David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Defence Force Retirement and Death Benefits Amendment (Fair Indexation) Bill 2010, which Senator Ronaldson, the shadow minister for veterans’ affairs, introduced in the Senate as a private senator’s bill last November. I suppose I have to give Senator Ronaldson credit for cheek in bringing this bill before the Senate. The proposition that Senator Ronaldson is putting to the Senate is essentially this: that this government is at fault for failing to enact a policy which his own party failed to enact for 11 years in office, and which Senator Ronaldson opposed as recently as the 2007 election. Senator Ronaldson did not say a single word in the Senate about this issue when he was in government, when he was in a position to do something about it—not a single word.

Just in case senators opposite have forgotten what the lobbyists on this issue thought of the Howard government’s performance, let me quote a letter sent by Mr John Hevey, of a group called the Aussie Digger Forum, to the then Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, Mr Bruce Billson MP, just before the 2007 election:

Bruce, it is long past the pale, that you avoid the true issues in this manner. It is long past the pale that the Coalition Government refuse to acknowledge the injustices that have been perpetrated by the Coalition on the issue of Military Superannuation over the past eleven years, it is long past the pale that the Veteran Community and in particular Military Superannuates have been flagging with the Coalition this very issue for the past eleven years, and now on the eve of a federal election you tell us through a “spokesperson” that the report into this matter will not now be forthcoming until 2008 - the same report that has been in your possession since July.

So there we have the great record of the Howard Government on this issue. Of course, Mr Billson may well have had good reasons to refuse to give the veterans’ lobby what it wanted. No doubt Senator Minchin, then finance minister, told Mr Billson that he could not have the money because it would be fiscally irresponsible to accede to these demands. Whatever, the issue here is not whether Mr Billson was right or wrong. The issue here is the hypocrisy of Senator Ronaldson and the opposition more generally, for demanding in such strident tones that we do something that they themselves refused to do for 11 years while in office.

At the time of the 2007 election, the veterans’ lobby group asked both parties to commit to changing the policy. Neither side was willing to change its policy. Let me remind the Senate again that Senator Ronaldson was a member of the Howard government. Again, I do not recall Senator Ronaldson breaking ranks with his party on this question. He went to the 2007 election on a policy which was the opposite of the one he is now espousing.

Senator Ronaldson’s bill would single out a subcategory of Commonwealth pension recipients for preferential treatment. To try to minimise the cost of this, the opposition has limited the scope of its amendment to retirees over 55. This has the divisive effect of leaving the more than 15,000 ADF retirees currently aged under 55 on the current scheme. Senator Ronaldson is thus in the strange position of arguing that the current arrangements are terribly unjust to ADF retirees but then proposing to leave the current arrangements in place for a large number of retirees.

This is not simply a divisive proposal; it is also a financially irresponsible one. In his second reading speech in November, Senator Ronaldson costed his proposals at $98 million over the forward estimates. In fact, as the Australian Government Actuary has advised, the real cost by 2014-15 would be $175 million. By 2019-20, the cost would be $205 million per annum. The Minister for Finance and Deregulation, who always tries to be helpful, has written to Senator Ronaldson and the Leader of the Opposition outlining the full costs of the schemes, but that does not seem to have made any difference to Senator Ronaldson.

This is typical of the attitude which the opposition have taken to public spending. They denounce the government for ‘reckless spending’, while at the same time promoting their own poorly costed, poorly designed schemes for more and more public spending in their endless search for cheap popularity with various lobby groups who would like, naturally enough, more money spent on their particular cause. The opposition do not care about the budget bottom line. All they care about is transitory electoral advantage with sections of the community who would like more public spending.

The opposition have demonstrated their fiscal recklessness by twice blocking a $5 billion savings measure put forward by this government. This includes means-testing of the private health insurance rebate, which would cost the budget some $2.1 billion over the next four years, and the closure of the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme, an Abbott-designed scheme that has had significant cost blow-outs and which will cost the budget $3.1 billion over the next four years. That is an additional $5 billion in spending over the next four years as a result of the opposition’s recklessness. They are also in the process of trying to block a further $2 billion in savings to the budget over four years by voting against reforms to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. The opposition have demonstrated time and time again that they are not committed to bringing the budget back to surplus.

This bill is, frankly, nothing but a stunt. Senator Ronaldson knows that there is no chance that this bill will become law. In fact, I suspect he is probably relieved to reach that conclusion, because of course the opposition have absolutely no idea where they would find the money to pay for this measure if it were somehow to pass. This is bad policy and financially irresponsible. To give the other side some credit, they know it. They are advancing this proposition in the complete knowledge that it has not a leg to stand on. The record of their 11 years in office is proof of that.

This bill is also quite possibly unconstitutional. Advice from the Attorney-General, which has previously been tabled in the Senate, makes it clear:

A proposed law that would appropriate revenue or moneys cannot originate as a private member’s bill. A bill for such a law cannot, in any event, originate in the Senate.

This shows that the opposition are not serious about this bill. It is nothing more than a populist stunt that aims to create the illusion of action, perhaps also the illusion of deep thought. But, of course, it is an illusion, because this is an issue which the coalition did absolutely nothing about during their 11 years in government. The opposition do not care whether this is good policy or bad, whether it is financially responsible or irresponsible or even whether it is constitutional or unconstitutional. All they care about is a headline in the Australian and a cheer from the gallery. But I am confident that the ex-service community, the defence community and indeed the wider Australian people will see this bill for the exercise in cheap, opportunist politics that it is. Unfortunately it is a stunt that is consistent with the tawdry methodology of those opposite.