Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Hansard source

Last night in the Main Committee I spoke on the Assisting the Victims of International Terrorism Bill 2009 and unfortunately, due to timing, I did not get to put on the record all of my concerns. I want to say that I support the private member’s bill as put forward by the member for Warringah, seconded by me, which provides up to $75,000 in compensation for the victims of international terrorism when they are subjected to terrorism overseas. Why do I support this? I support this because I have a personal knowledge, feeling for and understanding of those who have been victims of international terrorism. A person I have known for some 14 years, Paul Anicich, and his wife Penny, and Tony Purkiss, who I have known for a while, are outstanding people. I have seen the effect of that bomb blast in Bali in 2005 on their lives.

As members of parliament we can stand here and speak all we like about what we think or understand they are going through—the pain, the suffering, the loss of quality of life, the loss of income, the stresses on families—but I am not Paul Anicich and I am not Tony Purkiss. I cannot feel what they feel. I can only think I understand what they are going through.

As I said in the Main Committee last night, the Paul Anicich that I met 14 years ago was a leading legal practitioner in the Hunter. He was a model corporate citizen, shown through his engagement and leadership in the community. Tony Purkiss was an outstanding man. But I see these people now and it breaks my heart to see what they have gone through. Paul Anicich, when he came to see me not long after he got back to Australia and started to recover, wanted nothing more than a victim’s gold health card to help offset the additional financial costs of health treatment for what he went through in that bomb blast on that night in October 2005. Paul did not want cash; he just wanted some assistance by way of a card. He found it extremely traumatic to go to a new doctor and have to go through the whole scenario again, of what happened to him and the treatments—that is, of reliving that moment over and over again. He wanted to be spared that.

The private member’s bill put forward by the member for Warringah and seconded by me has our support. It was argued last night that there was no precedent for a $75,000 payment for victims in this situation. I would put to you that under the provisions of state governments there is a $75,000 victim of crime payment available. We are saying that these are Australian citizens, that these are Australians that deserve our support and that we as a federal government should make available to those people a payment of $75,000. That would go not just to the individual victims but to parallel the state provisions so that, if somebody had unfortunately been killed by one of these acts, their next of kin would be able to access this support—as, indeed, they are able under the state provisions—to help. This would not be a hugely expensive exercise. To date, if all the around 300 people from Australia who have been victims of international terrorism were paid $75,000, it would amount to less than $23 million. That is not a lot of money in the scheme of things.

The Prime Minister today decided to berate me for wanting to speak in support of this. I support his idea of establishing a national insurance scheme. But that is for the individual. This is about supporting the victims of international terrorism. I would have thought that doing something to help our fellow Australians who have suffered at this would have been a noble thing to do. So I asked the Prime Minister to go back to the drawing board, to reconsider his opinion and to look at this as a special case, as a special need for support. There is no member in this parliament who could ever know—and I hope they will never experience—what these people as individuals and their families have gone through. My call goes out to the Prime Minister: have a heart and consider the plight of these people and their pain and their suffering.

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