Our planned protest rally today 28th June in Brisbane was successful in achieving our goals: to publicly promote the matters by our presence outside the entrance to the Royal Commission Hearings, to gain media attention and to deliver a letter to the Royal Commissioner The Hon K. M. Hayne AM.
We had a good turnout of supporters both younger and older veterans and some with their wives. Present were Brad Campbell and members of Australian Veterans Alliance who run the Veteran Clawback group, John Lowis from DFWA, Ted Chitham from ADSO, Robert Cross, Rod Slater and Gary McMahon from the RAR Association and others with an assistance dog to hold the placards, handout fllyers and information sheets and answer questions from the public
(some of the “Protest Team” – Rod Slater was the photographer.)
It was good to see the effect of collaboration between the different ESO’s.
We were pleased to be allowed by the Royal Commissioner to hand deliver a personal request letter addressed to him through a Royal Commission staff person. The letter endorsed by ADSO, the RSL, and the Australian Public Sevice superannuation association/organisations – The Superannuated Commissioned Officers Association (SCOA) and the Australian Council of Public Sector Retiree Organisations (ACPSRO), urged the Commissioner to remedy the exclusion of the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation from the Royal Commissions Terms of Reference by a recommendation to the Federal Government. Ted Chitham, Brad Campbell and John Lowis were able to brief the staffer on the reasons for our request. We are hopeful that the Commissioner will support our request.
Brad and Ted were interviewed by both TV Channels 7 and 10 and the ABC said they would do a phone interview with Brad next week from the Royal Commission when they cover Superannuation in Darwin. There is No guarantee of being aired, but we can only hope.
A big thank you to John Lowis for organising the event and a huge thank you to those that turned up. Awesome effort by all.
Stand ready for further action