Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

That is precisely what I am doing. What I am saying is that I will move this amendment in sadness for a simple reason. I could not help but overhear the comments from the Clerk to you, Mr Deputy Speaker. The comments are quite accurate: the member for Ballarat is the next person to speak. The fact of the matter is that we are only having this debate this morning to accommodate the member for Ballarat, who, as I said right at the beginning, is going off for maternity leave. We all wish her a very successful and happy time with the birth of her child and we wish that everything goes well. But we are having this debate to accommodate her wish to speak. What I have said is absolutely true—this only became politicised when the member for Ballarat thought it could be a political point to win extra votes.

The amendment that I am intending to move reads as follows:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:“whilst not declining to the give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1)

notes that the bill creates a new category of memorial—namely a Military Memorial of National Significance;

(2)

notes that this new category of memorial, unlike ‘National Memorials’ under the National Memorials Ordinance 1928:

(a)

does not attract ongoing maintenance funding;

(b)

must not be located in the national capital; and

(c)

involves a decision of the Minister and the Prime Minister rather than the bi-partisan Canberra National Memorials Committee;

(3)

acknowledges as correct the stance of the previous Government that National Memorials, pursuant to the 1928 Ordinance, can only be located in the national capital; and

(4)

condemns the Government for:

(a)

playing politics with the veteran community;

(b)

claiming in the Budget Papers that it will declare the Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial in Ballarat a national memorial when it has not done so; and

(c)

misleading the veteran community by claiming to have met an election commitment to declare the Ballarat Memorial a national memorial, when the Government has failed to do so”.

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