Veterans Minister Chris Penk says Veterans deserve better and lays out priorities

In Veterans Minister Chris Penk’s first interview on his new portfolio, he says three years of service could qualify someone as a veteran, cuts to services will improve core functions, and ignorance on the number of modern veterans is a key problem to solve. David Fisher reports.

As the new Minister for Veterans, Chris Penk’s top priority is to answer the vexing question: “Who is a veteran?”
It seems a straightforward issue but is anything but simple, as illustrated by  Penk’s history of service in both the Royal NZ Navy and the Royal Australia Navy.
His New Zealand service doesn’t qualify him for veteran status. To meet the grade here, one needs to have served with specific deployments at particular times.
In Australia, though, Penk would qualify simply because he has served. This should be the same.

That report and the issue it raised have been solidly shelved ever since – and now Penk wants to talk about it.
He is eager to discuss several controversial issues in his portfolio: the long lag for veterans trying to access services, how the RSA fits into veterans’ concerns, the failure of the NZ Defence Force to capture the numbers of those who served and how that has led to New Zealand being effectively blind on the issue of veteran suicide.

But then, it is known that this is an area that has been run poorly for some time. Former minister Peeni Henare said eight months ago: “We’ve got to be far better than this.”

A 2018 review suggested the same and a 2014 law change attempted to fix embedded problems. Penk’s first interview on the portfolio takes place just days after Veterans’ Affairs cut access to a veterans’ perk launched in 2015 under the previous National Government. It could be seen as an illustration of the raw deal veterans have had to weather but Penk (and Veterans’ Affairs) says withdrawing a discretionary service will allow a focus on core business, such as the year-long average waiting time to have a claim considered. “The number of these claims has been steadily increasing and the timeframe of these claims will blow out if we don’t do anything,” he says.

National launched the Veterans’ Independence Programme (VIP) in 2015, giving veterans access to lawnmowing and other home help services. In the eight years since its launch, its cost went from an estimated $5m to $28m in the last eight months. The runaway cost is, in a way, bundled up with Penk’s top priorities for the role. Along with working out who qualifies as a veteran, he wants to resolve the question of how many veterans exist.

‘You should be recognised’

On the issue of who is a veteran, which Penk lists as his top priority, he says: “People have this instinctive idea that if you put your hand up to serve the country then that should be recognised.” That’s a reasonable assumption confounded by the “qualifying service” hurdle. “I’m inclined to take a more expansive approach to the question, ‘Who is a veteran?’. Perhaps it is someone who earns the Defence Medal after three years of service.”

Penk says he is cautious about weighing in too heavily without checking the cost, although spending cuts to other agencies such as ACC or the Ministry of Social Development could balance any extra costs. And, he stresses, nothing should be done that would jeopardise or worsen the provision of current core services.
But solutions could include the RSA, he says – a position that’s a match with the national body of the RSA, which is looking to partner with the Government for better veteran support.

It’s the nature of a covenant of service, he says. “For those who have put their hands up to service their country, there is an unspoken expectation that has arisen. The Government of New Zealand should respond to that.” As it stands, the current definition of “veteran” applies to a largely unknown number of individuals. It is estimated there are about 30,000 contemporary veterans. It causes a mess – a situation with which Penk agrees – because it is difficult to provide services when it is not known how many people might need those services. It is just this level of uncertainty that has led the NZDF to include a $1 billion variable in its accounts because it doesn’t know how much veterans’ welfare might cost in the future. “We don’t know what the shortfalls are because we don’t know the numbers.”
Confusion exists partly because the NZDF recorded individuals’ details across a range of different computer systems. And it is partly because it never stopped to grind through the records to come up with a number, although this was a recommendation of the 2018 review.

Herald inquiries have found that a working database exists now up to 2014. Penk expects the set of records to be completed up to the present day.

In Australia, record-keeping revealed a level of suicide among contemporary veterans that was so shocking it led to an ongoing Royal Commission inquiry. In New Zealand, we don’t know how many veterans have taken their own lives. Veterans’ Affairs is on a mission to forge links with other agencies to create systems that would catch that information. “I’d like to think we would take a kind of concrete action if we knew,” Penk says. “We don’t know at the moment if suicide rates among veterans are higher than, or lower than, the general population.”

‘We could do better’

Ideally, he says, personnel leaving service would have a method through which they automatically register their details with Veterans’ Affairs as part of exiting. There isn’t one. As a result, it’s an opt-in service. Penk suspects this is one reason the Veterans’ Affairs client base is so skewed against contemporary veterans. The agency’s annual survey of clients is a reflection of those it has in its records, with veterans aged under 60 making up only a small percentage of those it serves.
“It’s natural for older New Zealanders to contact government agencies with health conditions,” he says. ANZAC Day services exist in the public mind to remember the “old guys”, says Chris Penk, rather than those who have served in more recent conflicts such as Afghanistan. It could be that younger veterans aren’t as well represented because they have yet to reach an age at which a mental or physical reminder of service has yet to become a condition that needs treatment.

Penk says there is also a societal mindset born of generations of seeing old soldiers from World War II – and more recently Korea and Vietnam – that the “veteran” must be the “old guy”, and not those younger men and women who served in Afghanistan or other more recent conflicts. That mindset exists not only among veterans but the wider public. “It’s just a bit of a head-shift.” Penk is willing to contemplate foundational issues including whether Veterans’ Affairs is best placed inside the NZDF. While there’s a “natural relationship”, he says veterans’ welfare seems incongruent with the Chief of Defence’s responsibility to have a fighting-fit force able to go to war.

“That’s something I’m considering at the moment. I’m not berating NZDF – it’s the challenge of trying to do two things.”

Penk says he is sincere in the need for veterans to be better served. “The basics haven’t been done right for a number of years now. I think it’s a slow creep of increasing demand and the systems haven’t responded particularly well. “I think we could do better.”