Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I will table a transcript of thewest.com.au of 27 October 2008. Address the problem, Minister. The troops are relaxed, Minister. Have you any idea of what has been going on? Members, I will read to you an email I received on 10 February, four months after the minister said he would address the problem. This is from a constituent, Minister. It is from the wife of a long-serving SAS soldier, the mother of their five children, and this is what she had to say about the minister’s handling of this problem. She said:

As you are the local member I feel it imperative to contact you immediately due to the urgency of the situation—

this was 10 February this year—

I am writing to you to express my concern about the depth and gravity of this situation. This has been raised with the Minister for Defence, the Director-General of Personnel and the commanding officer of the regiment.

She went on to say:

For us personally, as a family, we are facing financial ruin.

This is the wife of a serving SAS soldier, Minister.

We have had no time to prepare an alternative solution to the problem or have my husband retrained or apply for an exemption. We have a large mortgage and five children. We are effectively a single-income family and will not be able to afford to pay school fees, meet our mortgage repayments or put food on the table.

This wife of a serving soldier went on to say, on 10 February:

The anguish, heartache and stress that this is causing to my husband, myself and, more importantly, my children, is disgusting. My husband has served in combat roles as an SASR trooper in Afghanistan and Iraq and various other theatres on numerous occasions. He believes strongly in what he is doing. He is ready to lay down his life for the good of this country and its political ideals. We as a family have sacrificed a lot to support him, including many, many months spent apart in the course of the last decade or more. It takes its toll on us as a family unit, and now to be told that this sacrifice effectively counts for nothing is a total outrage and a personal affront to my husband, myself, our family and all the people who serve in a similar position to him.

Minister, she asked for your help. The SAS have been asking for your help, and you have done nothing.

Four days after receiving this email, I met with this woman, I met with the husband of this woman and I met with serving SAS soldiers and their families. As soon as I could get out of Canberra, as soon as the parliamentary sitting was over, I went back to Perth and met with them on Saturday, 14 February. They told me, Minister, how you had been treating them. They told me of their frustration at the way they were treated over many, many months. They told me how they had rung the minister’s office to inform the minister personally of the hardship and the trauma that they were facing. One soldier told me that he has been battling this pay dispute since last July. Time and time again, he was told it would be fixed. Time and time again, his salary was docked for a retrospective debt arising from the tribunal determination. That was a debt of more than $30,000—and he disputes it. I spoke to this soldier on 14 February. The last straw for this soldier was to receive a pay slip on 22 January this year showing he had received no pay. The debt recovery action took all of his pay. He got zero pay on 22 January.

One of these soldiers that the minister said would be pretty relaxed about all of this, one of these soldiers that the minister said showed no concerns, was at this meeting on 14 February. I asked this soldier how he felt about the way he had been treated. He said he was too upset to tell me. He feared he would be disciplined. He feared that he would lose his job. So he said, ‘I’ll write it down for you.’ This was a serving SAS soldier who was so traumatised by this that he could not tell me and he wrote it down. Let me tell you what he said. This is a man who has served in Afghanistan and Iraq. He wrote a list, in dot points, as to how this had affected him:

• financial hardship
• being paid less than my mortgage repayments
• reduced income with added enforced repayments
• major setback in short and long-term financial plans
• the stress of not knowing what is going on
• the constant worry
• the personal relationship stresses—

His partner rang the minister’s office—

• low morale, stressed, depressed, saddened, angry at work
• an unknown entity keeps changing the goalposts
• no direction, no official references—paperwork—nothing official until the pay is taken from members pay
• no one knows what is going on, where the debt is being over watched from all who is running the show

I agree with him on that. Who is running the show, Minister?—

• interest is charged on the total amount owed

The Department of Defence is making money out of this. He finished with this line:

• financially stable one day, deep in debt the next, through no fault of my own

Minister, this is as a result of the tribunal determination. The minister has failed to exercise the fundamental duty of care that he owes to all members of our defence forces. In this case, his incompetence and his failures are all the more acute and all the more appalling because they have impacted on the lives of the serving soldiers of the SAS, who have been serving overseas on active duty, including in Afghanistan and Iraq. We know what the government thinks of the defence forces. We all read that report in June last year about keeping the Chief of the Defence Force waiting outside the Prime Minister’s office for hours. We know the regard that this government has for members of the Defence Force! The minister says it was in October last year that he first heard from Senator Johnston that the salaries of SAS soldiers were being cut and they were being hit with retrospective debts of tens of thousands of dollars. Minister, that is an extraordinary admission. That in itself is reason for you to resign. If you do not know what is going on in your department, you should go. It was raised in Senate estimates, and the minister said that Senator Johnston is to blame because he did not bring it to his attention earlier.

We heard today from the chiefs of the armed forces that it has been a problem since May 2008. What has the minister been doing since May 2008 when the determination was handed down? Minister, the words ‘retrospective’, ‘pay’ and ‘soldiers’ should have rung alarm bells in your office. Retrospective debts were being raised for SAS soldiers from May 2008, and you did not even know about it. Today the Chief of Army said the problem first arose in May 2008. In the following month, when it was raised at Senate estimates, salaries were cut by 40 per cent. Salary deductions were backdated to August 2007. Debts were raised in the soldiers’ names. There was no transition period. Bang! Overnight, the soldiers were hit with debts of $30,000 to $60,000 and they saw large deductions from their pay packets for these so-called debts.

Just imagine the impact that this has had on the morale of soldiers who are putting their lives on the line for their country. We have heard assurances from the defence chiefs today that these soldiers have had assurances before. What they need is for the minister to take control, to fix the problem and to stop blaming everyone else for his inaction. The minister was forced to concede yesterday on Perth radio that the buck stopped with him. How very noble of him! He said, ‘The buck stops with me but the computer system is going to take a long time to fix.’ He could not even accept that it was his responsibility; he blamed the computer system. It is not about computers, Minister; it is about a woman with her five children, the wife of a serving member of the SAS, who is worried at night that she cannot get the money to put food on the table and pay the school fees. Her husband, serving in Afghanistan, cannot get a night’s sleep. He is worried sick about his family.

The minister has no idea what is going on in his own portfolio. He has been asleep at the wheel. The soldiers I met on 14 February told me that what keeps them going when they are in the field, what keeps them going when they are away from their families, is an assurance that this government will care for them. This government has failed. This minister must go.

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