Elevated to the role in June by the state delegates, Mr Ferris has shouldered the responsibility of restoring the 102-year-old veterans’ charity’s reputation after a host of financial mistakes were made public.

In 2016, the beleaguered state branch faced numerous questions from the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission about its financial practices, including generous benefits handed to directors, and vague financial record-keeping.

In March 2018, the ACNC presented the charity with a Directions Notice requiring several standards to be met to keep its charitable status.

So when Mr Ferris, 56, walked through the doors, he was aware there was a challenge ahead to fix not only the institution’s reputation, but also its internal health.

“We’re in a state of repair. My issue is that we need to be more transparent to our members and also the public,” he said.

“The RSL is full of great people and it does a great job. We’ve just been tarnished and we need to repair that.”

A former police officer, Mr Ferris also served in the Royal Australian Air Force from 1979 to 1985, joining the RSL in 2010 before being elected Sunshine Coast region district president in 2014.

He is the youngest state president in RSL Queensland’s history, taking oversight of an organisation that, in 2016, reported a revenue of $106 million and assets of $86 million.

Describing himself as “a fixer”, he likes a challenge but still felt a few nerves and had several “surreal” weeks as he got to work in his new role.

RSL Queensland has lumbered through its 102 years, growing steadily from a small, volunteer-led group dedicated to the support of World War I veterans into a household name with 33,000 members and “serious governance failures”.

An ACNC investigation into the organisation's finances found multiple breaches in governance over the use of funds by directors, among other problems.

The investigation had been launched after it was discovered RSL Queensland owed the Australian Tax Office a fringe benefits tax liability of more than $312,000.

It found that a “long-standing practice” of RSL Queensland directors being given funds for “out-of-pocket expenses” but without any policy, guidance or governance for the reporting of those funds.

At the time, ACNC commissioner Dr Gary Johns said there was “a great deal of work” ahead to ensure RSL Queensland could fix the governance problems.

Six months later, and three months into his three-year term as state president, Mr Ferris is confident the charity is ahead of its requirements to the ACNC’s directions notice - so much so he hopes to complete the requirements before deadline.

“If we make a mistake, we need to admit we’ve made a mistake going forward,” Mr Ferris said.

“We can’t change the past, all we can do is make sure we don’t do it in the future.”

Walking into Anzac House in Fortitude Valley to begin a modernising campaign in June, Mr Ferris was aware changing the culture was key.

“If you can’t change the culture, it makes it very, very hard,” he said.

“We’re getting there. I was in Cairns on the weekend and I had a chance to speak to about 30-odd delegates up there … and I just tell it how it is, I don’t cloud it over or provide any fuzzy stories.

“They all came up to me and said 'thank you for being candid. thank you for being open.'”

The emphasis is not just on correcting lax finances and poor reporting, but on changing the image of the organisation in the public eye and ensuring it fulfills its core duty of caring for veterans and their families.

“It’s about changing an organisation that’s a hundred-plus years old, so that it’s relevant for the next hundred years,” Mr Ferris said.

“I keep hearing the same, ‘well we’ve always done it like that’.

“My response is, ‘well, we don’t do it like that any more’.”

The organisation is seeing a year-on-year increase in requests for assistance, a 25 per cent increase each year for the past three years.

Homelessness and welfare, financial assistance, mental health support, employment programs, support in claims made to the Department of Veteran Affairs are some of the services offered by the organisation.

It also funds research into PTSD and veteran mental health through partnerships with major medical institutions such as the Gallipoli Medical Research Foundation.

A primary challenge ahead is breaking away from the perception that RSL clubs, originally founded by sub-branches of RSL Queensland from the 1940s onward, still feed revenue directly to back veterans.

RSL Queensland has no links and receives no funds from the sub-branch clubs, instead raising most of its funds for veteran welfare through the RSL Art Union Lottery.

“The biggest problem we have as an organisation is the public just doesn’t know that we are so very different to the clubs,” Mr Ferris said.

“Everybody has the perception that when you walk into a club, you pay for that parmy or you pay for that pint, or you put $10 in the pokies, that that money is going back to the veterans, and it’s not.”

RSL clubs might donate funds into the community, but Mr Ferris said the money didn’t go directly to veterans.

He said the major challenge was changing the public perception that the clubs were snyonymous with the veteran welfare organisation RSL Queensland.

“If I went outside and said to Joe Bloggs ‘do you know what RSL Queensland does?’ - ‘Oh yeah, you guys are pints, parmies and pokies’.

“But we’re not pints, parmies and pokies -- we’re pensions, advocacy and welfare.”