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

I now table the internal defence paper trail, which acknowledges my direction and shows the stop on the recovery being put into effect. The member for Paterson interjected and said, ‘That’s not true.’ He claims I did not stop it for 120 days because he has a pay slip showing a zero payment. I asked the opposition yesterday to share that pay slip with me so that I could get to the bottom of the issue. It left me perplexed because, having been assured that my stop had been put into effect almost immediately, I could not understand why someone would continue to have overpayments deducted. Very sadly, the opposition chose yesterday not to share that pay slip with me, despite my request. I suggested that all names and any identifiers could be blanked out. I was looking for some cooperation to ensure that Defence had promptly acted on my instruction to immediately stop the deductions. Fortunately, I now have a copy of the same pay slip, I believe.

That pay slip for that fortnight shows that the member concerned had a net pay on that day of $2,749.06, of which $1,956 went into his Westpac account and $778 went into the Defence Force Credit Union. I do not expect people in the House to be able to read this, but at the bottom of the pay slip it says, ‘Entitlement: 00.’ I am happy to compare notes with the opposition to make sure it is the same document, but I am very, very confident it is. The ‘00’ down the bottom is the result of the last box on the pay slip. The box reflects quite complex calculations and adjustments which go to the debts that appear against the soldier’s name for various reasons, including, I think, the implementation of the tribunal’s decision. But no money has been deducted for that debt—which, by the way, was extinguished as of 18 February. This soldier no longer has any debt relating to the implementation of the Remuneration Tribunal’s decision. He could have other debts for other reasons, as members of the ADF often do—for overpayments et cetera—but, as of the Chief of Army’s directive of 18 February, this soldier no longer has any debt on that basis.

The whole politicisation of this SAS matter this week has been based on this pay slip, which the opposition have claimed resulted in the soldier being paid zero. Either the opposition are very dumb and cannot read the pay slip properly or they misrepresented the facts. I will leave it to members of the Australian community and, in particular, the men and women of the Australian Defence Force—and, even more importantly, the men and women of the SAS Regiment—to decide which it is. When Senator Johnston rightly—well, not rightly, because I think he should have brought it to me—brought up this matter for the first time in October estimates last year, he finished by saying:

I am very much obliged to the efforts you—

that is, Chief of Army—

have taken. I thank you for that. I will write to you if there are any further issues so that we might resolve them privately from here on in. Thank you very much.

Senator Johnston decided that this SAS issue was too sensitive to continue to pursue in the public domain. Apparently, the Leader of the Opposition decided something different.

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