Royal Commissions. That’s part of their value. Because we’ve got high expectations, we expect their recommendations to be taken up. And governments face unrivalled pressure to act. The fact that sometimes, they don’t achieve everything we hope they will, just shows how much faith we place in Royal Commissions to get the job done. And there’s a reason we have that level of faith.

But for the record, Royal Commissions have a record of achievement most governments would kill for. If you don’t think Royal Commissions change anything, you’re not paying attention.

The government is already planning to spend $40 million on the National Commissioner into Defence and Veteran Suicide Prevention, not including any other money that is spent on the problem itself. They’re planning to spend that money, year in, year out.

A Royal Commission is more expensive -- typically, around $100 million -- but it doesn’t last forever. You pay it once then you focus on how to put its recommendations into action. So within three years, we’ll have spent more on the Prime Minister’s never-ending commissioner than we would have spent on a Royal Commission, but we won’t have a final list of recommendations.

If you want to save money, spend it once wisely instead of wasting it forever.

We have plenty of suggestions on how to make things better, that’s true. But all we get on how those suggestions are being turned in to solutions are talking points coming from the heart of the problem itself.

There are so many stories of people experiencing their own level of trauma at the hands of the ADF and DVA, and the only way they get access to any help is if the very organisations causing the pain decide to cooperate.

What’s required is the ability to turn over every record under every rock.

What’s more, a Royal Commission can do what every weaker alternative can’t do: bring everybody involved in this catastrophe to the same table. BEcause it’s not just DVA, like the Productivity Commission report went into. It’s not even just veterans, like the Senate Foreign Affairs & Trade References Committee report went into. It’s veterans, it’s ADF, it’s the RSLs, it’s the advocates, it’s the Ministers, it’s the bureaucracy, it’s the treating psychiatrists and it’s the culture itself that binds it all together.

Every suicide is a tragedy, whenever it occurs. But different groups are committing suicide for different reasons. And veterans are killing themselves in greater numbers than the overall population. What’s stranger is that veterans cannot enter the ADF unless they pass a mental health check first. People who are mentally and physically fitter than the average general population when they go in are dying by their own hand higher than the general population. There’s something going on that we can’t account for, and it’s unique to the defence community. Every suicide deserves to be investigated but when every suicide comes back to the same core reasons, you’ve got to start doing something about the core.

Firstly, the goal of any inquiry into how to prevent suicide by veterans and serving ADF personnel is to prevent there being any ‘new wounds’. For those who would be traumatised by such an inquiry, they would of course not be compelled to give evidence. Royal Commissions are often emotional for those contributing their stories. It’s not a reason not to hold one.

Here’s an example. The Royal Commission into Aged Care or the treatment of people with disabilities are both revisiting deeply painful traumas, but it is not done gratuitously. It is done for a purpose of inviting people to share their experience, so that we can tie those experiences together where there are common causes and find ways to make sure nobody else experiences it again.

That’s what this comes down to. No parent who’s experienced the suicide of their child wants another parent to know what that feels like. But if we don’t hear their stories, we don’t learn their lessons.

Don’t be fooled. While the Prime Minister has said what he’s announced is ‘bigger and better’ than a Royal Commission, there are clear differences that show it’s a watered down bargain bin solution being marked up as the real deal.

1. It has less than half the resources of a Royal Commission. It's being sold as the same thing as a Royal Commission, but when you give something 40% of the resources and expect it to get the same sorts of results, you are setting it up for failure.
2. It doesn't have the independence of a Royal Commission. Unlike a Royal Commissioner, the National Commissioner will be created and filled by legislation. The Government of the day decides who the Commissioner is, and they sit within a Government department. And if the Government decides the Commissioner is getting too powerful, or asking too many hard questions, the government can fire the commissioner whenever it wants and replace them with a new one.
3. It cannot ever deliver a final list of recommendations. It just sits there. Part of the power of a Royal Commission is that it sits as a moment in time, and reflects on how we got here, and how we get away from here. It delivers a final report, and the report has a final list of recommendations. It's then up to the Government to implement those recommendations. You cannot draw a line in the sand if you never deliver a final list of recommendations. You just keep delivering updates.
4. It risks making things worse, not better. It's designed to be an alternative to a Royal Commission, but it's a completely untested alternative. The PM says he's come up with a new and brilliant solution that means it's better than a Royal Commission. But nobody has ever done it like this before, and maybe there's a reason for that. He's decided not to go with a tried and tested model that works, in favour of a risky and unproven model that could backfire and make things worse.

Firstly, Australia can walk and chew gum at the same time. I don’t want to look another grieving parent in the eye and have to say, ‘we could have done more to prevent this, but we had bigger things to worry about.’

And I’m not the only one.

The Prime Minister and I both agree that this is an issue that needs urgent and immediate intervention. We both agree that what we’ve done up until now isn’t working. We both agree that this is a problem that needs more than just another inquiry. But unlike the Prime Minister, I think veteran suicide is serious enough to warrant a Royal Commission.

And that’s what I don’t understand.

If you think the four deaths that occurred during the Rudd Government’s ‘Pink Batts’ home insulation program was enough to warrant a Royal Commission - and the Liberal Party does think that, because they called it - you’ve got to tell me why four veterans deaths a month isn’t worth the same treatment.

If you think allegations of corruption in the trade union movement was enough to warrant a Royal Commission - and the Liberal Party does think that, because they called it - you’re got to explain to me why it’s not worth a Royal Commission into why the homeless rate for veterans is double the national average.

If you think the suffering and abuse of children and young teenagers at the Don Dale Detention Centre is worth a Royal Commission - and the Liberal Party does, because they called one - ask yourself what we should do about the fact that one in ten veterans will plan their own death.

I won’t sit around and be told that we have more important things to worry about than this. For every family that loses someone to suicide, there is nothing more important. And if there is anything we can do to lessen that pain, or prevent that sort of tragedy, well there’s nothing more important to me either.