Among other things, Townsville is a garrison town. If soldiers and their families are doing it tough in a city where unemployment is more than 11 per cent, twice the national average, resources here are really stretched to try to give them support.
Too many veterans are falling through the cracks here and in the rest of the country. In a city like this the result of the lousy effort we have made to look after those who have served their country in war zones from Korea to Malaya, to Vietnam, to Iraq and Afghanistan and Somalia and Timor is broken marriages, domestic violence, homelessness and, worst of all, high rates of suicide.
