“The Law” is the legislation as it is modified by the courts.

In our case it is the Veterans Entitlements Act as modified by the Deledio cases, particularly the “Deledio Rules” and the “Deledio Additional Rules”.

The Repatriation Commission’s duty is to apply the law as it exists, not as the Repatriation commission thinks it should be. Because of its court appeals, and comments in its annual reports, the Repatriation Commission clearly disagrees with the decisions in cases such as the Deledio cases.

The judiciary has been rock solid on these matters, over many years.

The Repatriation Commission, or its subsidiaries, instructs its staff on how to process claims from veterans. It also provides training to advocates.

Quite clearly it has not provided instructions in relation to the “Deledio Additional Rules” to either its staff or the advocates it trains. This is either dishonest as described earlier, or an “oversight”. Given the vigour with which they have appealed to the courts and their abundant legal resources it is unlikely to be an oversight.

Just check the number of decisions (including VRB and AAT) where the opinion of one doctor is preferred to another. Quite clearly contrary to the following “Deledio Additional Rules”:

2. Conflict with other medical opinions is not sufficient to reject a hypothesis as unreasonable.

3.  As we have earlier pointed out, it is not the function of s 120(3) to require the Commission to choose between competing hypotheses or to determine whether one medical or scientific opinion is to be preferred to another.

10.  The exercise is not one of balancing or weighing the respective merits of a range of professional opinions.