RAAC Corporation update

Good afternoon Alf,

Thank you for the email below.

I have forwarded your email to all 12 constituent Member Associations and have requested replies by COB 10/11.

The import of the email's contents oblige me to respond.

It is important I believe, to ensure that the shopfront activities proposed to be exercised by ESOs apply strictly to TIP-level activities and not in any way to have ESOs act as a de facto VAN office.

That is the Corporation's stated view in examining this matter.

Similarly, this proposal must not in any way cross over with VAN or State Office functions and that must be made unambiguously clear to the Minister.

Both these matters are in the Corporation's view, non-negotiable.

Allied to the proposal is a need to ensure we identify personnel who are prepared to staff an ESO support centre and that they are adequately trained.

It is also pertinent to point out that there are a considerable number of ESOs within an outside ADSO who do not undertake veterans' welfare support and who refer veterans and widows to those ESOs who do. That has been the Corporation's experience in this instance.

As it stands, currently the lion's share of Welfare/Advocacy work is undertaken by an age cohort of Vietnam veterans who rare not getting any younger and who in many instances, do not enjoy good health and are trying to wind down, not wind up.

It will fall to individual ESOs to ID and target younger veterans or their spouses/partners to undertake the requisite training.

Similarly the devolution of TIP training apropos the Rolfe report (discussed at the August ESORT meeting), with associated funding must be addressed as a concurrent activity.

This will be a challenging demographic/cohort to capture as younger veterans are primarily concerned with getting a civvy job and working to put roots down and raise a family.

Experience indicates this cohort will not be interested in an ESO until they are in their 40s and things start going wrong.

I have a feeling the load will continue to fall to us Greybeards, as always.

Of equal importance as I discussed with David last week, is the requirement to monitoring any and all attempts to fold DVA into Centrelink.

The practice of Government has been since the mid to late 1980s, to have Departmental Secretaries undertake exchange postings to cross pollinate each other's experience in both Departments (Lionel Woodward was the first to cross-pollinate with DVA) as a precursor to having DVA subsumed by Centrelink.

Each Government would only give an assurance that the Repatriation Commission administered by DVA would remain in place "for the life of the present Government."

We need to maintain a watching brief on that and operates on the not unreasonable premise that such a move (cost-cutting of course) could still be mooted.

To allow that to occur would be catastrophic.

That is why in my view, we must ensure there are no dead cats waiting to be dropped on the table by the Minister in respect of on-site ESO support centres.

I do see the proposal as being apositive positve one wherea serving members particularly, could go to an ESO comfortable in the knowledge they are not being placed in a situation where they encounter someone they do not wish to encounter by accessing an OBAS.

Regards,

Noel

Noel Mc Laughlin

Chairman

RAAC Corporation

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