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

No special forces soldier in this country has a debt against his name because of the way in which Defence has implemented the Defence Force Remuneration Tribunal’s decision—end of story. That is not to say that there is not some work to do. There is some work still to be done—in particular, making sure that they requalify for those allowances which now will be part of their more general remuneration. I remind the House that it was the special forces soldiers themselves who sought to have the allowances folded into their remuneration. Why? Firstly, it was administratively messy to have all these allowances. Secondly, by aggregating those allowances and merging them into their remuneration, there was the benefit of extra superannuation benefits. Indeed, the special forces soldiers asked in their submission that the matter be dealt with retrospectively so that the benefit would be enhanced.

The Leader of the Opposition says I still have not fixed the problem and that the problem is not going to be remedied until May of this year. He cries foul and says that this is an outrageous thing for our special forces soldiers to have cast upon them. The Leader of the Opposition can seek to have that amended, if he likes, but the whole idea of it going out to May is to allow our special forces soldiers who do not have the formal qualifications to secure them. If we called game over today, we would be back here next week. Notwithstanding booking $9 million of revenue into its bottom line back in, I think, 2004-05, the former government, of which the opposition leader was a member, did nothing to fix the informal nature of the qualifications and made no investment in the ICT system which has contributed so significantly to this problem. The Leader of the Opposition really needs to do his homework.

Unfortunately, I have not come in here with a written speech like he has. He must have known something was happening. But you would have thought, given the opposition propose to have so much expertise on this matter, that the person writing the speech in the office of the Leader of the Opposition might have seen that the idea behind the remediation program running until May is to make sure special forces soldiers have the opportunity to remediate the situation and gain the formal qualifications they need. That is a system that should have been put in place right back when his government sought to recover some $9 million from some 5,500 soldiers some time ago. They come in here and cry that the buck stops with me. Well, I am happy for the buck to stop with me. Again, this problem, by way of the Chief of Army’s directive, has now been fixed. No special forces soldier has a debt against their name.

I want to answer the question I did not get the chance to answer in question time, because the Leader of the Opposition, as obviously planned by his tactics committee this morning, decided to shut me down to move a censure motion before I had the opportunity to finish my answer.

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