Graham Edwards (Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary (Defence and Veterans' Affairs)) Share this | Hansard source

There are a range of issues that I want to try to get through in the time available to me today, but first of all I want to deal with the issue once again of medals for members of the Australian Defence Force. There are two different categories of medals I want to pursue today, and I want to ask the minister—when the minister gets around to responding in detail—to tell the people of Australia and particularly the veteran community what has happened to these medals. These are medals which were promised a couple of years ago. The first medal I want to ask the minister to tell us about is the medal which was announced on Saturday, 26 June 2004 by the Hon. Mal Brough, the then Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence. On that day the minister announced—and I will quote from his press release, headed ‘Medal to recognise service in defence of Australia’:

The Howard Government has today announced the intention to establish a new medal that recognises volunteer service in the Australian Defence Force.

All relevant approvals are now being sought to allow the award of this medal.

The Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence, Mal Brough, said those who had served for a total of six years in the Australian Defence Force, regular or reserve, would be eligible and the medal would be backdated to recognise past service.

The minister went on to say, in the body of his press release:

It is anticipated that once a design has been finalised and the medals have been struck, the issuing of medals could begin around middle of 2005.

In another press release which the same minister put out, dated 11 July 2004, the minister said this:

The Australian Government has received notification of ‘in principle’ approval by the Queen for the establishment of the Australian Defence Medal for members of the ADF who have provided six years service in the Nation’s defence.

The minister went on to say:

... the Government was on track to call for applications by eligible serving and ex-service men and women by the end of the year.

That was at the end of 2004. This medal seems to have fallen into a big black hole since then, and no-one from the government side is able to tell me or those people who have been promised this medal where it is at, what the criteria are or when the medal will be ready for issue. At the time that the minister made this announcement, it was of course in the lead-up to the last election. I think it is one thing for a minister to make a promise to the defence community prior to an election. Having done that, this government has a responsibility to now make that medal available. I want the minister to tell me when this medal will be ready for issue and when the government will be calling for applications, because I understand that they are telling people who might be eligible not to put their applications in at this stage.

The other thing I would like the minister to tell me and the veteran community is what the criteria will be for this medal. The minister has announced that people who will be eligible for the medal are those who have served for a total of six years in the Australian Defence Force, regular or reserve. I want to know what provision the government is making for those people who, through no fault of their own, have had to leave the defence forces because of injury—for instance, a veteran who was hurt during his tasking within the ADF and, as a result of those injuries or wounds, was forced to retire and who, therefore, would not meet the six-year criterion. Will that person be eligible for this ADF medal? I certainly hope that a person in those circumstances would be eligible.

I also want to know what provision the minister is making to ensure that women who, in previous years, had a requirement to seek discharge when they were married or became pregnant are recognised. These women were serving the nation and may have met their four-year engagement period. Why aren’t they being recognised? Is the minister going to recognise those women who may have been forced out because of pregnancy or marriage?

These are questions which the defence community—members of the ADF, past and present—are very keen to get answers to. I think the government run the risk of being accused of playing politics with the defence community. They made this announcement, as I said, in the lead-up to the last election. They said that these medals would be available in a very short period of time. They have not been made available.

The other matter I want to turn to also relates to campaign medals, this time for ADF personnel who served in Iraq and, before that, in Afghanistan. The government made an announcement, again quite some time ago, about these medals. It is five years since our troops first went into Afghanistan, and these campaign medals have not seen the light of day. Last year, on 3 August, the then Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence, De-Anne Kelly, in a press release headed ‘Campaign medals for ADF personnel’, said:

Campaign medals for Australian Defence Force personnel who served in Afghanistan and Iraq are set to be issued by year’s end ...

That was at the end of 2005. Likewise, these medals have not seen the light of day. The minister, in the body of her press release, said:

A contract for the manufacture of these campaign medals was signed on April 26 this year.

That was the day after Anzac Day last year. Anzac Day 2006 is looming. It is only a couple of months away. It seems to me that, yet again, the campaign medal will not be ready for another Anzac Day for those veterans who, as long as five years ago, served our nation in Afghanistan and are currently serving in Iraq.

This is an absolute disgrace. It is a national disgrace. In my view, someone should be made accountable for these problems. Someone in the government should be telling these veterans some truth about where their medals are and when they will be available. We do not want any more press releases with false promises. We want to know where these medals are.

I have had the opportunity to discuss the matter of these medals with members of the government. Indeed, we went as a delegation to visit our troops in Bagram a few years ago as members of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, and when we came back we raised the issue with the then Minister for Defence, Minister Hill, and asked him to ensure that these troops received their own campaign medal. The minister wrote back and said that it was not the intention of government to issue a campaign medal for the Afghanistan campaign despite the fact that the Brits had decided to do it and that the Americans had decided to do it.

The government subsequently had a change of heart. I think that it was in 2004 that they announced that there would be a campaign medal. I know that members opposite are highly embarrassed about the fact that these promises have been made to our veterans but they have not yet been made good. I know that there is an amount of anger from those members opposite and, like me and other members on this side, they feel that our veterans have been let down over this issue.

I took this matter up with the then Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence, the Hon. De-Anne Kelly, and she said that it did not matter; they had been recognised because they had received the Australian Active Service Medal. That is fine. So they should have received the Australian Active Service Medal. But the Australian Active Service Medal does not identify the particular campaign that these members of the ADF have served in. The AASM does not do that. I call on the minister, newly appointed—and I am not criticising him for this—to come into the committee and during the discussion later on to tell the veteran community of Australia where the medals are, when the government will be calling for applications and when the medals will be issued. I think that our veteran community is entitled to some honesty and some truth in these matters, not just false promises made hastily before an election and which have not yet been made good by this government post election despite many opportunities for the government to do so.

The other issue that I want to touch on is the Australian government’s Investing in Our Schools program. I know that a lot of schools around Australia have benefited from this program. I know that a lot of members on both sides of the House have done a lot of work to try to ensure that their schools all benefit from this program. But I ask the Minister for Education, Science and Training to tell me why it is that education support centres in schools in Western Australia—schools within their own right—do not appear to be eligible for this funding. I have a copy of a letter here—and I will not name the school—which says:

Dear Principal,

I wish to advise that unfortunately your application for a grant ... for the Playground Upgrade under the Australian Government Investing in Our Schools Programme ... has not been successful on this occasion. Unfortunately your school’s application has not been deemed suitable for assessment because it does not comply to the administrative Guidelines for the IOSP ... When assessed it was found that your school’s proposed project, despite assistance from this Department, including requests for additional information, has not met mandatory requirements set out in the Administrative Guidelines.

The letter goes on to say that the school will have a number of opportunities to access this funding. It urges the school to review their application and encourages them to apply again.

I think it would be handy for this school community, before they sit down and do all the work that is necessary, if they could be advised whether or not education support centres are actually going to be eligible for this funding. Education support centres in Western Australia have been encouraged over the years, by both federal and state authorities, to become part of the main school community. They have been encouraged to work with just one P&C or one parent body. They have been encouraged to integrate within the broader and bigger schools. I think there is a lot of value in that. But it comes as a real shock to them to be told that, despite this advice over the years, they are not going to be counted or considered when it comes to this sort of funding.

I suspect that schools in Western Australia may be at a disadvantage to similar types of schools in the eastern states. I am sure that no government or minister would set out to do this deliberately, and it may be that there has just been a hiccup in the policy in a way which has excluded education support centres. I would ask the minister to have a look at this policy situation. I am sure that this school, and other schools, will be able to go back and review their funding. But before they sit down and do all the work that is necessary, and before they put the required time, energy and effort into their applications to make sure that they are done properly, professionally and fully, perhaps the minister might be able to give us some guidelines.

The difficulty is that the education support centres are separate schools within bigger schools. In other areas they have been encouraged to amalgamate to work with one P&C body and to become part of the school community. Where they have done that, and done it successfully, they should not be penalised with a refusal of funding in these circumstances. I look forward to the minister responding in due course to the points that I have raised.

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