FEBRUARY 2004

Vietnam And Agent Orange

I was privileged to join the RNZRSA team of the National President and a District President (Vietnam Veteran) speaking to our submission at the hearings of the Parliamentary Health Select Committee into Agent Orange and its effects on the veterans of that war and their children. The RNZRSA had written a submission in support of the Vietnam veterans without going into the sort of details that only those who were there could provide.

It was good to see that the members of the Select Committee were taking their job seriously, and that they were more than interested in what individual veterans, organisations representing veterans, Defence and other Government officials, such as the Secretary for War Pensions had to say on the subject, and on matters surrounding the subject. The Committee members had clearly grasped a lot of knowledge about what went on in Vietnam and about the problems facing many families with one or more disabled children along with a veteran of the war who had been injured by his experiences there.

We await the Committee’s findings with interest, and a certain amount of impatience, and look forward to a much more enlightened view from Government on the problems of Agent Orange.