17 hours ago
1
It has become a reflex to roll the eyes at Prince Harry and to file him away as a grievance-prone estranged royal with a Netflix deal and scores to settle.
There is, without doubt, plenty of material to work with. But as he stopped at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on Wednesday for a moving Last Post ceremony – far away from the palace intrigue, tabloid hits and podcast cycles – the instinct to dismiss him outright felt not just lazy and tedious, but wrong.
Because on a question that matters – how we treat those we send to war – Harry has done something many governments, including our own, are still struggling to achieve.
The Invictus Games, launched by Harry in 2014, is often packaged as inspiration. It is all that, of course, but perhaps more importantly, it is a corrective.
It gives wounded and traumatised veterans something institutions too often fail to provide: purpose, structure and visibility. It insists that service does not end at discharge, and that injury – physical or psychological – is not a private burden to be quietly managed out of sight.
“Our courage does not end when the uniform comes off. Your recovery journeys, often unseen, are acts of strength in their own right,” Harry told an Invictus Australia event last night.
“Because what happens after service is just as important as service itself.”
The Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, established in 2021, heard from thousands of current and former personnel and their families. What emerged was not a series of isolated tragedies, but a pattern of systemic failure.
Between 1985 and 2021, 2007 serving or former defence personnel died by suicide. In the past decade, the rate has averaged about three deaths every fortnight. Even those figures, the commissioners warned, are likely to be understated.
This is not a marginal issue. It goes to the core of how the nation discharges its obligations. As former army officer turned MP Luke Gosling warned this week, the arrest and upcoming war crimes trial of Victoria Cross winner Ben Roberts-Smith will cause even more anguish to the veterans’ community.
The commission’s final report was blunt about the culture within the Australian Defence Force. Among its 122 recommendations were calls to overhaul how leaders are selected – including the use of psychometric testing – and to hold them accountable for the psychological safety of those in their command.
Far away from the chaos of growing up in the public eye and a dysfunctional, broken family, Harry’s own account of returning from Afghanistan – unsupported, suppressing trauma, only confronting it when it became overwhelming – is not exceptional. It is familiar. His description of hitting a point where help is sought too late will resonate with many who have served.
This is where the easy criticism begins to wear thin. Harry’s record is not spotless. His public disclosures, including controversially revealed details of Taliban “kill count” while flying Apache helicopters in Afghanistan, have drawn legitimate criticism. His ongoing dispute with the royal family has, at times, overshadowed everything else.
But none of that diminishes the substance of his work with veterans. Invictus has created a space where recovery is visible and supported – and where governments are, implicitly, asked why they are not doing more.
Australia has no shortage of reverence for its service personnel. It marks sacrifice with precision and solemnity. But the royal commission made clear that remembrance is not the same as responsibility.
Harry’s visit will pass quickly through the news cycle. It will be folded into the familiar narratives about celebrity and royalty. But it carries a sharper edge than that.
Here is a figure routinely dismissed in public debate who has delivered a practical, enduring contribution to veteran welfare. And here is a country still grappling with evidence that too many of its own are left to navigate the aftermath of service alone.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.
