Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment (Omnibus) Bill 2017, and it is a privilege to do so. I would like to acknowledge the contribution of my colleague across the chamber and my colleague from Western Australia Senator Reynolds who has obviously had a lot more time in this place and have a lot more detailed knowledge of some of these issues than perhaps I do at this relatively early stage of my career. It is incumbent upon the government and the nation, when dealing with the very important issue of defence, to take a broad view of that issue, and part of the way we defend our community and defend our nation is by making sure we treat our veterans with respect and give them the processes and supports they need post their time in the service of our nation.

I would like to begin today by relating a story. It's a great honour, when you serve in this place, that you get the opportunity to represent veterans and their families and to represent the government at events where veterans and their families are honoured. I had just such an opportunity relatively early on in my career. My wife received an email from a former colleague of hers, and the email contained a very long, somewhat convoluted chain of events that led me to helping a poppy get placed on the wall of remembrance at the War Memorial.

A lady from Western Australia, Betty Havercroft, wrote a letter to The Canberra Times on 10 October, looking for someone in Canberra who could place a poppy on the Roll of Honour in memory of her relative, James Herman Breuer, who was killed in action at Passchendaele on 12 October 1917. Betty Havercroft wanted the poppy to be placed on the Roll of Honour on the 100th anniversary of James Breuer's death at Passchendaele. This letter appeared in The Canberra Times and it was seen, as I said, by a friend of my wife's. She had been researching her own family history and, as a bit of a coincidence, she found out that her grandfather had actually served with James Breuer and they'd trained together at a camp in Western Australia called Blackboy Hill. In fact, they'd lived not too far from each other at that time as well.

The next coincidence in the chain was that they had both served under a cousin of mine in the First World War, Major Edmund Drake-Brockman. Major Edmund Drake-Brockman was part of the training camp on Blackboy Hill and they were all part of the 11th Battalion that embarked for Egypt and landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. A subsequent series of events took them to the Western Front in July 1917, and then we see the vagaries of war. My wife's friend's grandfather made it back to Australia after he served, lived a long and healthy life and died at the age of 86, whereas a very young James Breuer died on the fields of Passchendaele on 12 October 1917.

So it came full circle, with Mrs Betty Havercroft looking for someone it place a poppy on the Roll of Honour. I was in Western Australia at the time, but I was lucky enough to be in a position where I could reach out to people I knew in Canberra to do that for her. It shows the depth of support for veterans and veterans' families that when a good friend of mine, Philippa Campbell, went to the Roll of Honour to place the poppy on the wall, she found that a number of others had already been there to do it. In fact, something like 12 people from Canberra or from around Australia had actually seen Betty Havercroft's letter in The Canberra Times and had gone to the Roll of Honour and placed poppies in the wall in memory of James Breur on the 100th anniversary of his death.

As members of this place, we get the extraordinary opportunity to meet with our defence forces, to meet with veterans and to represent the government at various events where veterans and their families are honoured. In the short time I've been in this place, I've had a chance to attend the BAE shipyards at Henderson with the Prime Minister, where we had a chance to inspect the ships up on the hardstand and talk about the investment in the Nulka anti-ship missile defence program and to talk with serving personnel—civilian as well as military—as the upgrades to those ships were taking place. Last week I had the honour of visiting HMAS Stirling with the defence minister, Minister Payne, to turn a sod on a $367 million investment in the redevelopment of Stirling naval base. Local contracts have already been awarded there and we've seen $37 million going into local businesses. I got the chance to speak with serving military personnel and civilians working on those projects. We do have an extraordinary opportunity to look to the future defence of our nation, and part of that, as I said, is ensuring that we treat our veterans with respect, giving them the systems and processes and support they need to be part of our society post their time of service.

The omnibus bill, which I'm very glad to see has cross-party support, modernises and aligns the Veterans' Review Board's operations with those of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, following the amendments made by the Tribunals Amalgamation Act 2015. I will second the comments made by Senator O'Neill that the processes we put in place for our veterans have to be quick, informal and accessible. They have to give people the opportunity to have their case heard in a way that allows them the maximum opportunity to have their voice heard whilst at the same time ensuring that a proper process is followed. The amendments also support the alternative dispute resolution process. Again, this is about giving people a chance to have their perspective heard in a perhaps less formal way than would otherwise be the case. It also supports the recent amendments to the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004, which provide for a single appeal path for reconsidering decisions.

Schedule 2 amends the provisions of the Veterans' Entitlements Act 1986 concerning the Specialist Medical Review Council, improving the operations of the council, streamlining its administrative arrangements and better reflecting the manner in which its functions and processes have evolved over time. Again, this is about making sure the administrative arrangements for those support services we place around our veterans are the best, simplest and most comprehensive they can be. The proposed amendments would simplify the nomination of appointment process for counsellors, enable online lodgement of claims, streamline the notice of investigation requirements and give the SMRC the ability to pay the travel costs of applicants who appear before an oral hearing of the council. Again, we need to keep modernising our systems as technologies improve and as we are able to move what has traditionally been a very paper based system into the modern era, and as we get the ability to move those documents around much more quickly. We also need to give the Specialist Medical Review Council the ability to allow applicants who feel that they need to appear in person before the council the ability to do so.

The proposed amendments to schedule 3 of the omnibus bill would enable international agreements to be made that would cover allied veterans and defence force members with service of the type for which benefits and payments, including rehabilitation, can be provided by the Repatriation Commission or the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Commission under the relevant acts. Currently the Minister for Veterans' Affairs can only enter into arrangements with the governments of countries that are or have been dominions of the Crown. These amendments would enable the Minister for Veterans' Affairs to enter into arrangements with a broader range of countries. Obviously the arrangements that have been in place reflect our history and reflect the history of our service in past wars, but times have changed and the nature of the Australian population has changed. This is a very sensible amendment, which enables the minister to look to arrangements that will better serve everyone who falls under these categories within Australia.

The proposed amendments in schedule 4 are intended to clarify that vocational rehabilitation assistance under an employer incentive scheme in the form of wage incentive payments is within the scope of the enabling provisions of the relevant legislation. Schedule 5 amends the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004 and the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation (Defence-related Claims) Act 1988 to add the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation as a person to whom the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Commission may provide information for purposes allowed under the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation's legislation. Again, this is a minor technical amendment that smooths the flow of information between relevant parties dealing with veterans' affairs. The proposed amendments implement a recommendation by the 2011 Review of Military Compensation Arrangements, intended to improve the information-sharing framework for incapacity and superannuation benefits between DVA and CSC and, therefore, reduce the time taken to process claims by DVA and CSC, better supporting injured former ADF members. Anything we can do to speed up processing times for people in these circumstances is obviously something we should all support.

In addition, enabling the CSC to use medical information and reports held by the MRCC to determine superannuation claims would also avoid the need to send ADF members for further medical assessment where DVA already holds relevant medical evidence that could be used by the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation to determine superannuation benefits. Once again, why would we want to send our veterans to require additional assessments by new medical personnel when those assessments have already been carried out to the satisfaction of the Department of Veterans' Affairs? We don't want to retraumatise our veterans. We don't want them to have to retell their stories, particularly when we are dealing with people, as we've heard from my colleagues, with significant issues like post-traumatic stress disorder or other similar psychological conditions, including people who have potentially been victims of physical or psychological abuse.

There is also the ability to dismiss frivolous and vexatious claims. My understanding is that this was requested by the shadow veterans' affairs minister, and it's something that the government has looked at and agreed to. These amendments clarify that the decision to dismiss claims for reasons of being frivolous or vexatious is a non-delegable decision and lies with the principal member of the Veterans' Review Board. The principal member will have the ability to dismiss an application for review where he or she is satisfied that the application is frivolous, vexatious, misconceived or lacking substance, or is otherwise an abuse of process.

In commending the bill to the Senate, I would raise again that one of the most important duties we have in this place is looking to the defence of our nation and that looking to the defence of our nation means that we must look to the adequate support of our veterans. Whilst these amendments are largely technical in nature, they do make important changes to ensure that the processes that our veterans face are the smoothest, simplest and easiest to access that they can be. I'm sure there is more work to do in this space, and I'm sure there are additional issues that will need to be considered over time, but this is a good bill and it does and will help our veterans. I commend the bill.