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

I would like to say, from my own perspective, that I am very keen to see an outcome to the reseal-deseal issue. I would like to acknowledge the tremendous work that the former member for Blair put into raising this as an important issue. Also, I would like to express my concern about the Korean War veterans in the terms that have been ably put by the member for Gilmore. I too will be watching the outcome of that issue with serious participation.

Going back to the question of the dental scheme, my advice is that the long delays are taking place with regard to retrospective approval for patients who have already received treatment. My advice is that the process for gaining approval has changed. They now have to contact the department by fax rather than by phone, and then they have to wait for written approval to be received at the practice before sending in their claim for payment. This process is taking as long as five months and one individual has just received payment for an outstanding account from November. There are a lot of similar outstanding accounts. Whereas this person is very happy to treat DVA patients, it is not reasonable that such persons should be carrying those expenses. That is the additional information that I have and I would be most interested to get a response back, because as long as the dentists are prepared to treat people that would be good.

I might go on to the question of the taking away of a spouse’s pension entitlement at the age of 50, because it affects more women than men. It is a very big worry. I have been talking to a veteran in the last little while, and I am able to recount this story with the veteran’s permission without identifying him. It really is a tragic story. He is a Vietnam vet who operated down the Cu Chi tunnels in Vietnam. He has post traumatic stress disorder; he came back; he was alcoholic. He got off the alcohol and he has become a workaholic. He has a back injury from being down the tunnels. He has permanent fungus in his feet because of what he had to walk through down those tunnels.

He has children from his first marriage, one of whom had a drug problem, but he is now enormously proud of her because she has worked for 12 months. He has a younger second wife. He simply has worked because he has wanted to work, but he is coming to the stage where his doctor says he may not work any more. He is not a TPI so he is not exempted from this requirement. His wife is 51. They had planned—and in his words it was his security blanket—that when he could no longer work she would look after him as she would be entitled to get the pension. He hastened to tell me that he did not marry a younger wife, thinking that the younger wife could look after him. But as it has transpired, they have been together for 12 years, married for eight years. He said that of his group of 98 that went to Vietnam, only 39 of them are now alive and the majority of those who died committed suicide. He said to me, ‘What do I do?’

The issue is the taking away of that entitlement and saying, ‘You have to wait another 8½ years,’ when you have people in this situation, and this will be repeated again and again. He said he is concerned about the guys coming back from Desert Storm. They do not know. I have put out press releases and I have spoken about it in the chamber a lot. It went out in their newsletter and he became aware. He just feels gutted, in his terms. He wants to work as long as he can but he says this is basically a sentence that he has to keep working until she is 58½. This is a real dilemma that will be repeated again and again. For a lousy $35 million, why are we putting Vietnam veterans through this and yet again treating them badly? He has served the country well. He has served it with distinction and he carries an enormous mental burden. There are other parts to his story which I will not tell but which are of enormous anguish and angst to him, and he lives with those flashbacks every day. His question is: what is going to happen to him when he stops work if he has not got a purpose in his life? Will he go back on the booze? This is a real dilemma. And with this amendment, as I said for a lousy 35 million bucks, we are taking it away from them. (Time expired).

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