Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

in the mid-thirties. For guys who have gone through this, there is the growth of their superannuation and lack of ability to make the nest egg even better with the rigidity of the current system. That is what really gets under their skin. That is what they want addressed.

I want to address the rate of superannuation for military personnel. Some people may think that service personnel get it pretty good, but I am here to tell you that in my city, when it comes to ADF personnel, we ask a lot of them. We hire a specific kind of person and we ask a lot of them. Very few jobs in this country require you to routinely carry 45- or 48-kilo packs, jump out of the back of trucks, jump out of the back of helicopters and the like and be prepared to go, at a moment's notice, anywhere in the world for these things. Wear and tear is part of your job.

My nephew has just joined the Army. He has just finished at Kapooka. He is one of the few guys who came through and will be getting an apprenticeship. He is very keen on his fitness and very keen on joining up. He wanted to go down the fitter and turner line to work on calibrations, making guns and helping with those sorts of things. I stressed to him, 'Please, please, please, don't join the infantry,' because when you finish in infantry you have shoulder problems, back problems, hip problems, knee problems and ankle problems. That is just par for the course. No matter how fit you think you are, you are hurting yourself every day when you are in the ADF. It is the nature of service that they do. I will explain my nephew's recruitment process—the way the ADF is changing the way they are hiring. They still look for the type-A personality; they still look for the person who is able to make decisions and is able to train for those decisions. When my nephew was going through the recruitment process, I was interested in hearing from him firsthand about what they were talking to him about. They wanted to know what kind of person he was, what kind of man he would become and how he would contribute to his society. An Army person, an Air force person, a Navy person or a person on the city street may not think that those questions are relevant. We are trying to make sure that we are hiring the right sort of person.

The ADF is a changing organisation. We are lucky that we probably have the highest paid soldiers, sailors and airmen in the world. Recently at the operation Talisman Sabre at Rockhampton, I was talking to a US army colonel. He said, 'I'm very interested in the support that you give your soldiers by way of pay, because it is a lot better than ours.' That does not mean that they are overpaid. There is the level of training that they go through. We have a different kind of Army. With the size and scale of the US Army, you have the necessary workforce and you are able to keep pushing people forward. We have a small to medium sized Army with a small to medium sized Defence Force. We require an intelligent soldier, an intelligent sailor and an intelligent airman or air woman. We must make sure that we are in that space and that we are able to provide the level of support required to make sure that they are available to give their best performance at the best possible time. We have a different kind of soldier to other armies. We are smaller, we have to be more adaptable, we have to be smarter and we have to be more intelligent. The basic soldier, sailor or Air Force person in this country is very clever. We must make sure that we do those things.

My electorate is one of the youngest electorates in the nation, but I have one of the largest veteran populations as well. The sorts of issues at play in this space must be taken care of because it reflects across my entire community. We must ensure that we leave the door open. When someone gets out of the Army, Navy or Air Force the door needs to be open for them to come back, even on a part-time basis to put their toe back in the water. What someone is like as a 25-year-old when they have done their eight or nine years on initial deployment is going to be completely different to what they are like as a 35-year-old who may have been married, had a couple of kids, has settled down in the community and is maybe looking for stability. We have to make sure that in our community we have the circumstance where people can come back into the service. It is not just about turning up on a Tuesday night for a march and a bit of a chat but coming back on a part-time basis, putting their toe in the water and saying, 'Can I rejoin? Should I rejoin?' They need the ability to work on a part-time basis and, as long as the ADF is in agreement, they would be able to provide as much income as they are prepared to make for their entire family.

In this place, we have to make it as easy as possible for people to transition back into the service, because we invest an awful lot of money in their training. The LHD is currently in Townsville and is about to do exercises in the Coral Sea. Major General Stuart Smith is in my city. When he talks about the training of soldiers for combat conditions, he talks about making sure that it is not so much a learned response but muscle memory, so that that is what you do. That is the level of training that is required in this space. That is why we have to continue to make sure that our training is the best, that our support is the best, that our medical is the best and that our superannuation is the best—superannuation and retirement benefits for the men and women who put their lives on the line on a daily basis to keep our country safe. At the end of the day, we have a very safe country and it is in no small measure due to the work that our Defence Force personnel do on the outside. With those few words, we commend this bill to the House. We hope it goes through and that by 1 July 2016 we will be up and away. I thank the House.

Debate interrupted.

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