Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

JOYCE () (): I apologise for my tardiness, Mr Speaker, but you've been exceptionally succinct in getting through some legislation this morning! Well done!

With regard to the Defence, Veterans' and Families' Acute Support Package Bill 2022, there are three acts. There is the Veterans Entitlement Act 1986, the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 and the Military Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2004. Those three acts have been cumbersome and somewhat out of order for the efficient delivery of a service. This bill mirrors one that was brought in by the coalition in March this year and the reason for it is that we need to get a greater capacity for people to have access to the services that they need. That's everything from services in support of them at home to psychological services.

One of the things about this is that in the past we've had caps on certain packages for what you could get. What this actually does is allow an expansion—no doubt, the government will bring forward a cap—of the allocation amongst the services and that will be at the discretion of those who are using them. One of the other things that is important about this is that it expands the remit of who is eligible for it. In the past, it was people who had had war-like service. This is going to allow for people who have been affected but they don't necessarily need to have had war-like service.

It's not a great cost to the budget—I think it's in the vicinity of $36 million or $37 million—and it really is taking forward a bipartisan position. My view is that I don't particularly want to make veterans' issues contentious issues in this place, as best we can. There should be an approach to make sure we get a full flow of these pieces of legislation through the House so that those people who can access it get access to it. I note that in this bill there is the capacity to backdate for those who were eligible but who have not yet received it. Although there was an inconvenience where they haven't had access to the money, they're going to be compensated for the period of time that they were without the service.

As I said about a similar piece of legislation yesterday—another veterans' piece of legislation—we have to acknowledge that the circumstances that surround our nation, unfortunately, have changed and have changed dramatically. I remember conversations with colleagues in the Labor Party, saying that for Australia it's in our region. Unfortunately, our children and our grandchildren—and probably ourselves—are going to live in different circumstances. Of course I talk about the rise of China and its unfortunate process of being more adversarial in the South China Sea and what we're seeing in other areas such as hacking into computers. So we once more have to start making the nation vastly more resilient than it has been. Part of that resilience will be an expansion of the defence forces, which comes hand in glove with our being able to demonstrate to them not only that we respect the service they give but that we give them support post their service and also that support to those families directly affected by those who have served. The bill goes to that process in expanding the remit of those who have access to the services.

What we have to do is make sure that in everything we do in this chamber one of the things at forefront is to make our nation as strong as possible as quickly as possible, because there is no other alternative. That is absolutely what we have to do, and it has to happen in myriad ways. It's not just in materials but also in personnel, care for personnel and how we deal with them. If we do that in a proficient way then we can attract further people into the Defence Force, which is absolutely essential. There are so many sides to that. I believe that in future we're going to have to go right back to square one. We're going to have to have a strong cadet unit at schools, we're going to have to have strong reserve units in regional towns, we're going to have to have the resources so they have the kit on parade and whilst training to be able to quickly slip into the regs and we're going to have to have people who enlist in the regular services.

We have 360,000 people or thereabouts who are ex servicemen and women in this nation, so it is a very large cohort of people that this nation and the government are responsible for the care of. The vast majority, it goes without saying, go back into civilian street as an easy transition. However, there are people for whom that is not the case, and we must put our attention to that. Going hand in glove with this is the royal commission, and we have to make sure we are compliant with the international act, whose name eludes me now. I think it's the international standard on social economic—I can't recollect it. But there are two parts of that, and this also works in concurrence with that to make sure we have not only looked after our veterans and their families but also abided by our international agreements in the same breath.

If we do this and if the attention of this House and the other place is on making our nation as strong as possible as quickly as possible in all the myriad ways that are required to do that then I think that we can go back to the Australian people as a House and say one of our greatest endeavours in this place is to make sure that their children, their way of life, their freedoms and the liberties that they take as a birthright are protected and will endure into the future. So I won't delay the House any more. I commend this bill, and I've already had discussions with the minister. I thank them for those discussions, in which I made clear that we would be supporting this.

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