David Feeney (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Justice) Share this | Hansard source

Our war veterans do not need to read Newspoll to know that this was a lousy budget. You have spoken in an earlier session around defence, Minister, about the virtue of not robbing Peter to pay Paul. Let us stick to that theme, because you have spoken virtuously about the government's policy with respect to DFRDB and the 59,000 persons that it affects. Let us now talk about the 280,000 people—the veterans, the war widows and the orphans—who will be hit by this government's new indexation system concerning pension cuts.

As you would be aware, there are now some 280,000 veterans and their families that are going to be hit by this lower rate of pension indexation—280,000 veterans and their families who were given no inkling that this catastrophe was coming down the road, because they have just endured a budget of twisted priorities and a budget of broken promises. It is now tragically plain to us that there has been a total of some $107 million ripped out of the Department of Veterans' Affairs, $107 million ripped out from Labor's record budget of $12.5 billion in 2013-14—something we can now, sadly, look back on as a high point for the budget, given the extraordinarily harsh treatment meted out to veterans and their families in this budget.

Can you confirm, Minister, that the coalition has slashed $107 million from the Veterans' Affairs budget? Further, can you confirm that the coalition is to slash some $65.1 million off veterans' pensions by September 2017 by indexing these pensions only to CPI, making a mockery of your earlier remarks concerning DFRDB? The current indexation system sees these pensions increase by the best of three indexation systems. CPI does not on average perform as well as these other indexation systems. That, of course, is something with which you would be very familiar, given the fact that you have wandered Australia promoting your DFRDB policy. How now can you explain your changed reasoning with respect to this indexation decision—as I say, affecting some 280,000 Australians on veterans pensions and some 310,350 veterans pension payments?

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