Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Veterans’ Affairs Legislation Amendment (Budget and Other Measures) Bill 2016. I thank the member for Solomon, a distinguished serviceman of this country. My state colleagues the member for Willagee, Peter Tinley, and the member for Warnbro, Paul Papalia, have also been proud servicemen who also now serve in our parliaments. As the member for Brand, I am proud to stand up today in support of our military personnel and veterans. I represent a seat which boasts a strong military presence. The Royal Australian Navy's largest base, Fleet Base West, HMAS Stirling, is located on Garden Island just off the coast of Rockingham in the heart of the Brand electorate. It is home to more than 2,300 service personnel and plays a critical role in the defence of the nation. It is home to the Anzac class frigates and the Collins class submarines along with some 70 other naval units.

Defence personnel from across Australia come to Brand to make their homes in the area and bring great benefit to the whole community. They have brought an overwhelming wealth of positives to the community. We are particularly mindful of the great challenges and sometimes the great tragedies that come with a life in the military. As well as the many serving service men and women and their families who call Brand home, there are also many veterans who live in the electorate who saw active service in the Second World War and in subsequent theatres of war. I stand here today for all those men and women because they were prepared to stand up for this country and were prepared to make sacrifices in defence of our nation and our way of life. I am also moved to support our veterans as the daughter of the former Royal Navy sailor and also the granddaughter of George Harvey Morris, a Royal Marine in the commando units of the Royal Navy. My brother also served in the Australian infantry. All have lived with some kind of trauma related to their service and all continue to pay the price well after their service has ended.

This Veterans’ Affairs Legislation Amendment (Budget and Other Measures) Bill will never be a cure all to address every veteran's concerns. There will be more that we can do. Indeed, many of the conditions that we treat today were not always recognised; returned soldiers were expected to just get on with life. The aftermath of the Great War delivered a legion of shell shocked and deeply damaged men back into Australian society with barely any care or assistance. They may have looked physically healthy but their mental injuries were often quite devastating. Today's returned service people from the campaigns in the Middle East have their own challenges to meet. So while one bill can never solve all the issues, at least this one is a very welcome step forward.

I think you can tell a lot about a country by the way that it looks after its veterans. There is no doubt about the respect and admiration we accord our returned service men and women—you only have to witness the Anzac Day parades and the Remembrance Day ceremonies around the country. But the challenge for us as parliamentarians is to continue to look at what we can do to help those who have done so much for this country. That is why Labor supports common-sense legislation that better serves the needs of our veteran community. We support our veterans and their families in getting the care and support that they deserve and that they need.

This bill is a step forward to further increase support of current and former members of our military. Among the reforms contained in the bill is a provision for the payment of interim compensation payments to incapacitated current or former Australian Defence Force members while the actual amount of compensation they will be afforded is being determined. Currently applicants are paid the national minimum wage while their claims for compensation are being processed. This means they might be forced to live on an income less than the income they received before their incapacitation. This can leave applicants having to cope with financial difficulties as well as with the stress of injury and of having left the service.

We can all imagine the difficulties such a reduction in income would cause. We can imagine the severe financial stress of having income suddenly reduced and the impact it would have when combined with the stress of dealing with a severe injury. In the suburbs of Brand that many defence families call home, unemployment is high and many households are already under financial stress. Defence families are not immune to the severe downturn hitting the West Australian economy. Defence Force spouses are amongst those who have either lost their jobs or who have had their hours of work reduced. Another hit to the family budget after a debilitating injury could be enough to tip a defence family over the edge into severe financial distress, and this bill will help prevent that from happening. It will help give our service men and women financial certainty when they need it most.

Defence families, like most Australian families, are usually geared according to their income with expenses including mortgage, rent, school fees, utilities, car loans and general living expenses dependent on a continued and consistent income. If your income suddenly falls, how do you continue to pay your bills when they stay at the same rate? How do you pay the mortgage, the rent, the school fees and power bills? This bill allows for payments to continue at 100 per cent of the applicant's normal income at the time of the injury until the claim is finalised. It is a change that makes sense. It is a change that reflects an understanding of the real world and the challenges faced by real individuals and real families. This change may represent a nominal cost to the Australian taxpayer but will mean the world for the small number of people caught up in this situation each year. I am sure future beneficiaries will include families and ex-Defence service men and women living in the electorate of Brand.

Perhaps the most significant reforms in this bill relate to the increasing access to treatment for mental health disorders which, thanks to the good work and support of advocacy services in this field—

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