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

For 12 months now we have had a government in a shambolic state. They promised a government of no excuses and no surprises, and for 12 months we have been enduring surprise after surprise and excuse after excuse.

There is a miscellany of broken promises I could touch upon today, but I would like to begin by making the point that one of my favourite aspects of the broken promises is not so much the egregious breaking of the promises but a government that refuses thereafter to admit that it has broken a promise. Time and time again we have seen this government stand up before audiences of pensioners, veterans and others and insist to their faces that they have received no cut. Of course, all that achieves—and your action faces tell the story—is that the anger grows, and the anger will come and bite you.

Just last week in question time the Prime Minister contradicted the Minister for Veterans' Affairs with respect to the Australian War Memorial. Before the last election the Prime Minister was, of course, desperately keen to speak highly of the War Memorial, and said:

… the Coalition will take the action necessary to preserve, protect and enhance the Australian War Memorial.

Now, of course, the War Memorial well and truly wishes that you had never taken an interest in its business and that you had never taken an interest in its work because, after having taken an interest in its work, all you have done is slash and burn it. The Prime Minister said last week:

I want to stress that the $800,000 that he refers to has not been cut.

Has the $800,000 just magically disappeared from its budget as part of the great coalition fairy story of what happened to its commitments to the people of Australia? At the same time that the Prime Minister was at the dispatch box insisting that there was no cut, that the $800,000 was a made-up fairy number, we saw in the Senate the veterans' affairs minister talking about the funding cut and saying, 'I did not make this cut with any joy.' At least, in Senator Ronaldson's defence, he knows a cut when he sees one and he understood the bad news that he was delivering. The Director of the Australian War Memorial said:

… the Department of Veterans Affairs informed the memorial last week that it has found it necessary to cease funding the travelling exhibition program effective immediately …

So, a cut is a cut. The work of the War Memorial has been slashed. The Prime Minister, who came into this parliament desperate to associate himself with the work of the War Memorial, has stood here and managed to oversee an $800,000 cut in its business.

That $800,000 cut to the work of the War Memorial absolutely affects it, because those travelling exhibitions have now been cut. Those travelling exhibitions—belittled as they were by the Prime Minister, who described them as 'small exhibitions'—have accomplished great things for the War Memorial. They have been seen by over 3.8 million Australians in their 17 years of work. Those opposite, who insist time and time again that they represent regional Australia, show absolutely no interest in the fact that it is these travelling exhibitions that take the work of the War Memorial to regional Australia and to our classrooms. Now, of course, the coalition have thrown it overboard without so much as a 'by your leave'. This action, in the Centenary of Anzac, is an outrageous decision.

It does not end there because the broken promises spread much further. The veterans' community has been aghast at the blows inflicted upon it by this budget from this government. For a government that said, 'No surprises and no excuses,' our veterans have endured both because, after having insisted that you would look after veterans, after insisting that you would look after military pensions, what have we actually seen? We have seen the abolition of the MSBS superannuation scheme for our serving military, which is a remarkable decision that will go to the retention of our military people.

Worse yet, the pensions of some 280,000 veterans, a total of 310,000 payments have now been cut. After spending years and years in opposition lecturing us on this side of the House about the virtues of triple indexation, no sooner had you found yourselves on the Treasury benches than you defied your own rhetoric, you overthrew your own words, and you abolished triple indexation for our veterans. We know that only one year in 10 is CPI the superior calculation. So, in nine years out of 10, you have now made sure that our veterans get paid less. Year after year after year we are now going to see the living standards of our veterans suffer because of your mean-spirited and cruel budget. It is a mean-spirited and cruel budget that has, of course, been a surprise and an excuse to our veterans' community.

I could go on and talk about submarines, and about the fact that David Johnston promised to build and assemble 12 submarines in Adelaide. We have seen that promise turn to dust. (Time expired)

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