Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Service in the Australian Defence Force is obviously a far from ordinary job. There are no other jobs in this country where people are trained to deal with being shot at and blown up, and are trained to shoot to kill, when they need to—hopefully not very often, hopefully never. It is not a normal job. It presents great difficulties for those who serve in the Defence Force. Being on operations is dangerous enough, but even in training it is very dangerous. Recently, we had the terrible news that three soldiers were injured, when training with an artillery piece, in the Shoalwater Bay training area.

Unsurprisingly, the people who serve in the military suffer all sorts of injuries and it is not uncommon for people to leave the military and carry those injuries for the rest of their lives. I did 20 years in the Army. I did not see operational service but, through the rigours of training, by the time I left the military, I had had surgery on both knees and on both shoulders, and I had a hearing loss in both ears—and that was without going on operational service. I do not tell you my statistics about my joints and ears to big note myself but I think it highlights that it is a difficult line of work and it often leaves people with injuries they carry through their whole life. Even if they are not injured, just moving around all the time—every couple of years moving interstate or even overseas—places a great burden on soldiers and on their families, on children in particular. It is not uncommon for the children of soldiers to have to change schools on numerous occasions. Sometimes children even have to repeat a year or two as they move from state to state, country to country, and are required to deal with different curriculums in each of the education systems.

It is not surprising that there is a higher incidence of relationship problems in the military because of these absences and soldiers going overseas. We have heard about soldiers who served in Afghanistan two or three times—protracted absences. We have heard about soldiers who served in Iraq, who served in East Timor before that and more recently served in Afghanistan. I am labouring this point because I really do want all members to understand that the military is an extraordinary profession and that those who serve in our military genuinely deserve all the support we can give them. And when they leave the military, they should be looked after.

Regrettably, some of them have not been looked after, in particular because of the way the DFRB and the more recent DFRDB pension schemes have not been indexed properly. Those schemes have only been indexed against the consumer price index. We have probably all seen the charts which show clearly that the real value of their pensions has diminished over time and would continue to diminish over time if we did not fix the indexation. The fact that we need to index government payments and pensions properly is illustrated by the fact that other payments are already indexed better—for example, the age pension, which increases by the greater of the CPI or the pensioner and beneficiary living cost index.

On one hand we have, for a long time, understood the deficiency of CPI indexation of government payments at any time, yet we have not addressed the inadequate forms of indexation for other sorts of payments. In other words, the government's move to remedy the indexation for DFRB and DFRDB is warranted and it is way beyond time that it is done.

I give credit where it is due, to the government, credit for finally acting on this. It is way beyond time that this action needed to be taken. It is a great shame that this positive reform has been surrounded by so much political argy bargy. We have the government saying that they are doing a wonderful job and the Labor opposition fighting a constant confrontational battle over every policy it seems. But do you know what? Neither side in this chamber is covered in any glory when it comes to the indexation of military superannuation. I am not letting the Liberal Party off the that hook here. Why was this not fixed during the Howard government? Why was this not fixed during the Keating government, the Hawke government, the Rudd government, the Gillard government? There has been a succession of governments, both Liberal-National coalition governments and Labor government, all of whom have not addressed this in the past when it should have been. So yes, I give credit where it is due—to the government tonight for finally acting. But I suggest the government should be a little more humble in crowing about its achievement, considering it could have fixed this during the many years of the Howard government and it decided not to.

I am also concerned that the bill does not go far enough. As we have heard already in the speeches in this place, the bill will remedy the indexation arrangement but only for DFRB and DFRDB recipients over the age of 55. In other words, those recipients who are younger than 55 will not enjoy the benefit of the enhanced indexation arrangem ents. That is quite a few peopl There are about 56,000 recipients nationally of DFRB and DFRDB. A small number of DFRB recipients are under the age of 55 and, interestingly, 20 per cent of DFRDB recipients are under the age of 55, so they will not enjoy the benefits of these reforms before the House at the moment. I have an amendment that calls on the government to remove the age 55 threshold for people to enjoy the improved indexation arrangements. I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House calls on the Government:

(1) to expand the scope of the bill to include all recipients of the Defence Force Retirement Benefits and Defence Force Retirement and Death Benefits schemes, regardless of age; and

(2) that such a change exclude any Senator or Member of the House of Representatives currently in receipt of a DFRB or DFRDB pension.

Quite simply, this amendment removes the age 55 threshold. In essence, it calls on the government to apply this reform to all 56,000 DFRB and DFRDB recipients, so it will apply to the small number of DFRB recipients currently under age 55 and the 20 per cent of DFRDB recipients under age 55.

I hope this sensible amendment will be agreeable to the government and to the opposition. I suggest that this amendment is fair and logical. There is no logical reason why you would apply this only from age 55 other than as a budget savings measure. Logically, if there is a problem with the indexation for these two forms of military superannuation and we are going to fix it—and it looks like we are trying to achieve that here tonight—then let us fix it properly. Let us not almost fix it; let us try and fix it properly. I suggest this is not going to be at any substantial additional cost to the government. I have heard figures bandied around that perhaps a total additional cost of—

Mr Ewen Jones interjecting—

Let us put the politics to the side here.

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