Editorial - Tuesday July 30, 2013

Shame on the Army

IT WAS hardly surprising to see Chief of Army Major General David Gawn so apologetic last week after the Army Court of Inquiry released its report on the death of Private Michael Ross as he returned to Waiouru from a training exercise in September last year. Private Ross fell from the inflatable craft he and others were using to cross Lake Moawhango, desperate attempts to retrieve him failing. His body was recovered a week later.

There was little that Major General Gawn could do but apologise, in the face of a report that laid bare a raft of failings. So many, in fact, that they could not be attributed to one person or one admission. Just about everything that could have been done wrong was done wrong. He was stating the obvious in the extreme when he conceded that Private Ross' death had been preventable.

Private Ross' family have every right to be enraged. A son, a husband, a father, a brother, a nephew with many years of life before him was lost in circumstances that went beyond tragic. An aunt told the Auckland District Court last week that the family had been haunted by the thought that their loved one was lying at the bottom of Lake Moawhango. The family felt ripped off, she said, while Michael himself had been robbed.

The family, however, were deeply saddened but not angry. Their ability to forgive is extraordinary. Failure to comply with fundamental safety procedures by an organisation that by its very nature routinely places the well-being of its 'employees' in danger will be widely regarded as unforgivable, and while a witch hunt will change nothing, it is reportedly not out of the question yet that individuals will face a Military Police investigation.

But the family is right; there is probably no point on in punishing people now. The important thing is that lessons are learned to reduce, if not eliminate, the chances of further deaths in such circumstances. The Army says it will learn those lessons, and is already acting upon some of the 33 recommendations from the Court of Inquiry. Those recommendations range from a commitment to making the Navy a 'centre of excellence' for all small boat watermanship across the three services to validation of the revised, enhanced infantry boating watermanship procedures and an audit by the Royal Australian Engineers of safety in training procedures across a number of engineering fields, including the use of small boats.

New safety guidelines governing the use of Zodiacs and similar small boats have also been developed, with associated detailed briefing and training requirements, although that begs the question as to what was wrong with the old ones. The clear suggestion is that at least one of the failings that contributed to Michael Ross' death, the under-inflation of the boat he was aboard, which rendered it dangerous in choppy water, was already covered by the existing guidelines.

More basically, the life jacket of the type worn by Private Ross, which had presumably been used at some point and had not had its gas canister replaced, rendering it useless, have been checked and procedures for on-going checks have been revised. It seems to be a certainty that a functioning life jacket would have saved his life. This tragedy could have come down to something as simple as failing to replace the canister.

The Army is taking a much broader view of what it admits were systemic failures that played a part in his death, however, and so it should. If the 33 recommendations from the Court of Inquiry are all valid, and no one is saying they are not, the Army's safety procedures are in need of a comprehensive overhaul. Michael Ross' family might well take some consolation from that, but they have every right to question how an organisation for whom safety should be second nature could have got so much so wrong.

When it is all boiled down, if the Zodiac the soldiers were using to cross the lake (and it must be noted that that was reportedly a departure from the original plan) had been properly inflated Michael Ross might well have returned to Waiouru safe and sound. If he had been trained in the use of the life jacket borrowed from the Navy he might not have died.

What happens now isn't clear. The potential for individuals to be charged by the Military Police is one thing, but it is surely the Army itself that needs to change, and while the Court of Inquiry recommendations, and the Army's response to them, are encouraging, the District Court, which last week accepted a guilty plea to a Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment charge of failing to provide a safe working environment for Michael Ross, does not seem to have many teeth. The maximum penalty is a fine of $250,000, but the Army, being a Crown entity, cannot be fined. Indeed there would be little point in doing so, even if imposing a fine was an option. The money would be better spent on gear and training that will better protect the lives of other soldiers in the future.

Last week's legal argument in the District Court centred on whether the judge could make a finding of culpability. The Army said it could not, the Department of Labour arguing that it was the only authority that could.

At the end of the day the Ross family are right. There seems little point in arguing culpability. The important thing is that what Defence Minister Jonathan Coleman has described as hard lessons are learned, not only by the Army perhaps, but all three services. We are entitled to expect that the men and women who sign up to protect us from armed aggressors are prepared to put their lives on the line in our defence, but we should not accept that their lives are put at risk for the lack of basic training and safety procedures that all are taught to follow, in their own best interests and those of the men and women who serve alongside them.

Needs and wantsThere is no doubt that welfare dependency is a factor in the Far North's crime rate, but no one should be tempted to attribute the thieving that goes on here to abject poverty. It has always been true that some people steal because they have no option, while others help themselves to what they want, as opposed to what they need, because it's the easy option.

The London riots of a few years ago were a great example of that. The supposedly disengaged, not always especially young, took advantage of the mayhem to help themselves to all sorts of stuff, very little of which had anything to do with basic needs. And when names began being put to faces it was discovered that the looters included many who had no need to steal at all.

The burgling of Kaitaia shop DD Gold is a reminder of that. These kids, as they seem to be, were not desperate for clothing they cannot afford to buy to keep out the winter chill. They were after NBL and NRL gear, highly desirable, apparently, and not expensive by anyone's measure. The fact is that it's easier to pinch it than work or save for it. These thieves do not deserve sympathy or convoluted explanations of their behaviour. They deserve to be punished.