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

I rise to add my comments to the second reading debate of the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (2008 Budget and Other Measures) Bill 2008. Last night in the Main Committee I spoke at length about the way the Rudd government is taking away entitlements that veterans have enjoyed. There is the hypocrisy of this whereby the government has said that it would always protect veterans and their rights and believes that they should be serviced by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. We have seen the resignation of the secretary of that department. That is of great disappointment to many veterans because they believe he has done a very good job, as do I. I would like to place on record that, although I have been the shadow minister in this portfolio for only six months or so, I have come to have a very high regard for him and I think he will be greatly missed. I am just wondering whether he is yet one more casualty of the abuse of public servants that is going on at the present time by the current government.

I want to speak very specifically about the increase in the age limit at which spouses of veterans will have access to service pensions. At the present time that age is 50. Because of the budget initiative of this government, the age will rise to 58.5. It is unreasonable to, in one leap, take a pension which people may have been planning on and push it out of reach for the best part of a further decade. It should be compared with the way in which the Howard government initiated moves to shift the age limit for the pension from 60 to 65. That was done over many, many years and we are still not quite there. In other words, it could be factored into people’s arrangements. For the age limit to be lifted as it is, in one swoop, in one year, is totally and utterly unreasonable. Accordingly, I will be moving, on behalf of the member for Warringah, an amendment to schedule 5 of the bill which would enable that age limit to remain at 50 years, so that veteran entitlements would not in fact be diminished.

With regard to the other issues in the bill, my colleagues have covered those very solidly and very wisely. There will be a further amendment relating to the seniors card. I would point out that in the budget there was not one word about seniors. There was nothing for the older population who are retired people and obviously do not fit the description of a working family. It is such a narrow definition and excludes so many people. Veterans and other people who are retired are outside that parameter and do not count. That is becoming more and more clear. I saw the honourable member across the table, the member for Maribyrnong, say that there was something there for seniors. Of course there was: they were the provisions which we in fact introduced about the utilities allowance. They were part of our policy. Mr Rudd went and said, ‘Me too, me too, me too,’ and now wants to take credit that it was his own initiative, but it was not. We are very pleased when the government chooses to put what were our policies into practice, but we will not have them take credit for them. They simply said, ‘Me too.’

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