Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This has been a vexed issue for this parliament with respect to Defence and veterans' policy over a number of years so I think that it is important in that context that we explain a little bit of that history. It is an issue which governments have grappled with not just over the last four or five years but quite a while before then, and I draw this particular point in those circumstances.

Those who come here today, as the member for Fadden has done, and state that without doubt, unequivocally, the coalition will act upon the commitment they have now made, needs to remember that for 11 years they did not do it. It was not an issue that was raised only in the last four to five years; it was an issue raised regularly over the previous decade. Throughout the previous decade the coalition government, of which for most of that period the now opposition leader was a member of cabinet, said no. I have even seen recent comments which have suggested that the former foreign minister, Alexander Downer, has suddenly had a conversion on the road to Damascus and now thinks that this is an issue that needs to be acted upon.

I have got to give marks though to the former finance minister, former Senator Nick Minchin, who at least has had the courage of his convictions to be consistent with respect to this issue when recently he wrote in a letter that was printed which said:

It is easy to feel sympathy for the demands made by retired defence personnel for improved superannuation ...

However, all claims made upon the public purse, even those by retired defence personnel, should be considered rigorously and on their merits.

This particular claim was properly rejected by the Howard government, of which I was a member, as well as by the Labor government.

There is no inherent logic to the proposition that a public sector employment related superannuation payment should be indexed in exactly the same fashion as a means-tested welfare benefit in this case, the aged pension.

Defence personnel have their superannuation payments indexed the same way that all other commonwealth public servants on defined-benefit schemes have their payments indexed.

The payments are maintained in real terms, which is what they signed up for. Changing the indexation for defence personnel would create immediate demands for the same change to be made for all other former commonwealth employees, at a potentially enormous cost to taxpayers.

The government should continue to reject this demand.

That is the position of Nick Minchin, former senator, former finance minister, long-time member of the cabinet of the previous government, long-time cabinet colleague of the now opposition leader who has done an amazing backflip compared to his past. Others—and there may be some here—would remember not only that, but that when he was minister for employment and workplace relations, his department actually put forward a submission in respect of considering related issues around the question of compensation in which he argued that defence personnel and people in that area should be treated no differently from other Commonwealth employees. So we have seen a change, and I think that is something that really needs to be remembered by the defence community.

Is military service unique—yes, it is. What do you then do to recognise that uniqueness? A range of things can be done, and a range of things have been done. For example, there is the capacity to access superannuation at an earlier stage under the scheme we are talking about than is the case overwhelmingly for people in the public sector. The fact is that there are various compensatory payments made through the Department of Veterans' Affairs for the impacts of military service. It is recognised.

I would like to address one point that was made in passing, which was the claim that I as a shadow minister prior to the 2007 election went around the country spruiking the fact that we would make changes with respect to this policy. That is incorrect. I must admit that I did when asked on rare occasions make the point that we were committed to a review of superannuation indexation arrangements. That review occurred and was acted on. A set of decisions were made that are well known to the Defence community, decisions that they were not happy with. But the fact that there was a commitment to a review does not commit us to change. I certainly made that point on a number of occasions prior to the 2007 election. I understand the concerns that have been raised by the veteran community. I support their right to pursue those concerns. I wish them well. But we need to try to remove some of the hypocrisy from the arguments that have been put by those opposite about this serious issue.

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