TAS: Mother gives emotional evidence at Senate inquiry

AAP General News (Australia)
04-21-2004
TAS: Mother gives emotional evidence at Senate inquiry

By Libby Sutherland

HOBART, April 21 AAP - A Tasmanian woman choked back tears today as she spoke about
the disappearance of her only son at sea nearly two years ago.

Joan Gurr, of Launceston, was one of two grieving mothers to give heart-wrenching evidence
before the Senate inquiry into the effectiveness of Australia's military justice system.

Her son, Leading Seaman Cameron Gurr, was two months shy of his 21st birthday when
he was lost overboard from HMAS Darwin in May 2002 off Christmas Island.

On the night he vanished he had been drinking with mates after being promoted.

A subsequent naval board of inquiry was told of illicit drinking sessions aboard the
ship, with seven members of the Darwin crew punished as a result.

Miss Gurr told the Senate inquiry she believed the naval probe focused more on broken
rules and punishment than what happened to her son.

"I honestly feel that board of inquiry was so terribly focused on rules and regulations
and breaking them they forgot about Cam," she said.

"How can someone be missing for eight hours plus and nobody knows he's gone?

"I don't understand that."

She recalled the "vastness of the ocean" when flying over the search area in a naval
helicopter and thinking "they can't find him in this, they can't find him in this".

"In my head, I know where Cam is but, in my heart, I can't accept it," Miss Gurr said.

The inquiry also heard from Susan Campbell, whose daughter Eleanore Tibble killed herself
in November 2000.

The 15-year-old air force cadet had been accused of fraternising with a 29-year-old
instructor who was a senior officer at the Tasmanian Air Training Corps in Hobart.

At the time of her death, Eleanore believed she would be dishonourably discharged because
of the alleged relationship.

After giving evidence together with daughter Maria Campbell, who broke down in tears
during the hearing, Ms Campbell told reporters the past three-and-a-half years had been
a "walking hell".

She said the contact she had received from Defence Force authorities after Eleanore's
death had been "absolutely glaring in its inadequacy".

Ms Campbell told the inquiry she welcomed the chance to access a degree of redress
in respect to the events surrounding the loss of her daughter, which had previously been
denied to her.

"For me ... it is probably the most significant thing I may ever do in my life in terms
of testing democratic process, being able to pursue to the end a just cause and then to
have a degree of transparency applied to it so that there can be put in place changes
which may ensure that such a situation may not occur again," she said later.

"I believe that my work now is to ensure that I can see some structural changes in
the way that young people, minors, are handled in both the cadet corp as well as minors
in the military."

Also giving evidence today was former Navy technician Melissa Munday, 29, who was serving
on HMAS Westralia when a fire claimed the lives of four sailors in May 1998.

Due to report on August 5, the inquiry has three more days of public hearings in Brisbane,
Melbourne and Adelaide this month.

AAP las/jnb/de

KEYWORD: MILITARY (PIX AVAILABLE)

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