The RSL needs a complete refresh to get through this crisis

Thousands of volunteers, many in uniform, are on our streets this week calling for donations to the RSL's annual poppy appeal. In its centennial year, the work of the RSL remains fundamentally important to Australia's 160,000 veterans and their families.

A Senate inquiry this year highlighted the critical work veterans' charities do on mental health and urged a greater national focus to help recent veterans transition back into our community. The need remains acute: in the last year, one investigation found, more Australian veterans took their own lives than died during combat operations in Afghanistan.

In the Herald, five years ago, I foreshadowed the emerging problems faced by today's soldiers returning from a decade of war. That article became a book, Anzac's Long Shadow, urging a national conversation on the place of veterans in Australian life.

Today, thankfully, the public debate is as much about helping the living as it is about honouring the fallen. That's because many have answered the call to do more for veterans and their families, and understand better what veterans can give back.

NSW Premier Mike Baird and his ministers committed to help more than 200 veterans transition into the public service. Clubs NSW similarly committed to boost veterans among their 62,000 staff and several RSL clubs have opened new veterans' centres. The NSW RSL established a new charitable arm, Defencecare, focused on helping veterans and their families in immediate distress. New federal government employment initiatives connect major companies with veterans' groups. Homes for Heroes is addressing the issue of veteran homelessness while another charity is training veterans to be part of humanitarian disaster recovery teams. 

Veterans are no longer desperate and desolate, isolated from the society they have served. They are beginning to thrive. Nothing embodies this new spirit more than Prince Harry's Invictus Games for wounded warriors, bound for Australia (and hopefully Sydney) in 2018. 

But though it looms large among the ecosystem of ex-service organisations, the RSL is in crisis. The organisation's NSW board faces multiple investigations into allegations, yet to be proven, of breach of duty. Most concerning are allegations that the last state president, current state treasurer and two other volunteer directors quietly received more than $2 million of vaguely defined "consulting fees" from an RSL-controlled company at the same time they were encouraging rank and file donations to it. This week the national RSL president, Rod White, until recently heading NSW operations, stepped down. Anger at the revelations is white-hot across the 360 community sub-branches of the RSL in NSW, and among the charity's 40,000 volunteer members.

But most concerning is the damage these revelations might cause to public trust in the RSL. It would be tragic if the organisation's recent efforts were to be cruelled by the actions of a few. 

Restoring the RSL must begin by acknowledging the culture among the organisation's leaders that has allowed these problems to fester. Greater transparency into leadership decisions and finances will help the RSL be more accountable to its members and the public. That includes greater oversight by the NSW Parliament, by whose hand the RSL was established in 1935. 

Legacy and the War Widows Guild have modernised their structures and simplified administration – the RSL must do the same to its multilayered, unwieldy and often opaque bureaucracy. Preserving the mateship at the heart of the RSL means it must remain volunteer-led, yet with half a billion dollars in assets the RSL cannot operate as it did last century.

The RSL's staff have good ideas: they need directors who can implement them. The RSL also needs leaders who can listen to members more. During last year's three-day long annual meeting, sub-branches from Dee Why to Dorrigo had only 90 minutes to outline their diverse concerns.

New voices are needed at the very top. It is odd that despite having three very capable women running the RSL's district councils, none have yet been incorporated into the state leadership. Nor are younger veterans adequately represented.

If the RSL is to survive for another century it cannot wish away its problems. It must seize them as an opportunity to once again make the organisation relevant and enduring. And to remind the public why the RSL's important work needs supporting each Remembrance Day.

James Brown is vice-president of the North Bondi RSL Sub-Branch and a veteran of Iraq, Afghanistan and the Solomon Islands.