Nationals Senator Matt Canavan has supported Joel Fitzgibbon’s call for a separate new inquiry into the senior ADF officers and politicians who deployed and redeployed the SAS soldiers.
Former Labor frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph speaking of the need for an inquiry into the senior ADF officers and politicians who were in part responsible for pushing Australian soldiers beyond their mental resilience.
“A parliamentary inquiry would help us to understand what went wrong and help us learn the lessons so it would never happen again,” Mr Fitzgibbon said.
Discussing the issue, Mr Canavan said, “there obviously needs to be a reflection, if you want to call it an inquiry or something, about the decisions that were made.”
He added he was “not so sure” the decision to keep Australian troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq for so long “was the correct one”.
“I’m not sure this should be the roles of our armed forces into the future,” Mr Canavan said.
“We need to reflect on the lessons from this experience and support them in the future.”
“I think the vast majority of our soldiers do honourable and brave work”.