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

To take the opposition through this yet again, let me make this clear. On 24 February I told the House:

I guarantee that no special forces soldier will be financially disadvantaged by the implementation of the independent Defence Force tribunal’s determination of March 2008.

On the morning of 25 February, appearing before the Senate estimates committee, the Chief of Army said the following about his directive of 18 February to extinguish all the debts:

It establishes a transition period during which no soldier will be financially disadvantaged until all proficiencies have been audited, deficiencies identified and adequate training opportunities provided to enable affected soldiers to demonstrate proficiency. This effectively removes any discussion about debt. There is no debt.

Following the Chief of Army’s statement I then told parliament in question time:

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.

What the Leader of the Opposition, in his usual way, left out of his question yesterday was the rest of my paragraph. I will restate it for the record:

That is not to say 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.

That is why I have engaged an independent auditor.

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