Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

No-one raised the issue with me. I said: ‘I am concerned about the issue. If you have concerns, please make contact with me.’ As always, I gave them a business card of my ADC, which is the usual process for military people to make contact with their minister.

My office advises that we did have one woman ring my office complaining about an overpayment. Unfortunately, she was unprepared—and I think that is understandable given the political nature of this issue now—to give us her name, number or situation. She just wanted my office to know that there was a problem. I appreciate her having done that because it reinforced in my mind that we still have problems. You have to understand that the stop on the recovery action had been put in place. So why was this woman having problems? Unfortunately, she did not leave her details but, as I said during question time, Defence recovers money from the men and women of the Defence Force, including the Special Air Service Regiment, all the time for all sorts of different reasons. The Special Air Service Regiment often ask to have their pay delivered in advance. If they are going overseas and they want their wives to be cashed up, they are paid in advance. When they come back, their pay stops until they catch up. Sometimes they come back from deployment and the system—their system, which I am determined to fix—does not acknowledge that they are home, would you believe, and they continue to get the tax-free deployment allowance for weeks, if not months. Defence legally and appropriately recovers the money.

Members of the opposition need to be careful when they throw up these examples of recovery. They could potentially be about the remuneration tribunal’s decision or they could potentially be about something completely different. Senator Johnston, in Senate estimates today, thanked the generals. He said: ‘Thank you. You have explained the situation. We are satisfied now that our people are going to be taken care of.’ But the Leader of the Opposition seems to be on a completely different track. Why? Because he still sees a political opportunity. (Time expired)

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