Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Defence Personnel) Share this | Hansard source

We on this side of the chamber always support appropriation bills. It's a legacy of the dark days when a Labor government was held to parliamentary ransom by a coalition that wouldn't respect the House of Representatives. We have a strong, principled position that we support appropriation bills even if we don't agree with every single thing that's in the particular bill. This is an appropriation of nearly $16 billion and covers a whole range of portfolio areas—from agriculture to defence to the digital economy and a whole range of other areas—but in relation to this bill, Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2021-2022, I want to take the opportunity to speak generally about where the economy stands and where this government has, in my view, failed dismally.

Before they came to power, nearly a decade ago, the government promised there would be surpluses in every budget year, certainly in the first year and in every year thereafter. That's what the then member for North Sydney and shadow Treasurer, Joe Hockey, said. They haven't delivered one. It has been the longest period of consecutive deficits that this country has seen for 40 years or more. We on this side of the chamber, who have constantly been criticised on debt and deficit, won't take lectures from a government that has racked up a trillion dollars in debt, that has delivered deficit after deficit, and that wasted $20 billion on JobKeeper for businesses that didn't deserve it and didn't need it—that had made profits—when it wouldn't support casual workers or people in this country on visas, who had to rely on the generosity of the Australian community to maintain themselves.

This is a government that prides itself on being, allegedly, a low-taxing government. It's the second-highest-taxing government in the history of the Commonwealth of Australia, and it has had multiple failures. My community has seen that writ large. In the digital economy, as the member for Kingston talked about, there are whole suburbs in regional areas where they're going to have to rip up what they've done and, eventually, bring in fibre to the premises. One of the terrible legacies of the former Prime Minister and member for Warringah, Mr Tony Abbott, and the subsequent Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, is the failure of the NBN, which has disadvantaged regional and rural communities massively. It's a point of equity and equality in this country: we need to have a digital economy that will help farmers, students and other people living in regional and rural communities to have the same opportunities as people living in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane. But that's not happening. A government that have spent over $50 billion, when they promised that it would cost $29 billion and that they would have it all done years and years ago, are going to have to rip it all up again, in large part—and the HFC connections—and do it all over again. They should never have done it, the policy decision they undertook years ago. They should have done it once, done it right and done it with fibre, as Tony Windsor once said. So we need investment in roads and rail and digital infrastructure to improve the economy.

This government have failed on so many levels in terms of the economy. One of the things I want to talk about is their failure to accurately support wage claims and improvements in wages and conditions for workers. They have failed on 52 of the 55 forecasts when it came to wage increases. They have constantly failed. Even now they can't bring themselves to support wage increases in the aged-care sector. The election sweeteners that they'll dole out right up until the day of the election in May will only benefit six per cent of aged-care-sector workers, because the overwhelming majority of people who work in the aged-care sector who will get the benefit of this funding, this almost wage tokenism, are full-time workers—only six per cent. So many people will not benefit in any way whatsoever because they're casual workers and because they have been disadvantaged by a system that has been let down by the coalition. Whether you look at MYEFO 2015-16 or budget 2016-17, they indicate nearly $1.7 billion in cuts to the aged-care sector, a sector which has been put under tremendous strain by this government and its failures in terms of quarantine, vaccinations, the booster program, PPE and rapid antigen tests.

I have been to aged-care facilities in my electorate that are feeling the strain, with people losing jobs, shifts not being filled, people not getting the kind of support and care they need, and people struggling with COVID. The government has monumentally failed across this space, with a minister who thinks that the aged-care sector is doing exceptionally well. Over 700 people have died since January, and the minister thinks the sector is doing exceptionally well! Well, come and visit the aged-care facilities in my electorate. I was at one last Friday, Cabanda in Rosewood, which is a rural town in my home city, the City of Ipswich. Cabanda is struggling with PPE and RATs, increased costs because of COVID and a classification that's wrong—and I've raised that issue on a number of occasions in this chamber. But, when it comes to this, the government wants to take credit for everything and responsibility for nothing. They constantly talk up their achievements but fail to deliver. I want to give a couple of examples of that when it comes to the areas that I deal with as shadow minister for defence personnel and veterans' affairs.

I want to pay tribute to people like Glenn Kolomeitz, a lawyer who's been helping Afghan veterans, veterans in this space, and so many other people who've been supporting them in this area. They feel let down by a government that talked about their achievements in Afghanistan and the evacuation. We're thankful for everyone who has been evacuated and our ADF personnel who did it. But we have a moral obligation. This government didn't evacuate people quickly enough, and they didn't take up the offer from the Americans to evacuate people, and we're letting them down. There are still people over there—security guards, Afghan interpreters, people who worked with our embassy, people who worked with our people over there—who are still languishing under the Taliban and the despotic rule of the Taliban. What are we doing to get the out? Very little. It's not only a national security responsibility for this country to not let down those we supported in war and peacekeeping operations; it's also a moral obligation and an ethical obligation.

The impact on those veterans and the ADF is now writ large for all to see, because we now have a royal commission that was established after the work and advocacy of people like Nikki Jamieson, Karen Bird, Julie-Ann Finney and so many other people who pushed hard for a royal commission. It's sitting in Sydney right now. It was in Brisbane last year.

What have we heard during that time? We have heard about mental health issues, suicidal ideation. We have heard about bullying, bastardisation. We have heard about harassment, sexual assault. We have heard about people who have committed suicide and the impact on their families. This has been going on for quite some time. These are confronting issues, and they will confront not just the ADF but governments in the future. But this government has let us down and let the ADF and the veterans community down. Waiting times for the processing of claims are blowing out. The 100-day rule is just a nonsense. Twenty-eight per cent of applications for compensation are being dealt with within 100 days. Last year the Senate finance and public administration committee was given overwhelming evidence that, under the MRCA legislation, the DRCA legislation and the VEA legislation, claims are blowing out. There are 50,000 claims currently waiting to be processed. That came out in evidence to Senate estimates last night. This is having an impact on the mental health of our veterans and their families.

I want to finish on a bit of evidence that came out last night. We've got to go back to October last year, when the minister announced a McKinsey review. The government love privatising, labour hiring and outsourcing. One of their favourite organisations is McKinsey. So they spent $1.3 million on this external review. The minister said it was his action plan, which was going to be delivered by the end of last year. It was an action plan that was going to reform the Department of Veterans' Affairs, where still 34 per cent of the people who work there are labour hire, working for one of the 46 companies that the current government engage to deliver services. Why they don't lift the ideological cap and employ public servants who are experienced in the Public Service and the Department of Veterans' Affairs to complete the process in time I'll never know. But they spent $1.3 million on this McKinsey action plan. They've never released it. I've called for it multiple times, and they've never released it. In the House of Representatives chamber, the minister sat opposite me, and I called on him to release it. They still haven't released it. So the processing times keep blowing out.

We heard in Senate estimates last night that this review is a complete dud. It interviewed a total of two families and received only three formal submissions and 33 emails from the public. They spent $1.3 million of taxpayers' funds on this report to overhaul DVA claims in that period of time. Three months after it's been completed, we're told, its findings and its recommendations remain secret. That's one example—I could give so many—that says it all. The backlog of claims is getting worse in the Department of Veterans' Affairs, and the evidence shows the outstanding number growing to 50,000 claims, as I said. A royal commission has heard evidence about veteran suicide being linked to the backlog of claims, and the royal commission said the backlog of claims is 'unacceptably high'. We've got a review that cost $1.3 million of taxpayers' money, and it is not being released. The recommendations are secret. As I say, there were three formal submissions and 33 emails and they interviewed two families. What did they do for $1.3 million? Two families! I say to the minister: release the report and the recommendations. This is the action plan. It reminds me of the mental health strategy they were going to do following the Productivity Commission report that came out on 2 July 2019. The response had a lot of blank pages and pictures and was a recitation, a litany, of government programs, with almost no recommendations, no action to be undertaken.

That's the legacy of this government with respect to the Department of Veterans' Affairs and the hundreds of thousands of people they interact with every day—$11.7 billion is spent every year by this department on hundreds of thousands of people. There are approximately 60,000 people in our ADF including reservists, and this government has let them down. They can't deliver submarines. They can't deliver defence platforms. They cancel future programs at huge costs. When dealing with our trusted allies and friends, like the French, they don't do the right thing in many respects in the way they deal with them. They also let their contractors down.

I say to the minister, when it comes to the Department of Veterans' Affairs, 'You're not achieving your defence personnel requirements.' In all the reviews we've been told that in not one year since 2016 has the ADF recruited the optimal number of people. Why? Because the government can't deal with them when they exit and transition in terms of housing and homelessness, in terms of employment and job opportunities, in terms of support for rehabilitation and compensation, in terms of claims. The Department of Veterans' Affairs has outsourced and privatised and used labour hire more than any other Commonwealth department. I say to the minister: 'Lift the ideological cap, reduce the backlog, release the McKinsey review and engage with the Labor opposition. Let's work with the recommendations of the royal commission and veterans communities around the country to improve the situation. Minister, do your job.'

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