Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

You join a very long queue of people who are not involved in negotiations with the ESOs—the minister, the department, staff and everyone else—because they were not consulted. As we discussed some hours ago, they were not advised of this addendum to the explanatory memorandum. In fact, one of them got it at five o'clock tonight.

I want to take up your point on the clarity issue—having been told that it was actually the nature, the extent and the clarity; but you acknowledge that Mr Campbell said it was only a clarity issue. Parliamentary Secretary, are you aware of this comment from Rear Admiral Doolan: 'What we are saying is that we seek clarity, and we see schedule 2 as bringing a degree of lack of clarity. As I said in my opening remarks, we see the current status as allowing for offsetting and being reasonable and we have no difficulty with the current arrangements'?

I think the matters that Senator Xenophon raised today indicate that either this is a sledgehammer to crack a nut or this is not required at all, or this is a deliberate attempt to transfer responsibility for policy and decision making in relation to this matter away from the parliament to the department. In relation to that, Parliamentary Secretary, I need go no further than the addendum to the explanatory memorandum, which makes it clear that the Repatriation Commission will be issuing appropriate policy guidance to staff of the Department of Veterans' Affairs. Indeed, that is the issue the ESOs have—that you have transferred the policy decision-making process from this place to the department. There is established offsetting legislation and practice, and effectively what you are doing is transferring that out of here to the department. Senator Xenophon, this is probably coming to a close and there will be a division shortly.

The Vietnam Veterans Federation have said that even if guidelines are drawn up by the Repatriation Commission they should be spelt out in the legislation and that the Repatriation Commission guidelines are simply too ephemeral. Do you agree with those comments or not?