Veterans' Affairs New Zealand General Manager, Brigadier (Rtd) Rick Ottoway.

A veteran on the helm at VANZ

By Bill Hopper

Veterans’ Affairs New Zealand (VANZ) became an operational unit of the New Zealand Defence Force and the sole agency with end-to-end responsibility for the entire War Disablement Pension (WDP) process and co-ordination of all services to the country’s veterans.

The man steering the organisation as General Manager is Vietnam veteran, Rick Ottaway, who’s last military post was Deputy Chief of Army in the rank of brigadier.

As a captain, he spent 12 months on active service with the New Zealand Army Training Team in South Vietnam.

When announcing the appointment, Chief of Defence Force Lieutenant General Jerry Mateparae said, “Rick Ottaway will be at the forefront of championing veterans’ issues in New Zealand.” He said the new position was a significant one as VANZ became more closely integrated with the NZDF with services to veterans being consolidated and expanded.

“With a positive point of view, I think it’s an exciting time to be involved,” says Mr Ottaway. There is the new War Pension legislation coming and we have to be in a position to move forward with that.” His vision is to head an organisation that can look after those people who are currently in the VANZ constituency and also prepare for the veteran contingent of the future. “We have to be looking forward as well as dealing with those who are with us now,” he says. “So hopefully we can introduce them into a seamless system and we are not reacting when it happens as opposed to being ready when they arrive. The moment the NZDF sends one person overseas, he/she’s a potential veteran.”

Since 1994 about 1000 new veterans a year have been created. “That’s about 14,000, about four times the size of the Vietnam cohort – yes,” he says, “there is definitely a continuum of veterans.”

Mr Ottaway says in general terms the younger veterans are currently not presenting with too many problems –“but we do have a couple of 20 year olds on the books”. “I think that one of the future challenges is to have a far better system of recording the experiences people have had, so that if they do have a health issue 10, 15, 30 years from now we have better records than in the past.

“Also, sad as it may seem, some people have been exposed to conditions in the current areas of operations that might have issues in the future. If we know who they are, we may be able to monitor them before it becomes an issue."

Client or customer are words Mr Ottaway doesn’t like. “We have veterans. I don’t want to see any clients or customers but am overjoyed to see some veterans.” He says there is always a challenge to provide services that are appropriate for the time. “Everything changes. We need to be changing to meet changing situations that we have no control over and also veterans’ changing demands. We’ve got to keep looking forward because it will affect the current contingent of veterans and those to come.”

Referring to the long delays experienced by many veterans seeking news and reviews of WDP claims, he says VANZ is moving to a total case management system. “That’s one of the big benefits gained out of the total integration of what was the Ministry of Social Development section in Hamilton which is now a completely joined up part of Veterans’ Affairs. We are also looking at the handling procedures of claims.”

He says unfortunately things get out of VANZ’s control in the medical area as the medical profession has its own pressures with patients. “It’s a heavily involved system, but I think there are things we can do to speed it up. We are looking at that with some urgency. At times it can take many months to make some specialist appointments. “What I want to do is to see if all conditions need a specialist - can the individual veteran’s GP make the decision.

“We’ve got a backlog of people with presumed conditions. All I need in that case is the GP to say ‘this man has got condition X’ and we know it’s on the presumptive list. We can deal with that right now.”

He says if a veteran has a presumed condition but unfortunately has three or four other conditions requiring the normal medical procedure of visits to specialists it would probably have to be played out over time, “but let’s deal with these presumed conditions right now”. “Get it in front of the panel and, say we assess it as being X percent, let’s start paying the pension, at the same time hoping the case management system will accelerate the consideration of the other conditions. I believe that at the moment we have unacceptable times and an unacceptable number of people in the queue. We’ve gone from 2500 two or three years ago to about 12,000 currently.”

Mr Ottaway joined the Law Commission team touring the country in November 2008 seeking veteran input into the redrafting of the War Pensions Act. One of the major areas to be addressed was to ensure that those who are currently being serviced by the existing Act are protected. “It was very interesting to hear what the veteran community had to say and how they felt about it. The current Act is creaking a bit and I believe the Law Commission under Sir Geoffrey Palmer is much better equipped to interpret what we have currently got and look at how the law should be framed for the future.”

Mr Ottaway sees his new position as a great challenge. “I hope we can provide the level of service that veterans deserve. I’ve been impressed with the people who work at VANZ, particularly those who are in the frontline dealing with the veterans. They have a great deal of care and compassion.

He says it was pleasing to note that there is a large group of people who do an awful lot to assist VANZ’s job – “primarily they are members of the RSA who do it in an unpaid, often unrecognised capacity. In most cases they are the interface in human body terms between us and the veterans – those welfare officers out there who physically deal with the people who have got needs.”

One of his concerns is for the veterans who don’t necessarily come under the umbrella of the RSA – “those who aren’t members, those who don’t feel comfortable as members. We all have to be looking out for those people as well.”