Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw. This is what the now Prime Minister said to the RSL:

A “fair go” is the least a grateful nation can offer to serving and former military personnel.

That is what he said. Where is the fair go in cutting the real pay of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and women? Where is the fair go for ADF families in the cuts to leave and other entitlements? This is, yet again, another government broken promise, another government lie. And that tally is mounting up: already today we have discussed three or four others. To promise a fair go for our military personnel before the election, then slug them with a real pay cut after the election—'no surprises' the then opposition leader said before the election. There will be no excuses, no blaming the others, no blaming anybody else; no surprises for the Australian public. Well I have got to tell you: there are 55,000 bloody surprised service personnel in this country today!

This is, unfortunately, a pattern of behaviour when it comes to this government. The first decision, the very first decision, taken by this defence minister was to cut the pay and conditions of ADF personnel serving in Afghanistan and the Middle East. And now in the first chance they get to put in place an ADF pay deal, the Abbott government cuts the ADF's real pay and conditions again.

This is despite—and here is where the real deceit comes into play and not one of the speakers who are going to follow on the other side will be able to explain this—in the 2014-15 budget already having allocated funding for a fair pay deal for ADF personnel. So they put in the budget four per cent. It is in the budget papers. It does not add to the deficit. It does not add to expenditure: it is in the budget. What do we see? A pay increase of 1.5 per cent already allocated, already decided, but they budgeted for up to four per cent. So they cannot try and blame previous governments. They cannot try and blame the deficit. They cannot try and blame all of the expenditure on other programs in their own budget: they allocated for up to four per cent. They are just being mean, tricky and deceitful.

I spent weeks exposing the fact that it is a real pay cut. I have had the minister saying, 'It's not a pay cut at all; they are getting a pay rise.' They are all playing with words and semantics. It is real pay cut—