Ross Hart (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think it's appropriate that I call to the attention of the House the service of the member for Solomon. He served this country with distinction. The one person's service that he left out in his speech was his own service. I'd also like to comment on the fact that, over many years in legal practice, it was an honour and a privilege for me to represent the veterans community. Many years ago, I took on a practice of acting in Administrative Appeals Tribunal matters with veterans' affairs matters, with a cohort of veterans that were the leftovers from the Second World War—in particular, the prisoners of war. If you act for any group of veterans and if you're acting for the prisoners of war, and you get to experience the privations that those ex-servicemen and ex-servicewomen suffered, you really need to understand the place that our veterans should hold in our hearts and minds.

Having said that, I rise today to speak on the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment (Defence Force) Bill 2016. This bill enacts the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation (Defence-related Claims) Act 1988 as a military-specific statute, directed towards the payment of compensation for injuries arising out of or in the course of employment in the Defence Force between 1 December 1988 and 1 July 2004. As it currently stands, Defence Force members and their dependants are covered under the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act, the SRCA, which applies to all Commonwealth employees. The bill currently before the House will create two separate acts—the SRCA, which will apply to Commonwealth employees, and the DRCA, which will only apply to members of the Defence Force and their dependants. This is a good thing. Removing the Defence Force section from the SRCA and creating its own act will place all current veterans legislation under the Minister for Veterans' Affairs. This is a much more suitable arrangement than we currently have, with the Minister for Employment responsible for all employees covered by the SRCA, including defence personnel.

The implementation of the proposed DRCA will provide for a complete separation of the legislative framework for defence-related claims from the Comcare scheme under the SRCA and will provide the Minister for Veterans' Affairs with the responsibility for all three of the compensation acts that cover veterans and Defence Force members. Further, the DRCA will provide defence members with access to military-specific compensation and rehabilitation schemes and will enable the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Commission, the MRCC, to bring the newly enacted DRCA into closer alignment with the MRCA.

Recently, I co-hosted a veterans forum with the member for Kingston in her role as the shadow minister for veterans' affairs. Hearing firsthand of the experiences with the Department of Veterans' Affairs and struggles with obtaining suitable compensation for defence personnel and veterans from the Launceston community highlighted for me personally—and amplified my experience of—the importance of giving particular attention to the veterans community.

This approach has been recommended as a consequence of reviews into the operation of the legislation which presently applies to members and ex-members of the Australian Defence Force. It goes without saying that, irrespective of the views of experts who have reviewed those schemes—including the Tanzer and Campbell reviews, which I'll refer to later in this address—there is a sense of abiding frustration within the veterans community, associated with that legislation. It is legislation which has previously sought to cover Defence Force personnel and veterans which may have different operations depending upon the person's service and, in particular, their dates of service.

I recently had the opportunity to speak in connection with the visit of the last Korean veterans to Korea. At that time, I reflected upon our obligation—that is, our community's obligation, our collective obligation—to veterans of our armed services. I suggested at that time that more needs to be done to address the unique requirements of the veterans community and, in particular, the pain and sacrifice reflected in the suicide rate of our veteran community, which I will refer to later in this speech.

Pension and compensation entitlements for ex-servicemen and ex-service women are complex. Again, based upon my experience, these provisions are unnecessarily complex. There are multiple considerations which may impact upon the course of a claim to compensation and/or pension, including interaction with a number of pieces of legislation, some of which are not Defence-specific. There is no doubt in my mind that our veterans deserve to have compensation schemes for personal injuries and workers compensation with respect to injuries in the workplace which are Defence-specific. Currently, a member of the Defence Force may be required to engage with the SRCA, the legislation which administers the Comcare scheme, but the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act, the MRCA, may also apply. This legislation applies to members of the permanent forces; members of the reserve forces; cadets and officers, including instructors of cadets; persons who hold honorary rank or appointment in the ADF; and certain other classes of persons who are connected with Defence services—all with respect to service on or after 1 July 2004.

The MRCA is designed to cover the whole spectrum of military service. However, there are inconsistencies between the Veterans' Entitlements Act, the Comcare legislation and the MRCA. There are different benefits available to claimants—in the main due to the history of each of the acts—different rates of payment, different circumstances which give rise to an entitlement, and numerous other very frustrating inconsistencies. For example, it remains incredibly frustrating for advocates, and no doubt claimants, that a member or veteran must satisfy for the purposes of one piece of legislation the necessary preconditions to receive the payment of a benefit, but that evidence or, more properly, that determination made by the ADF is not necessarily capable of being relied upon in a claim under one of the other pieces of beneficial legislation.

Unfortunately, that frustration is not addressed by this legislation and it is unlikely to be addressed in the near term. But, in a practical sense, the likelihood that a former member might be required to navigate multiple pieces of legislation in order to advance the claim for compensation is reduced by this legislation, given that this legislation proposes to clone the provisions of the Comcare legislation so as to establish a separate Defence compensation system.

The reference to cloning of the Comcare legislation is entirely appropriate. This legislation is intended to re-enact the SRCA in order to create the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation (Defence-related Claims) Act 1988. I'm indebted to the Parliamentary Library for bringing to my attention comments as to the unique nature of military service comprised within the Tanzer review, which was the review of the military compensation scheme of March 1999. That review said:

The role of the ADF [Australian Defence Force] is to protect Australia and its interests. To meet this role, the ADF is required to maintain an operationally capable force, which displays a high level of fitness, commitment, efficiency and discipline among its members. To achieve this, certain inherent requirements apply to those personnel serving in the ADF. These requirements will, to varying degrees, impact on the lifestyle of each ADF member. Such conditions are ... specific to military life and would not normally apply to the majority of those in civilian employment.

The difficulty that many face in returning to civilian life is illustrated by a disturbing set of statistics. Mental health issues within our veteran population are a growing concern to me, as I stated in a speech earlier this year. Whilst we lost 41 soldiers on active duty between 2001 and 2014, we lost 291 veterans to suicide in the same time period. I note with cautious approval the recent announcement by the minister that certain conditions—in particular, mental health conditions—will be accepted and eligible for treatment irrespective of the length of service and any issue of causation. This is a very good start and I want to see how this will work in practice.

Since Australia's involvement in the First World War, there have been successive programs to provide compensation and support to veterans and their dependents. I digress slightly at this stage to refer to a delightful piece of historic research recently provided to me, which concerns Defence housing constructed in the David Street and Mary Street area of East Launceston following the First World War. Whilst obviously not concerning military compensation, I'll use this example to illustrate that the obligations created by service—and the expectations of the public, and service personnel—extended to the creation of compensation, housing, and pension schemes with varying degrees of success and regrettably, it seems, failure. The book Home From War by local historian Kim Simpson details stories from the Newstead War Services Homes, a project set up by the federal government in 1918 to provide homes for returned service personnel. The government at the time wanted to assist returning service personnel return as best as they could to a relatively normal life, despite the toll that going to war for their country had taken upon them. All returning service personnel who returned from overseas service were entitled to apply to the scheme. This was extended to war widows and to service personnel returning with mental health issues. The book goes on to explain that, unfortunately, in the period of the 1920s and going up to the Great Depression, most of those service personnel in fact lost their houses because they were unable to keep up even with the payment of the rates to the municipal corporation. It is sad to see that the best intentions to provide housing for veterans were unable to be followed through.

In 2009, the then Minister for Veterans' Affairs announced a review of military compensation arrangements, which was conducted by a steering committee chaired by Mr Ian Campbell PSM. This review, the Campbell review, focused on the operation of the MRCA. Nevertheless, the review called for—amongst other things—a review of the legislative schemes that govern military compensation for service before 1 July 2004, and the identification of any anomalies that existed. The Campbell review was strongly in favour of a military-specific compensation scheme, in line with the recognition that military service is different from civilian employment. This, of course, is not the first attempt to differentiate between service personnel and Defence members of Comcare.

The Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (Improving the Comcare Scheme) Bill 2015 was introduced into the House on 25 March 2015. That bill sought to make significant changes to the Comcare scheme by amending the SRCA to make the scheme sustainable over time. The effect of this would have been to reduce the types of injuries that were compensable, reducing the cost of the scheme, and creating a regime to suspend and/or cancel payments to injured employees. It is very important to note that the bill was intended to operate so that the amendments made by the other schedules to the bill, with some exceptions, would not apply to Defence-related claims. The bill lapsed when the parliament was prorogued on 15 April 2016.

This bill makes good the government's promise to carve out the workers compensation entitlements of Defence Force members from the SRCA. Due to a number of concerns within the veterans community, the present bill was sent to the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade. This was supported by Labor. A number of concerns were raised before the committee in relation to the consultation process undertaken by the department. This is something that Labor takes very seriously. One of the issues which appears to arise with respect to the consultative process is the extent to which ex-service organisations have the resources to assess legislative proposals and provide informed feedback. The committee also highlighted a perception that the Department of Veterans' Affairs has an adversarial relationship with some veterans' advocates, veterans advocacy groups, and lawyers acting on behalf of veterans. The committee stated that, in their view, DVA should be seeking out and actively engaging with those persons who are best informed and capable of providing analysis of proposed legislation.

There were also a number of detailed concerns raised with respect to the drafting of legislation. This is due in part to the fact that the SRCA is a comprehensive act which has been amended by 68 different acts. Some of these acts included application, transitional and savings provisions which will continue to be applicable for the purposes of the DRCA. Due to this complexity, a so-called Henry VIII clause has been incorporated to provide for a remedy for any adverse unforeseen consequences which might arise from the unique manner in which the present legislation was enacted.

The Australian Government Solicitor has recommended that the regulations to modify the operation of the DRCA could only be made under the clause if the minister certified to the Governor-General that he or she is satisfied that such modification is necessary or desirable to ensure a re-enactment of the DRCA does not place any person other than the government at a disadvantage. The regulations would be introduced as disallowable instruments, which would be subject to the usual parliamentary processes. Labor senators provided additional comments which proposed amending this clause to place an obligation on the minister to conduct consultation with relevant ex-service organisations and the veterans community, and released the full text of the proposed regulations publicly. This is important to ensure that the veterans community would be consulted on regulatory changes. In summary, this legislation is a positive development. It is important that we introduce Defence-specific legislation. Labor supports this legislation. I commend the legislation to the House.

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