Last week, the National Press Club in Canberra hosted two major press conferences, one day apart. The first was a desperate plea for attention from Nick Kaldas, the Chair of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicides. The second was an all-out attack on the Voice to Parliament, via Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, the Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians.
While Senator Price’s inflammatory comments were gleefully reported by mainstream media everywhere, Nick Kaldas’s words were soon lost in the news cycle, despite the fact that veteran suicides are claiming twenty times as many lives as those lost in combat, without counting people who served before 1985.
That’s at least 1,600 deaths between 1997 and 2020.
Nick Kaldas is a remarkable character, born in Egypt. He worked as a policeman in Australia from 1981, investigating numerous homicides, then spent twenty years as a hostage negotiator.
He rose to become Assistant Commissioner of NSW Police, worked for the United Nations, then became Chair of the current Royal Commission.
National crisis
It’s most unusual for Royal Commissioners to front the media before their work is complete, but Mr Kaldas said he was driven to this step by decades of government and defence force inaction, and an almost complete lack of interest in the veteran suicide issue from the media.
He noted that for every suicide, approximately another 135 people are impacted. ‘Rarely, a week goes by that this Royal Commission isn’t alerted to the untimely death of another serving or ex-serving member,’ said Mr Kaldas. ‘It’s unquestionably a national crisis.’
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is a former deputy mayor of Alice Springs, and a woman so useful to the IPA, Murdoch media empire and Liberal-National Party coalition that if she didn’t exist they would have had to invent her.
Blossoming under the tutelage of Barnaby Joyce and Michaelia Cash, she says the kinds of things that John Howard and Tony Abbott used to say before they became unacceptable, providing cover for the most racist and divisive politicking imaginable, while simultaneously claiming Anthony Albanese is the source of all division engulfing the country.
Gems from Senator Price’s press conference included that her opponents wanted to ‘demonise colonial settlement in its entirety and nurture a national self-loathing about the foundations of modern Australian achievement’, that Indigenous Australians already had adequate political representation, and that there were ‘no ongoing negative impacts of colonisation’.
Turning point?
For Andrew Bolt on Murdoch’s Sky News, this sort of nonsense amounted to a ‘turning point’ in Australian race relations.
In Jacinta-world, tap water and supermarkets are an adequate replacement for obliterated culture. The generational trauma of convict descendants is equivalent to survivors of ethnic genocide. If you have a go you get a go, regardless of your skin colour or background, and the most dangerous people to watch out for are Aboriginal men. Sound familiar?
Senator Price, like Senator Pauline Hanson, is always the victim, regardless of her well-paid positions and increasingly amplified megaphone. ‘I’ve been told I’m a sellout. I’ve been racially abused, vilified, name-called and threatened with violence. And why? Because I want to stop children from being abused,’ she said.
Of course her attacks on others, including her former colleague on the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council, Professor Marcia Langton, have nothing to do with it.
Missing in action
For Nick Kaldas, everyone from the Prime Minister down has a role to play in preventing the spiralling deaths of military veterans to suicide, with the Department of Defence currently doing no more than going through the motions.
He called for the country to unite over the issue, which was touching so many families.
‘It’s not enough to support and reflect on the sacrifices of our veterans only on days of commemoration and remembrance,’ he said. ‘Australia has let down its veterans for far too long.’
The Chief of the Australian Defence Force, General Angus Campbell, was present but left immediately after Nick Kaldas’ speech. The PM had other commitments.
While the main venue at the National Press Club continues to be renovated, the big-hitting speakers keep coming, with Warren Mundine and Noel Pearson on the way soon. Sadly, in any contest between unity and division in modern Australia, particularly when the media is involved, division seems destined to win.
If this story has raised any issues, current and former ADF veterans and relatives can get help from Open Arms on 1800 011 046, or Lifeline on 131 114.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning film-maker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
Long ago, he did work experience in Parliament House with Mungo MacCallum.
David an excellent article I hear Mungo applauding. To see Marcia Langton hardly able to keep her tears from falling makes me so ashamed. Great compare and contrast
Well – the NPC did everything they could to stifle Senator Price, including giving her a minor room.
But no, David – a ‘victim’ she certainly ain’t !
(Why do the hating-left dislike humour and self-reliance so much?)
I hope one day her speech ‘gems’ will be taught in our schools as the pivot-point of renewal with a welcome return to egalitarianism in Australia.
NACC, NIAA, ATSIC, DAA etc., plus most of the other many Councils dedicated to aboriginal advancement have dismally failed under present and past management.
We need a complete shake-up of the ‘status quo’ and find inspiration for new spirit of disadvantage-reform for all our citizens.
‘The Voice’ is only entrenching our past failures. It is certainly not the right choice for a prosperous, brighter and more cohesive National future.
Hello moderators. I know you don’t like links but this link to X is contained in many news reports today including this one : https://www.smh.com.au/national/press-club-rejects-racism-calls-over-scheduling-of-price-mundine-speeches-20230918-p5e5hn.html
In the interests of accuracy, I think people reading comments like this one should have access to the NPC/Laura Tingle response to these sorts of claims.
It’s a clear and comprehensive explanation I can’t copy and paste from X
Laura Tingle, Press Club president and ABC board member gave a detailed explanation of the back story to this on Twitter. Before leaning to the conspiratorial, perhaps read it. Try googling “press club rejects racism calls over scheduling of price mundine speeches”.
David seriously mate ..did you watch Ms Price at the
NPC speech ? it was balanced.. and like it or not
This referendum is certainly not just about recognising Aboriginal people’s in the constitution
Or having a say in parliament on better outcomes
for Aboriginal people’s is it ! This is why unfortunately it will not be voted in ..The labor government and Albo will have to bear full responsibility…just leave the details to us vote yes ..
No – the no voters will bear the responsibility!
and the moral high ground.
The key ingredient is accountability, accountability for funds provided by the taxpayers of this country. At present accountability is only something the bureaucrat’s and so called aboriginal councils thumb their noses at. It is not a free ride, it is provided for the betterment of these people, however somehow it is lost in the long line of handlers that hand on only a pittance for the people it is intended for. A voice to parliament will not change this broken system. People like Ms Price and other aboriginal parliamentarian’s ( no shortage of them) understand the problems and have a better chance to change current circumstances in parliament from parliament.
Have very little sympathy for veterans. What did they think the military does?
What do you think the Military does Lenore ?
Given you the very freedom’s we all enjoy to this day… disrespectful at best …
I have to agree with you Barrow. Most of the wars we have been to since have been highly questionable but in WW2 a military response stopped the victory and expansion of a very nasty philosophy and, for this country, Japanese invasion.
But, PTSD and suicide are always tragic — no?
Have you been to Japan? FYI they are a very civilised and sophisticated people.
Absolutely Lenore, they learnt the outcome of war in the worst possible lesson.
That doesn’t mean that they had good intentions in the 40s in their expansions in the Pacific. Nor does it mean that we’d all be happy to have a foreign invader at our shores no matter their nationality.
The Japanese records show they had no intention of invading Australia. For the first 30+ years of civilisation, the most spoke language was an Australian version of Gaelic, because most White People transported, or emigrated here, couldn’t speak English. It’s not our native language. Neither is the legal, cultural, etc. We assimilated, then pushed for independence, and here we are. The Constitution is the treaty, the nation is our reparations.
❓❓❓Have you written this in Gaelic Australian, Christian? I can’t get your gist at all beyond “The Japanese records show they had no intention of invading Australia.”
What about the prolonged bombing of Darwin, the air raids across northern Australia and the submarine hits on the east coast? At the time Papua New Guinea was also considered Australian territory.
Chan eil, it is called Australian Gaelic, and it is a mix of Irish, Scottish, Welsh, with some English words. Most people transported here from the UK couldn’t speak English and had trouble learning it.
Japan bombed US resupply lines here, and tried to get us to keep our troops at home, but their military assessments said they didn’t have the resources, nor the need, to invade an entire second continent full of armed civilians.
Fun fact: While Guinea was an external territory of Australia, Hawaii was not a state of the US in 1942, just an external territory also. Good reason to get rid of the Torres Strait Islands, so we are not dragged into a war defending them in the future.
Interpretations no doubt differ – it’s suggested there were differing ambitions between the naval and army divisions. However many of our troops were not “at home” but engaged with Churchill’s actions in the European theatre with a subsequent battle between Churchill and Curtin with Curtin insisting troops be returned home to defend Australia.
After the fall of Singapore and the continued advance of the Japanese military, and with Japanese action isolating Australia from the protection of its allies, invasion I think was a quite justified fear along with mitigating action.
The vast bulk of Australia’s military force was” at home ” in 1942.
It was our best 2 divisions who weren’t here.
My parents and Grandparents lived in Rabaul just before the Japanese Invasion. The women and children were evacuated on Christmas Day 1941 a month before the invasion.
My Father and his stepfather survived by escaping from New Britain three months later. Less than 300 escaped from a population of over 3000.
My uncle was executed in the Tol Plantation Massacre in February 1942, along with 160 other soldiers, after they surrendered.
Please, don’t try to justify how “nice ” the Japanese were in WW2.
No surprises there.
For what Lizardbreath ?
I don’t know what you’re asking me Barrow.
I meant to add that we could make the comment “what did they expect” about lots of occupations that might be vulnerable to PTSD: police, ambos, fire fighters, social workers etc etc. It’s not a reason not to care for them.
Those you list above are occupations that help people, not ones that kill and rape and torture. Obvious I would have thought.
“I have no sympathy for ambos – what did they think scraping people off roads would be like?”
The same line of reasoning, Lenore. You need to add a bit more explanation if you want to justify your exemption from care for one particular occupation. We don’t need a militia. That’s a complex case to make.
Don’t forget the military do a range of missions, including helping out in our increasing disasters.
Police and Social Workers never kill and rape and torture? Fire-Fighters are never arsonists?
Difficult to know exactly which points you people have missed. Who said anything about militia and nurses never kill babies?
The entire point of our military, and our militias, is to save lives. When bad actors fool them into the opposite action, it’s the bad actor at fault, not the individual troops. If we exiled our well-meaning fools, we would have serious population issues.