MUFTI | Volume 66 No. 1 | Final edition
The April 2025 edition of Mufti is available online to download and read here.
For more than 90 years, Mufti has been a much-loved voice for Victoria’s veteran community, sharing the stories of service, sacrifice and camaraderie that define the RSL.
The April 2025 issue of Mufti will be the last in its current form, but this is not the end of our storytelling. Instead, we are embracing the future – expanding the way we share stories to reach more people, more often, and across more platforms.
Over the last week we have seen our MUFTI stories already reach much larger audiences immediately via our website and social media platforms.
We would also like to assure readers that stories from our veterans and our Sub-Branch community will take on a more prominent role in our operations. Demand for veteran assistance is increasing year on year, and therefore we must make some difficult decisions to bridge the widening funding gap. We also know that our community is increasingly preferring to read things digitally, as they happen.
The printing and distribution of Mufti was costing more than $50,000 per issue. Every dollar makes a difference, and we hope to channel production cost savings towards initiatives that support vulnerable veterans, as well as our ongoing advocacy efforts.
While we will not be producing bi-annual print editions of Mufti, you will still read more of the stories you loved from Mufti via our website, social media and email communications. Importantly, you will also start to see more of these stories appearing beyond our own community to tell the wider world of the work the RSL does and why it is needed.
We believe that shifting the focus to have the external media tell our stories online, on television and radio, and in print, will reach a much larger audience and help change public perceptions about what our Sub-Branches do day-to-day to help the community. This is evident in some of the stories featured in the final print edition.
The proactive steps taken by Ballarat RSL Sub-Branch in the face of local veteran suicides was featured on WIN News Victoria, local radio and the Ballarat Courier, and the story of discovery by the Korumburra RSL Sub-Branch was featured nationally on 7NEWS television.
Going forward, these will also have a strategic focus to help influence policy makers by illuminating veterans’ stories.
For those that do not have access to email and our website, you have not lost your regular stories. From 2026 an Annual Magazine that focusses on the human faces of our Sub-Branches work and the stories behind it will be produced.
Your local Sub-Branch can also assist you to show you the stories we will generating through the year on our RSL Victoria website when you’re next visiting. For those with email access who prefer to print out their stories, we will be providing printable links via an expanded distribution of ‘The Bugle’.
Our veterans need our support more than ever before, and this decision will help us meet that goal, while bringing to life more stories from around RSL Sub-Branches in Victoria.
Author
RSL Victoria
First established in 1916, RSL Victoria’s primary objectives are to provide support to veterans and their families, acknowledge Australian Defence Force service and perpetuate its patriotic duty whilst encouraging conversation and mateship between those who have served and their communities. A crucial role of the RSL is also to appropriately commemorate those who have suffered and died in service of our nation or its allies.
