Peter Hendy (Eden-Monaro, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to rise to speak on the Defence Force Retirement Benefits Legislation Amendment (Fair Indexation) Bill 2014. I will keep my comments relatively brief in order to allow as many of my coalition colleagues as possible to speak on the bill.

My seat of Eden-Monaro is not the biggest defence electorate in Australia, but it is nonetheless a very sizeable one. There are more than 2,000 defence related workers in the electorate, and there are around 3,500 defence veterans. When you add their dependants to that list, you can see that there is a very sizeable total. And I want to commend the Defence Force Welfare Association in my region, which has done a fantastic job representing its members.

One of the reasons the Liberal Party won the seat of Eden-Monaro at the last election was the shabby treatment meted out to this community by the last government over its dismal six years. And one of the biggest insults to the defence community was the failure to deliver Labor's 2007 election promise to improve indexation for defence super. The former member for Eden-Monaro was actually a frontbencher in the Defence portfolio for almost the whole of the last six years, and he abjectly failed in delivering for the defence community in this area. The poor old soul continues to haunt the corridors of Parliament House as the junior defence adviser for the Leader of the Opposition. The Labor Party has a lot to do to repair the relationship with the defence community. Senator Conroy and his vicious personal attacks on a distinguished general is totally incapable of doing it, and the former member for Eden-Monaro is also a dead weight for the ALP when it comes to the same community. And to imagine that Kevin Rudd thought that he was cabinet material defies belief.

During the last term of the previous parliament, we sought to introduce legislation and resolutions that would deliver on our promise for defence super indexation. Each time, it was rejected by Labor. I think the minister at the table, the member for Kooyong, will remember that famously on one occasion our attempts were defeated by just one vote on the floor of the House of Representatives. In fact, if the then member for Eden-Monaro had stood by his public statements to fight tooth and nail every day for this reform, his vote would have made the difference. And yet he voted against it. So much for fighting tooth and nail; just more empty rhetoric. And that also applies to the completely disingenuous speeches we have just heard on this bill from the other side. The member for Canberra also voted against that resolution. If she had voted for the resolution, it would have got up in the last term of the previous parliament. And the current member for Batman, who was a senator in the upper house in the last parliament, also voted against a similar resolution in the Senate.

So what does this bill deliver that the Labor Party said they would do, but never did? This gives effect to this government's election commitment to fairly index Defence Force retirement benefits, DFRB, and Defence Force retirement and death benefits, DFRDB, pensions for recipients aged 55 and over from 1 July 2014. The measures extend fair indexation provisions to invalidity pensions, reversionary pensions and pensions for those associates in receipt of a pension as a result of a family law split who are aged 55 and over on the current relevant indexation date.

Under the new fairer indexation methodology, which mirrors the two-step indexation process for age and service pensions, the first step would be to calculate the pension that would result if it were increased in line with the better of the consumer price index—that is, the CPI—and the pensioner and beneficiary living cost index. The second step would be to compare the resulting pension to the male total average weekly earnings, often called MTAWE. If the calculated pension is greater than the specified floor percentage—that is, 27.7 per cent—of MTAWE for the single pension, then no further adjustment is made. If the resulting pension is less than the floor percentage of MTAWE, it is increased so that it equals the floor percentage of the MTAWE index.

The proposed changes will have an immediate impact on some 45,000 current DFRB and DFRDB pensioners where the originally entitled member was aged 55 or over at 1 July 2014. Overall, it should help some 57,000 pensioners. This bill gives effect to many years of advocacy by this government, this coalition, for fair indexation of DFRB and DFRDB superannuants and their families. It delivers a key election commitment in full and addresses a longstanding grievance of the veteran and ex-service community. It exactly matches our promises before the election. In Eden-Monaro, there will be 813 direct recipients and some 132 dependants. This legislation will directly benefit around 1,000 of my constituents. I am very proud of the fact that we have made this an early piece of legislation in the life of this parliament. It is a clear sign of the priority we are giving to the defence sector.

In conclusion, may I again appeal to Labor to actually support this bill. Despite the fact that they said it was their policy, they repeatedly voted against it during the last parliament. Indeed, earlier this afternoon they tried to suspend the standing orders to delay the debate on this very bill. I urge them to support it in the Senate and allow this much-needed reform to proceed.

See this speech in context