Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to be able to make a contribution to this debate on the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment (Defence Force) Bill 2016. I want to acknowledge the contribution of the member for Brand. Serving veterans as well as past veterans is an important element of her electorate. She has shown a commitment over a long period of time to their welfare and the welfare of their families, and I thought her contribution was right on the money.

I also noted the contribution of the member for Solomon, who, as a veteran himself, has a unique perspective for this parliament. There are only a small number of current parliamentarians who have served in uniform for this country, and each of them, in their own way, brings different and important insights into service—what service means and how veterans react as a result of their service. It is very important that we acknowledge their contributions most particularly.

I want to talk about the comments made by the member for Solomon, particularly around the changing nature in the Northern Territory of the ex-service community, and the work of Bob Shewring and Ray Palmer. There is no doubt that they have moved significantly towards addressing the needs of current serving veterans and recent veterans—that is, people who have separated from the Defence Force over recent years. That is very important. And of course Ray brings a unique insight as the father of a young man who was killed in action.

I come from Alice Springs, and one of the tragedies that's happened in Alice Springs in recent months has been the effective demise, at least in the short term, of the RSL in our town, largely not because of anything that happened in our RSL itself but because of the relationship it had with the South Australian RSL and the South Australian RSL's own administrative difficulties. Thankfully, while the RSL club is closed, the RSL services will continue. The club is, I'm told, forming a relationship with the Alice Springs Golf Club. That of itself is important, but what is most important is that its services and its advocacy for former defence personnel and current serving veterans be available to anyone who requires them, and that will continue.

As a former Minister for Veterans' Affairs, I strongly support the intent of this legislation. I believe that it is important for rationalising the way in which we provide support for our veterans in the serving community. I am indebted, as always, to the Parliamentary Library for their Bills Digest. On the issue about which we're speaking, I want to reinforce, most particularly, why it is important that we treat our veterans community and our serving personnel appropriately. They are not like any other Australians. They are unique. The Bills Digest reminds us of the words of a review of the Military Compensation Scheme that was conducted in March 1999 by Noel Tanzer. It is known as the Tanzer review. In it, these comments were made—and I quote from the Bills Digest:

The role of the ADF [Australian Defence Force] is to protect Australia and its interests. To meet this role, the ADF is required to maintain an operationally capable force, which displays a high level of fitness, commitment, efficiency and discipline among its members. To achieve this, certain inherent requirements apply to those personnel serving in the ADF. These requirements will, to varying degrees, impact on the lifestyle of each ADF member. Such conditions are generally specific to military life and would not normally apply to the majority of those in civilian employment.

That is really true. It is a very apt description of the men and women in uniform who serve this country as members of the Australian Defence Force.

We need to understand that, when someone puts on that uniform, they are effectively saying that they're prepared to die for their country. They are required to act under instruction and order and do things that most other Australians would never be required to do. When we see the unique nature of military service, we ought to acknowledge and make sure that, in providing for our veterans—both serving and those who are no longer in the Defence Force—their needs are being properly met. I think this piece of legislation is significant in that regard.

As the Bills Digest reminds us, since the First World War, successive Australian governments have had a high priority to 'provide compensation and related support to veterans and their dependants'. As highlighted by this document:

Compensation for members of the Australian Defence Force who suffer injury or disease has been the subject of numerous changes since that time.

As a result, members are covered by a number of different pieces of legislation: the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988, SRCA, which we've heard about; the Veterans Entitlements Act, which applies to service before 1 July 2004; and the Military, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004, or MRCA, which works for those who served on or after 1 July 2004.

The MRCA was the first piece of legislation designed to cover the whole spectrum of military service, but, as you can imagine, given the time between these various pieces of legislation, there are inconsistencies between the VEA, the SRCA and the MRCA. They provide for different benefits, significantly because of their own histories. They have different rates of payment and give different circumstances which give rise to entitlement. That's something which is particularly untenable, really. We need to make sure there's a uniform way of dealing with our veteran community.

When Alan Griffin was the Minister for Veterans' Affairs, he commissioned the then secretary of the Department of Veterans' Affairs, Ian Campbell—as part of a steering committee chaired by Ian Campbell—to do a review of the military compensation arrangements. While the terms of reference focused on the operation of MRCA, the Campbell view was strongly in favour of a military-specific compensation scheme that recognises that military service is different from civilian employment—and it is, and we should all acknowledge that fact.

I know, from my own experience, that it is very different. We only need to talk to members of the veterans community, whether they're older members who survived the Second World War or the Korean War or the Vietnam War, or whether they are more recent veterans who had experience in Africa, Somalia, the Middle East, Afghanistan or Timor-Leste. We know that their experiences have, in many cases, given them either injuries or illnesses that will last for the rest of their lives. That has an impact not only on them but, of course, on their families, most significantly. We need to make sure that we're doing everything we possibly can to properly address their needs and their requirements.

I note that the member for Brand talked about the Senate inquiry into the suicide issue. What that Senate inquiry made very clear is that this is really a young person's thing—the majority of these suicides happen to young serving members, or ex-serving members, who are young men, primarily; they're not even in their mid-20s. We send people to do things and, when they do those things, they experience situations which none of us who haven't been there could even contemplate. Not only are they putting their lives on the line; they are also, potentially, suffering the impacts of observing incidents, which will have a lasting effect. One of the issues which arises out of that is that, too often, younger veterans, when they separate from the Defence Force, lose contact with their comrades and have no affiliation with the RSL or any other Defence organisation, and, as a result, they often get lost. When it's time for them to be treated because an injury, which they received during their service, has become apparent and is affecting the way they live or when they develop mental health issues as a result of their service, sometimes they are very alone. It's these young people that we've got to be most concerned about because, as that committee report tells us, they are the ones who have suffered the most.

I am pleased to be able to support this legislation. Others have gone through the intricacies of it, and I don't intend to do that, other than to say that this bill makes good the government's promise—and I commend the government for doing this—to carve out the workers compensation entitlements of Defence Force members from SRCA. It will effectively quarantine Defence Force members from the effects of any future amendments of the SRC Act, and, most particularly and importantly, it will place all current veterans acts with the civil minister, in this case the Minister for Veterans' Affairs, which is as it should be.

It's important that we see the current minister as also responsible for defence personnel issues, as I was when I was a minister, so he gets a good look across both the Defence department—current serving men and women in uniform—and veterans—those who are current serving veterans or people who have separated from the Defence Force—and is able to bring those two departmental agencies a lot closer and, hopefully, get a lot more clarity and understanding for veterans and veterans organisations. I do think this is an important piece of legislation, and I commend it to the House.

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