The Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide has let down Australia’s non-religious service personnel in failing to call for modernisation of Defence’s religious-based frontline wellbeing support capability, says the Rationalist Society of Australia.
Following the release of the Royal Commission’s final report on Tuesday, RSA Executive Director Si Gladman said he was extremely disappointed that none of the 122 recommendations included a direct call for reform of Defence chaplaincy.
“The Royal Commission’s failure to deal with the elephant in the room will, unfortunately, likely lead to continued negative wellbeing outcomes for non-religious personnel. Unless the federal government steps in and takes appropriate action, many non-religious service personnel will continue to be unable to access appropriate frontline wellbeing support that meets their needs,” he said.
“Without a recommendation directly calling for reform of Defence’s chaplaincy capability, it appears the Royal Commission is comfortable with theologically trained religious agents – many of whom come from churches that believe suicide is sinful – overseeing the Defence Force’s frontline wellbeing capability for what is a majority non-religious workforce.
“As the proportion of Defence personnel identifying as non-religious grows year on year, this situation, clearly, cannot be allowed to stand.”
Although more than 60 per cent of Defence Force personnel identify as not religious, Defence provides mostly religious chaplaincy as frontline wellbeing support. Only the Navy provides a handful of secular wellbeing officers, while Army and Air Force offer their staff only religious chaplains – and, increasingly, evangelical and Pentecostal chaplains.
As the RSA has reported, alarming Defence figures show that the ratio of Christian chaplains to Christian personnel stands at 1:134, while the ratio for non-religious pastoral carers to non-religious personnel is 1:11992.
A number of submitters to the Royal Commission said: the religious affiliations of chaplains put up barriers to non-religious people, LGBTIQ people and women seeking wellbeing support; religious chaplains had problematic view; and, in requiring a theology degree and experience working in church communities, chaplains had inadequate qualifications.
On a number of occasions during the hearings, Counsels-Assisting the Royal Commission questioned witnesses about the appropriateness of religious-based chaplaincy (see here and here, for example).
Yet, the Royal Commission did not even invite Collin Acton, the former Director-General of Navy Chaplaincy who is leading the push for secular reform across Defence, to appear at the inquiry to provide testimony.
Recommendation 13 of the final report leaves open the door for possible future reform of the chaplaincy capability. It calls on Defence to recognise that operational readiness depends on a healthy workforce, and urges it to establish a panel to co-design a new doctrine on ‘people, capability and service’ with Defence Force members. As part of this recommendation, the report says the panel should:
“…identify any other single-service or ADF cultural norms, symbols, systems, policies or processes identified by members or commanding officers as barriers to the prioritisation of member health and wellbeing…”
In a discussion on the topic ‘Could health and wellbeing support be embedded?’, the Royal Commission’s report said there could be merit in exploring greater unit-based health and wellbeing support.
Lieutenant General Simon Stuart – now Chief of Army – had told the Royal Commission that health and wellbeing support needed to be provided at the ‘point of need’ and proposed embedded teams reflecting a multidisciplinary model, including medical professionals, allied health, and pastoral care.
Mr Gladman said the RSA would now step up its lobbying of the federal government, Defence and members of parliament to bring about secular reform of Defence’s wellbeing capability.
The Royal Commission has published on its website only one of the RSA’s submissions – the first one that was submitted in 2021. In that submission, the RSA argued that the religious-based model was no longer fit for purpose, as it put up barriers to some personnel seeking appropriate wellbeing support.
In October 2023, the RSA made a second submission, providing evidence of: how religious demographics in Defence had fundamentally changed; how chaplaincy was viewed as a ‘missionary’ activity in the Defence Force; and how chaplaincy was unable to provide non-judgemental care. The submission also provided evidence of how a taxpayer-funded advisory body of religious clerics, the Religious Advisory Committee to the Services (RACS), had actively sought to block secular reform within Defence.
The Rationalist Society of Australia is actively lobbying and advocating for secular reform of the Defence Force. See the latest updates here.
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Si Gladman is Executive Director of the Rationalist Society of Australia. He also hosts ‘The Secular Agenda’ podcast.