Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the in-committee debate on the Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment (2015 Budget Measures) Bill 2015. When the minister replies, I will seek clarification and confirmation on whether schedule 2, clause 9B has been omitted from the amended version of the legislation. It appears that the contested and controversial schedule 2 will be scrapped by this government. There are many nervous veterans who would like to hear the words from the minister, personally.

I have no objections to schedule 1 and schedule 3 of the proposed government legislation. Schedule 1—$0.7 million over the next four years—will expand the range of services available under the Veterans' Vocational Rehabilitation Scheme, the VVRS, and make changes to the way certain periods of work undertaken as part of the VVRS, income earned from that work and periods of unemployment affect the rate of disability pension and/or service pension paid to participants. As a matter of fact, I welcome that. I congratulate the government for doing that. That is a wonderful thing. I know that there are a lot of veterans and families who are very appreciative of that.

Schedule 3, relating to the graves of dependants of member of the Defence Force—at a cost of $1.8 million over four years—allows the Minister for Veterans' Affairs to amend Regulation 31 of the Defence Force Regulations 1952 so as to provide for the repatriation of the remains of service dependants buried in the Terendak Military Cemetery in Malaysia.

However, I do have concerns and suggestions for schedule 2 and specifically clause 9B which I strongly oppose. This provision, as it stood in the unamended legislation, undermined and weakened veterans' fundamental legal rights and decreased their chances of appealing bad decisions made by the Veterans' Review Board. The provisions, which would have harmed our veterans, relate to the legal costs, which can be awarded to veterans by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for successful appeal applications to decisions made in the Veterans' Review Board. Under the current system, costs can be awarded to veterans should their appeal to the higher authority, the AAT, be successful. That right to access costs would be taken away from our veterans should this legislation be passed in its original form, or indeed in an amended form which was leaked to me. It was there in black and white at clause 9B, which read, on the version that found its way into my office somehow:

After subsection 357(6) Insert

(6A) if in any proceedings, the Tribunal varies or sets aside a reviewable determination made by the Board, the Tribunal must not make an order under subsection (2) or (4) in favour of a claimant in relation to the costs of those proceedings if:

(a) In the course of the review by the Tribunal, the claimant provided to the tribunal a document relevant to the review, and

(b) The tribunal is satisfied that, at the time when the Board made the reviewable determination, the Board did not have the document, nor was the document reasonably available to the Board; and

(c) The Tribunal is satisfied that, if the Board had the document at the time when the Board made the reviewable determination, the Board would have made a determination more favourable to the claimant than the reviewable determination.

Translating that legal speech into easily understandable English, it means that, if the veteran introduces to their legal process new information as part of their appeal in the form of a doctor's report, supporting statements from former ADF colleagues, witness statements from family and friends, medical statements from GPs outside the defence system, personnel files from Defence, summons documents or psych documents, then that veteran will have to pay for their legal costs, even if the veteran wins their case before the independent appeals tribunal. This provision was clearly designed to deter veterans from appealing decisions made by the Veterans' Review Board.

Who would appeal a bad decision if you would be forced to pay for the legal costs no matter what the outcome of the legal proceedings? That is exactly where we were heading. Most fair-minded Australians would expect that, if an independent judicial tribunal found in favour of a claim by one of our veterans, that veteran's legal costs would be reimbursed. It was not the veteran's fault that a wrong decision was made in the first place, so why should they be forced to pay extra for what was essentially a government mistake?

Without the amendment, it would have made things significantly harder for the veteran and their personal legal team to subject the Veterans' Review Board decision-making process to independent scrutiny. While the government likes to peddle the mistruth that the Veterans' Review Board is a fair and independent body, the simple fact is: veterans are not allowed to take their solicitors into those hearings, and many of the members of the VRB are legally trained. I do not see where the fair playing ground is in that. We have a situation where, quite often, the veteran and his or her advocate, who do not have official legal training, walk into a room full of government representatives who have official legal training. To rub salt into what has become a gaping wound, the public servants who serve on these government bodies, should they have a grievance and want to appeal before the AAT, will be able to be awarded legal costs should their appeal be upheld. It is a shocking example of where public servants are being treated better and given more legal rights than our veterans.

Before I close, I would like to broadly comment on the state of affairs within Veterans' Affairs. I had high hopes when the old minister, Minister Ronaldson, was replaced with the new minister, Stuart Robert. Those high hopes lasted for about five minutes into my first and likely my only meeting with Minister Robert. It is clear from the tone and attitude of the new Minister for Veterans' Affairs that, despite the fact he is a veteran himself, his loyalty is to the Liberal Party and not his former comrades, certainly not the diggers from non-commissioned ranks. That is for sure. I raised a couple of very important veteran cases with the new minister, and his dismissive and misleading comments shocked me to the core.

The only hope I have for justice to be delivered to veterans who have been betrayed, bullied and ignored by successive governments is for a royal commission to finally be established. We will get there in the end. A royal commission would give thousands of veterans a chance to put their hands on a Bible, tell the truth and lift the lid on the dysfunction, endemic corruption, abuse of office, misconduct and cover-up from the highest levels of Defence and Veterans' Affairs. It will take a massive backlash from the public to force this government into establishing a royal commission, but I am confident that, when the stories of veterans like Marcus Saltmarsh, SAS Trooper Evan Donaldson and Jordan Woodruff, just to name a few, are properly told, the white-hot anger from the Australian people will be felt, even by politicians who think they are untouchable in this reinforced and insulated building.

In closing: when the minister replies, I seek clarification and confirmation from her that schedule 2, clause 9B, has been omitted from this amended version of the legislation.