Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Those issues go to a range of problems, including ICT problems and the inflexibility and lack of capacity of those systems and, of course, the informal process which was granting special forces soldiers competencies without a formal course. That is just a fact. I reaffirm my commitment to ensure that nobody wrapped up in the processes of the implementation of the defence force review tribunal’s determination will be adversely affected by this series of events.

I should say this: the opposition needs to be very careful here. There are a number of people who regularly incur overpayments and therefore debts. Some of them originally were wrapped up in the review tribunal’s determinations. They are no longer affected, because I have suspended that recovery process and they will be fixed. Others have debts for other reasons, and the opposition needs to be very careful to differentiate between those two or three or four or five different sets of people. My recommendation to the opposition is to stop playing politics with our special forces soldiers.

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