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

Before I was so painfully interrupted, I was referring to the government's disgraceful attempts to axe payments made to the children of killed or badly injured veterans, which I am proud to say was disallowed by Labor in the Senate.

So outraged were veterans and veterans bodies and ex-service organisations about these various moves that in fact the Vietnam Veterans, Peacekeepers and Peacemakers journal even wrote and about it:

… it's not just the children's loss that's upsetting, it's the mindset of the decision makers who would approve such a mean spirited measure. We have reason to be concerned.

Sadly, what we have before us is a bill that does not go to remedying the situation that our veterans find themselves in. I hope the government will put the minds of these Vietnam veterans at ease and abandon their mean-spirited plans to cut payments to orphans.

These cuts are despite comments before the election by the Prime Minister and by Senator Ronaldson, now the Minister for Veterans' Affairs, who both said they were committed to fairness for our ex-service men and women, our war veterans and their families. It is fair to say that the veterans' community took the Prime Minister and the minister at their word when they promised 'no cuts to pensions' before the election. And yet we see this promise has been most spectacularly broken. It is going to be one of the lasting testaments to this unfair budget, one of its outstanding attributes—that is, the fact that some 280,000 veterans have had their living standards cut as a result of this budget. Labor will continue to fight to protect these veterans and their families from these unfair cuts. We have already committed ourselves to reintroducing triple indexation for their pensions, to restore to them the living standards that were so savagely cut only a few months ago. It clear from the budget papers that the minister and the coalition do not care about the hardships they have inflicted on our veterans.

It is often said by both sides in this place that there is no greater responsibility for government than the defence of Australia and Australian interests, and of course that is true. And it is often said by both sides that with that comes the profound responsibility of caring for those who have offered the courage, the commitment and sometimes the sacrifice required to deliver that protection. That is why the Australian government is responsible for providing appropriate support and compensation to Australia's veterans and ex-service personnel. And it is universally true that the Australian community is very proud indeed of its veterans and its ex-service men and women. They have served proudly and in the finest tradition of the Australian Defence Force; they have protected our society and our country. They go where they are sent; they respond to their nation's call. And so with all of those important understandings in this place, the decision of government to defy its own rhetoric, to defy its own promises, to defy its own policy proclamations and to come in here and cut the living standards of our veterans community was a remarkable moment.

But we see that this was not an accident, it was not a moment in time: sadly, it is in fact part of a pattern. This bill also fails to remedy the government's most recent atrocity—that is, its cut to funding of the Australian War Memorial. As everyone here would well and truly understand, this is the Centenary of Anzac. Over the next four years, Australia and Australians will celebrate and commemorate World War I and Australia's extraordinary level of participation in that conflict—a conflict that cost more than 60,000 Australian lives, which saw more than 400,000 Australians put on a uniform and serve. We were a country, small as we were, that made a remarkable contribution to that war and suffered terrible burdens and terrible losses as a consequence. But one of the outstanding things of that conflict was the role it played in the formation of the Australian identity—and of course this is why the Centenary of Anzac is of such extraordinary importance to Australia and Australians, because of the fact that in the mud and gore and challenges and sacrifices of that conflict so much of the modern Australian identity was formed and our sense of nationhood was born.

That is why the Centenary of Anzac is such a vitally important thing and that is why the announcement yesterday that the Australian War Memorial would have to discontinue its travelling exhibitions because of this government's mean-spirited $800,000 cut to its budget came as such a shock. It came as such a shock because Dr Brendan Nelson, former Leader of the Opposition who is now doing an outstanding job there at the War Memorial, having won the universal respect of ex-service organisations and all those who rely on and value the War Memorial, was forced to come forward and announce that the travelling exhibitions of the Australian War Memorial would have to cease and would have to cease precipitously—within days. He was forced to make this announcement, he revealed, because more than $800,000 was cut from the Department of Veterans' Affairs. It is a cut the department is making in the context of its own budget cuts from the budget.

So what we see with this is that for some 17 years now the Australian War Memorial has been managing travelling exhibitions, taking the successful work of the Australian War Memorial outside of Canberra, bringing it into schools, bringing it into classrooms and taking it to our regions as well as our capital cities. So what the travelling exhibitions have enabled over those 17 years is for a whole range of different audiences to be able to avail themselves of the work and those uniquely Australian stories. Incredibly, over those 17 years some four million Australians have seen those travelling exhibitions, which is testament to the fact that this is money well spent. These travelling exhibitions are very well received and are able to reach new audiences in our regions such as the aged and infirm. Never in all those 17 years has there been a more important year for these travelling exhibitions than this one. This and the next few years would see those travelling exhibitions, one would have thought, at the very zenith of their work and their importance to all of us because over the centenary of Anzac those travelling exhibitions were going to bring those Anzac stories to Australia and to Australians.

You can well and truly imagine our astonishment when we discovered that the mean spirited budget of this government will pull $800,000 out of the War Memorial, a remarkable thing. I remember when the previous government gave an additional $7 million of funding to the War Memorial to further boost its work, and the unctuous words uttered by the then opposition as they congratulated that investment. Of course, in office, we see that investment being rolled back and we see longstanding work, a 17-year program, brought to oblivion by the mean spirited cuts of this government.

Our sympathies certainly are with Dr Brendan Nelson and the team at the War Memorial. Obviously they are managing not just disappointment of the War Memorial's clients and fans but their own team and their own morale. In a radio interview on the ABC on Monday, Dr Brendan Nelson made it very plain that this sad decision was the direct result of budget cuts and made it plain that this budget cut came as a shock. We are going to see these travelling exhibitions stop and stop virtually immediately.

This $800,000 cut must be reversed. It is not reversed in this bill; it should be. It now presents us with the remarkable combination that we have some 280,000 veterans and their families out in the community whose living standards are under direct assault who month in, month out are going to receive less money from this government. We have seen a whole range of entitlements and benefits to disabled veterans and war orphans cut. And then to add insult to injury, an $800,000 cut to the War Memorial just as it begins the centenary of Anzac, an absolute disgrace. Our veterans, obviously, deserve better.

So while I am happy to support this bill essentially on the basis that it is implementing good Labor policy and continues the tradition of the Minister for Veterans Affairs of bringing Labor policy into this place because he has none of his own, it does not change the fact that this bill does nothing to remedy the grievous attacks on our veterans and the fact that, once again, the veterans community has been promised big things by a conservative opposition only to have its hopes and aspirations absolutely shattered once they came to office. As I said, this is not a new phenomenon but never before has it been done with such breath-taking speed and never before has it been done with such remarkable scope that 300,000 people would be so quickly disappointed in the immediate aftermath of the coalition victory.

But those opposite know this. The veterans' community is famous for a number of attributes and one of them is its memory. Every one of the electorate offices of those members opposite will be getting their visits from an inflamed and disappointed constituency, who have served this country and who, in many cases, voted for the coalition in good faith because they believed them and their words. They will not believe them and their words again.

Debate adjourned.

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