[Peetwo]

'Bureaucratic Bastardry' - 7:30 Report cont/-

Via ABC 730:

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Full segment version plus transcript: 

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/dva-secretly-...im/9883774

DVA secretly changed rules to deny veteran's claim
Posted Mon 18 Jun 2018, 8:02pm
Updated Tue 19 Jun 2018, 6:43am
Expires: Wednesday 18 December 2019 8:02pm

The Department of Veterans' Affairs secretly deleted an incapacity policy to prevent an injured veteran claiming compensation. The Department denies any impropriety by its staff.

Read the full statement from the Department of Veterans' Affairs.

Transcript

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: You'd expect that when soldiers are injured in the line of duty that the Department of Veterans' Affairs would look after them.

Sadly, we're about to show you another example where that has not been the case.

These kinds of failures are so regular that some advocates even claim the department has a strategy - delay, deny, destroy and hope they die.

Tonight we're highlighting a former soldier's 10 year fight to get his entitlements.

DVA employed multiple law firms to fight him, even changing a policy to deny his claim although as Michael Vincent reports, the department finally admitted it had failed the war veteran.

And a warning, this story contains strong language.

MARTIN ROLLINS, VETERAN: You get immediately grabbed and just ripped backwards and your rig is being deployed and pulled out behind you, and it's a pretty violent action and in that, you know, quarter of a second, half a second, your heart is through your throat.

That's it, it's an adrenaline ride. Once you're on, it's just, you're just on.

MICHAEL VINCENT, REPORTER: Martin Rollins was once among the elite of Australia's soldiers.

Today, he struggles to leave his house.

What is life like now on your worst days?

MARTIN ROLLINS: Pull the blinds, go to sleep, try and sleep.

Just keep focused on wake up tomorrow, wake up tomorrow, wake up tomorrow, wake up tomorrow, go to sleep, wake up tomorrow.

That's what happens on the worst days now.

MICHAEL VINCENT: Martin joined the ADF straight out of high school at age 17.

MARTIN ROLLINS: Loved it. Nothing touches you like that job.

It's like it puts, it puts lightning in your bones.

MICHAEL VINCENT: He's now 50 years old and for the past decade, his life has been consumed fighting the Department of Veterans' Affairs, DVA.

GREG ISOLANI, MARTIN'S LAWYER: Their behaviour has been appalling. After more than 25 years of representing veterans in this jurisdiction, I have never seen a case like Martin Rollins and the extent the department has gone to.

BRIAN BRIGGS, MILITARY COMPENSATION SPECIALIST, SLATER AND GORDON: What is worse about this case is the deception and the delay, basically bureaucratic bastardry on a level that I haven't seen before.

MICHAEL VINCENT: Martin's troubles began during his six years of service based around Australia.

The constant hard parachute landings, compounded by carrying a 60 kilo back pack - it all took its toll.

MARTIN ROLLINS: Your back is everything and then your body starts to pack up and you don't believe it.

MICHAEL VINCENT: Because you think you're super human.

MARTIN ROLLINS: Oh, yep. We did.

MICHAEL VINCENT: Army doctors declared in 1990 he had long standing low back pain and degenerative problems with a disk.

He couldn't lift, bend or carry anything, and was unfit for parachuting.

Martin uses one word to describe his back.

MARTIN ROLLINS: Fucked.

MICHAEL VINCENT: Martin discharged and settled down in Ballarat, getting on with his life as best as he could.

The DVA paid him a disability pension that eventually rose to $116 a fortnight but it wasn't something he relied on to survive.

To manage his back problems, he created several businesses, including a small mortgage operation to ensure he remained self-employed.

MARTIN ROLLINS: I could manage my own time, I could self-manage my own resources and I was only answerable to myself.

MICHAEL VINCENT: By mid-2007, his back gave out and he had to have spinal surgery.

MARTIN ROLLINS: It was just excruciating, incredible pain and it just got worse.

There were bits of the disk that had fragmented and broken all over the place.

MICHAEL VINCENT: Ahead of that 2007 operation, Martin reached out to the Department of Veterans' Affairs.

He was offered initial help of an extra $25.50 a week.

He was then granted 16 weeks of temporary incapacity payments at $370 a week to get him through but when that ended in early 2008, he asked for economic loss compensation, to keep his small business afloat.

His requests were rejected.

So beginning the first of thousands of frustrated and sometimes angry calls, emails and faxes.

Martin began living on credit cards, getting help from the RSL, just to keep himself going.

MARTIN ROLLINS: I had no idea what the legislation was. All I was was, I was just incapacitated. I was just reaching out for help.

MICHAEL VINCENT: By June 2008, Martin warned the department about the very serious potential loss of his business.

First, he put his house on the market. By July, his business was gone.

MARTIN ROLLINS: Take away their employment, there's incapacity, there's housing loss, there's relationship loss, there's isolation, there's depression, there's stress, there's chronic pain.

You may as well just turn up at the house and just shoot him in the head.

The only difference here is the gun is a pen and a paper, that's the only difference. The effect, the result, the outcome is exactly the same.

MICHAEL VINCENT: By the end of 2008, he had pretty much lost everything, only then did he hire a lawyer.

GREG ISOLANI: The department just put up obstacles, constantly, and just ignored him.

MICHAEL VINCENT: In 2010, his case was mentioned in the Parliament having escalated to the executive level of the department.

The following year, the minister, Warren Snowdon, gave assurances that the department had the case in hand.

STATEMENT FROM WARREN SNOWDEN, VETERANS AFFAIRS MINISTER: I am satisfied that the processes used to determine Mr Rollins' claims have been appropriate and have been in accordance with the current legislation and policy.

MICHAEL VINCENT: Do you think they lied to the minister?

MARTIN ROLLINS: Yes, absolutely.

MICHAEL VINCENT: 7:30 can now reveal for the first time that before those ministerial assurances were given in 2011, back in 2010, the department had already deleted an incapacity policy to deny Martin Rollins further assistance.

It was a policy specifically designed to help self-employed veterans that if they became incapacitated, they could declare their earnings were zero.

It meant they would still be able to get financial help from the department, even if their business was earning an income.

But the DVA not only deleted that policy, Martin and his lawyers say they were never told.

GREG ISOLANI: It was done specifically and annotated for that purpose, of denying Rollins incapacity payments and to deny me, on his behalf, to properly calculate the detriment that they caused.

BRIAN BRIGGS: This constitutes bureaucratic bastardry, an act of bureaucratic bastardry as its worst.

When you deliberately get rid of a policy, you amend or vary or revoke a policy, and then hide that from the person trying to rely on the benefits of that policy, and their lawyer, to defeat their claim, and also to defeat a claim under defective administration for how they've treated him.

MICHAEL VINCENT: It was five years later that Martin and his lawyer would learn about the deletion in 2015, when they discovered the department's policy change buried in a 200-page draft report into his case.

The department's intent was clearly revealed in that report. It says the policy was deleted "to remove any reliance that Rollins or his representative could place on it for the purpose of his outstanding claim, as well as his defective administration claim".

Ultimately, Martin Rollins won an empty victory in late 2016, when the DVA Secretary wrote to him.

STATEMENT FROM SIMON LEWIS, SECRETARY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS' AFFAIRS: On behalf of the department I apologise for your experience and the difficulties you have faced..."

MICHAEL VINCENT: Two offers were then made - $58,000 for back payment of Martin's incapacity entitlements and then a second offer, curiously described as an administrative payment, of $69,110.07, conditional upon signing a release and indemnity.

MARTIN ROLLINS: Well, I fired an email back to the secretary of the DVA and I basically told him where he can shove his $69,000.

MICHAEL VINCENT: You weren't going to shut up?

MARTIN ROLLINS: Nope.

BRIAN BRIGGS: The amount of money that they would have spent defending this claim over a period of 10 years and we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, multiple law firms, cover-ups, it just, it defies belief that they could get away with this.

MICHAEL VINCENT: As for Martin Rollins, the 50-year-old former soldier wants DVA's behaviour investigated to ensure no other veteran suffers the same fate.

MARTIN ROLLINS: I think it's dangerous, what they're doing. They're moving in a direction that is nothing to do with veterans' welfare.

LEIGH SALES: And 7:30 approached the current minister, Darren Chester as well as former ministers, Warren Snowdon and Michael Ronaldson. All declined on-camera interviews.

It a statement to 7.30 the Department of Veterans' Affairs denies any impropriety by its staff, it also acknowledges some aspects of its client service could have been better in Mr Rollins case.

A detailed statement is on our website.

 

Could you imagine if a high profile politician or bureaucrat were to be in a terrifying plane crash or serve in the forces, copped a cap in the arse, wrecked their back and witnessed human atrocities beyond our imagination? Would they be kicked to the curb, pushed to the limits of wanting not to exist? Of course they bloody wouldn't. They would be treated like gold.

The protected species that infest the halls of parliament are so fukking out of touch with the real world and are cruel sacks of shits to their own citizens. A money making machine which lines the pockets of egotistical dumb-asses and wastes millions per year on corruption of their own making.

It is dark and it's evil to the core with no soul. Our parliament.

To deny this soldier his rights of compensation for getting fukked up whilst defending our shores displays the audacity and arrogance that the establishment has become. For the department to hide essential documents, lie and watch this man suffer and beg, demonstrates the absence of any moral compass or ethical thread. He became a number, a liability and a burden. Behaviour projected from those in the department he thought would help him never happened, instead they inflicted the feeling of hopelessness, worthlessness and leading to the desire to leave this cruel world by suicide.

Keep fighting the pricks mate. Somethings got to give. These delusion filled grandiose puppets are an ugly mutation of the human evolution. Dividing their nation whilst advertising and promoting the propaganda of unity. What a crock of horseshit. 

The gut wrenching feeling of your own government turning on you once you have discovered a truth is very real. They watch you, intercept your devices (so they are always a step ahead of you), they park cars out the front of your house to try and rattle you. I say fuck ém!

Stand up to the establishment and understand their dirty tactics or submit to their tactics only to be eaten by frustration and hopelessness. Fighting them is almost impossible because it's a game to them. They will spend millions to avoid any accountability. 

Keep going mate, drag it into twenty years, stick it up their parliamentary privileged arseholes. Be that pain in their privileged arse. After ten years one learns how to tame and handle the despicable mob of parliament.


You'll come out winning Buddy. Don't let the arrogant worms take anything more away from you. 
The Ozzy swamp in Canberra needs draining! The infestation of parasites has reached the point of epidemic and they are feeding off the Australian taxpayer.

Absolute Scum.

Oh no 7D Chester, two ministries of the Crown and two disasters (so far)...  



Maybe 7D,  instead of swanning around taking FIGJAM selfies, you and your invisible 'do nothing' - Minister for Reality – Really? - leader, should start doing the job of actually providing governance to an obviously self-deluded, self-serving 'law unto themselves' bureaucracy - FDS! 




MTF...P2