Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—The Minister for Defence is putting the soldiers in the front line while he puts their families on the breadline. I move:

That this House censures the Minister for Defence for:

(1)

his failure to protect the wages and conditions of Australia’s elite fighting SAS soldiers who are in the frontline in the most dangerous part of the world, fighting for freedom against the Taliban, under our flag and wearing our uniform; and

(2)

in particular, the Minister’s:

(a)

failure to honour his guarantee to this House four months ago that these salary problems would be fixed;

(b)

failure to ensure the families of serving SAS soldiers did not suffer hardship;

(c)

failure to obtain full information about the nature and extent of the problem;

(d)

failure to intervene to prevent retrospective action that has resulted in soldiers being hit with debts of tens of thousands of dollars and large salary cuts; and

(e)

actions in undermining the authority of the leadership of Australia’s armed forces.

The SAS is in the front line in the battle against terror. They are in the front line fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and we have a minister here who knows nothing about their affairs. Twice he was asked how much their pay had been docked. He said he did not know. It is bad enough that he did not know, but the worst part of it is he does not care. He has put those soldiers on the front line and their families have received payslips with nothing at all—soldiers on the front line, families on the breadline.

How can we ask these men to put themselves in harm’s way? How can we ask them to fight the most ruthless enemy when we have such an incompetent defence minister, a man who is indifferent to the hardship their families are suffering as he wanders lost through a maze of excuses? Excuses do not pay the mortgage. They do not pay for the groceries. Excuses may serve to protect this incompetent minister for a few more months from the wrath of the Prime Minister but they do not defend the integrity of the obligation all of us owe to our armed forces. There is no greater or more solemn obligation for an Australian government than to do everything in its power to safeguard the welfare of those we ask to serve us in war, in our uniform, under our flag in the most difficult and dangerous conditions one could ever imagine.

What we have seen revealed in this House is an incomprehensible saga of bungling and incompetence which for almost a year has seen these elite forces let down by an extraordinary, unprecedented example of ministerial ineptitude and incompetence. The Australian people are asking today: how could the families of our men fighting in Afghanistan, taking on the most dangerous, most ruthless enemy in the world in the front line in the battle against terrorism open their pay packets and find there is nothing in them? How could it be that their wives and children back at home could be left to fret and worry over whether this pay debacle could leave them unable to pay their mortgages, in danger of being thrown out of their own homes? This is a national disgrace. It is a scandal and what is most scandalous of all is that this minister comes into the House this week and will accept no responsibility at all for a fiasco that has occurred entirely under his watch.

We had the incredible spectacle just a moment ago when, on the second occasion the minister was asked how much had been deducted from their pay, he finally said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said that he had no idea. He did not know how much had been deducted from their pay; then he started to provide figures of some deductions that had occurred years ago. Who does he think he is? A military historian or the Minister for Defence? We need a Minister for Defence who knows what is going on today. Our soldiers in Afghanistan need a Minister for Defence who they know stands behind them as securely, loyally, devotedly and courageously as we are asking them to stand in the line of battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

He has betrayed our soldiers with his incompetence. He is a minister who promised more than four months ago that this problem would be fixed. But, unbelievably, he has not fixed it—not by a long way. We are not talking here about pay anomalies involving 20,000 people. We are talking about a relatively small number of men upon whose shoulders the heaviest responsibilities have been placed—placed by us, the people of Australia and its government. We put those responsibilities on them—to stand firm in the face of terror—and we have a minister who has let them down. It is just a small number of men. A competent bookkeeper—a competent minister, indeed—could have sorted this out in a few hours, as could even this minister if he had shown the slightest energy or willpower. He could have sat down with the records, worked out who had been paid and who had not been paid and sorted it out himself. We are talking about dozens, not hundreds, of people. We are talking about a relatively small number of men. But what has he done? He has dithered and he has dissembled. He has blamed it on computers. He has blamed it on his own department. He has blamed it on everybody but himself.

We perhaps saw the most contemptible example of the minister’s readiness to blame everybody but himself today, when, so desperate to wriggle out of this scandal, he twice—not once—tried to use a courtesy in the Senate extended by the shadow minister for defence, Senator Johnston, to our men in uniform as a fig leaf to hide behind. I can tell you that Senator Johnston’s appraisal of this minister’s competence is the same as that of everybody on this side of the House and that of every Australian.

This debacle arose after a ruling by the Defence Force Remuneration Tribunal in May last year, which reconfigured the terms and conditions under which some classifications of SAS soldiers would receive their pay entitlements. The change in arrangements was backdated to the previous August, in effect retrospectively revising their pay entitlements. This is not a case of mistaken payments where somebody suddenly finds millions of dollars dropped into their bank account or where the wrong address is given and suddenly they find all this money that they know has got nothing to do with them. These are men who were being paid in a way which the Army thought was appropriate at the time and which they thought and believed was appropriate at the time. They had no reason to believe they were being overpaid at all. I have very real doubts whether the Army properly, legally—certainly morally—should be docking their pay or questioning their pay at all.

The opposition raised this scandal at a Senate estimates hearing on 22 October—that is, more than four months ago. On the same day, this incompetent defence minister stood in this House and pleaded ignorance of the issues raised but then guaranteed to the Australian people that he would fix the problem immediately. He said, ‘I can guarantee to the House that this problem will be fixed.’ That is what he said, standing opposite me. The Prime Minister sat beside him at the dispatch box as he delivered that pledge. By rights, if the Prime Minister cared as much about the welfare of our soldiers as he should—if he really cared about supporting our soldiers as he should—he would have been apoplectic about this outrageous dereliction of responsibility. He would have taken this incompetent defence minister back to his office and demanded in no uncertain terms that the problem be fixed and fixed immediately. By rights, he should have also called in the Chief of the ADF to insist the problem be fixed immediately—no ifs, no buts, no more excuses.

I say again: the families of these brave men cannot eat this incompetence and these excuses. They cannot pay the mortgage with this incompetence and these excuses. These men need to be rewarded, they need to be paid and they need a government that stands behind them, a government that does not throw everything aside into a sea of excuses—‘Oh, it’s all too hard.’ You cannot throw the fighting men of Australia into the too-hard basket, Minister. You threw them into the front line of battle; then you sent their families onto the breadline by sending them a pay packet with a big zero in it. That is what this minister sent them.

True to his style, the Prime Minister shirks the hard decisions—and he shirked this one too. He sought to assure the House yesterday that he had taken a keen interest in bringing an end to this fiasco. But when exactly did the Prime Minister discover his sense of urgency about this appalling state of affairs? There was a moment that demanded resolute, principled leadership.

I remember when John Howard was Prime Minister. People would raise issues with him and, when he explained that there were challenges associated with resolving them, people would look him in the eye and say, ‘You’re the Prime Minister: fix it,’ and John Howard always set out to fix it. Everyone on this side of the House knows that, if the Prime Minister were John Howard, this issue would have been fixed immediately. There would have been a speedy resolution, a speedy announcement and it would have been fixed. Instead, we have a Prime Minister who does not care. Instead, the Prime Minister has gone missing in action on the men we send into action.

We send our soldiers into harm’s way to take on this challenge of terrorism, to take on the most dangerous enemies in the world, and the government is so indifferent, so unconcerned, that the minister will stand up in October and say, ‘I will fix the problem,’ and in January payslips are received with nothing on them: nothing to pay for the mortgage, for the rent, for groceries—nothing. That is what they got. We talk in this House all the time about the gratitude of the nation to our men in uniform. We talk about the thanks of a grateful nation. Well, the SAS can say to this minister, ‘Thanks for nothing.’ That is what they got from him: nothing at all. More than four months after guaranteeing he would fix this problem the Minister for Defence has delivered nothing. His promise to fix the issue has not been fulfilled, and we know from the testimony of the Defence chiefs in estimates today that this promised resolution cannot and will not be fulfilled until May at the earliest. They have to wait until May. And the minister tries now to excuse himself and to seek absolution because the mess that he has presided over will be resolved at some point in the future. That is not good enough.

The fact is that a minister who has let down our fighting men once will let them down again. Our soldiers know about loyalty. They know about character. A minister who does not have the character to fix this problem immediately, who does not have the character to fix this problem when he said it would be fixed, will not have the character to stand by them again. Our men in uniform know that the only reason anything is being done is that the opposition has raised this matter again and again in this parliament. Let us be quite clear: the minister said, on 22 October, that he would fix it. Yet the directive that the Army issued to resolve the issue, so he claims, is dated 18 February. Is there anybody here, is there any soldier in Australia or serving us abroad, who does not understand that the only reason this directive was issued was because the minister knew he was going to be called to account by the opposition in this House for his incompetence? That is the measure of this minister: incompetent, slovenly, lazy and careless about the best that Australia can offer, the best that Australia can put into the field against the worst, the most dangerous and the most ferocious enemy. He sends them onto the front line. Soldiers on the front line, families on the breadline—that is the defence policy of this minister.

More than a year after these decisions to reconfigure the pay scales and allowances of the SAS were made, the problem remains unresolved. Why should our elite troops in the battle line have to be worrying about whether their families back home can make mortgage payments? Why should they suffer the distress and anxiety of receiving a payslip with nothing on it? Why should they be issued with debt notifications of tens of thousands of dollars, not due to an accidental overpayment as the government would have us believe—that would be bad enough—but through the retrospective stripping of those soldiers of their full pay entitlements?

It is only now, after the opposition has brought to light further evidence of the ongoing hardship and distress of these soldiers and their families that we finally get a commitment that no financial disadvantage will be suffered. Only now do we get a promise that when the time finally comes that all of this is tidied up, none of those families affected will be asked to repay the debt. But what we do not get, a year after this debacle began to affect our fighting men and their families, is immediate and unconditional action to waive all penalties imposed and debts incurred through this fiasco—not in April, not in May, but today. All we have from the minister is a form of weasel words designed not to fix the problem but to rescue his job. The only jobs package he is interested in is his own job. It is too little too late. It is much too late. The damage has been done. The trust has been betrayed.

We know that this incompetence is so great that the Prime Minister can have no confidence in a minister who blames everybody but himself—a Minister for Defence so cowardly that he will not take responsibility for any element of this fiasco. The one consistency we have had from this minister is that it was not him. He will not take the blame for anything. He asks our soldiers to stand in the front line, to stand up against the shells and missiles of the enemy, but he will not stand up for anything. He passes the buck. He passes the blame around as generously as he is stingy with dollars for our soldiers. He gives our soldiers nothing in their pay packets. Imagine that, Mr Speaker! Just reflect on that.

I ask all Australians to reflect on the character of a Minister for Defence who can say on 22 October that this problem would be fixed and in January dock all of the pay of one of our finest fighting men so there is nothing on the payslip—nothing. Talk about the thanks of a grateful nation! There is no thanks from this minister. The minister should have fixed this long ago. We all know that. He said he would, but he has not. The problem will continue and drag on for months. It is an outrageous dereliction, an abandonment of duty by a minister of the Crown. This minister, if he were honourable, would resign today and not trouble the Prime Minister. And if he will not do the right thing, if he will not accept responsibility for his incompetence, if he will not be prepared to say that he got it wrong—that he has failed and that he is too incompetent and slovenly to have this job—then the Prime Minister must act and sack him.

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