Barnaby Joyce (New England, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge that obviously you, Deputy Speaker Wilkie, served. Obviously it runs in families a bit. Both my grandfathers served; my father served, and I served in the reserves. Veterans affairs was such a fundamental part of the iconography of the family—a bizarre anger sometimes and an attachment to their service.

My father was repatriated during the Second World War; he was smashed up. He became a very successful person in business, but I remember he would spend an inordinate amount of time arguing about his pension. At the time he'd become a little bit serious. He wasn't easy going, but things never fussed him. But he would get a little bit angry when he was arguing about his pension. I can't remember the exact form of the conversation, but it was something like: 'Dad, you've done so well in life. You're turning over places worth millions of dollars. Why would you worry about whether it's $40 or $60?' And I remember him abruptly saying, 'You give me back my leg, and I'll give you back your 20 bucks.' It was something that he'd held on to. When he passed away, we found an account that had all his pension money in it; he'd never spent a cent of it and had just put it in an account. I don't know why. It was something he argued about but never actually used.

What it shows is the depth of feeling—you've got to understand that—that veterans have about their service. They get a sense that, in many instances, they were just sort of kicked out the door. You sign on the dotted line to offer your life for your nation, and then, at the end, it's, 'See you later.' Dad always said, 'When I got out of hospital'—after his fifth or sixth or 10th operation—'they literally just parked my wheelchair on the side and said, "Well, if your family can come and pick you up, that would be great."'

With the Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures No. 2) Bill 2025, you've got to understand that this is seminal. Veterans' Affairs is something that most people know nothing about, but, for the people who are involved with it, it's absolutely core, because it's a reflection of gratitude by the nation for the service they have offered. If you don't have service men or women, you don't have a defence force, and if you don't have a defence force, you don't have a nation. You will lose it. The world has not changed. Reference point 1 is Vladimir Putin and what's happened in Ukraine. Reference point 2 is the growth of totalitarianism, as exhibited quite clearly by communist China. Reference point 3 is the Middle East. Reference point 4—and on you go. Human nature has not changed. You're always going to need a strong defence force, and, if you want a strong defence force, you've got to put all the promises out there at the start to exhibit a sense of, 'Show your patriotism; sign up.' There's a quid pro quo to that, which is, on the way out, gratitude for your service. We look after you. It is not beyond the pale. It's not that everybody has to bow and scrape and you get everything for free. No, I don't think any returned service men or women or ex-service men or women want that. They accept that, if you're back on civvy street, you're back on civvy street. But, if there are afflictions and things that need to be dealt with, they want it dealt with respectfully and promptly. That is what this bill is about: dealing with things respectfully and promptly.

There were a range of recommendations when I was shadow veterans' affairs minister, and I, on behalf of the coalition, was doing my very best to work hand in glove with the minister, because we wanted this to be non-contro. We wanted this through. But we're still talking about it. This has been going on now for years, and it should already be done. It should be finished. It should be complete. What are we in? 2026. So this is something that's got to be prosecuted. I don't know who the shadow minister is now, but it has to be prosecuted in a form that says we've got to expedite this thing and bring it to a conclusion.

Just in passing, I'd like to apologise. I did not attend the last post ceremony last night, because I was still in my electorate. I just want to put an apology in for that. I most definitely would have been there if I had not been tied up somewhere else.

What we also have to acknowledge in this bill is: What is the timeline now for finishing this off? When does this actually come to a conclusion? We have concerns about the processing of claims and the mechanism whereby they process them, where they say, 'Oh, we're getting through the claims,' but then we found that what they're actually doing is duck-shoving things sideways. If a claim's rejected, it goes back to the start, but it's noted as being processed, even though it's really just amended and it's back in the pile again. We need clarity on exactly where this is and where this processing attachment is at. I acknowledge that it has certainly picked up a lot of the slack that was there—100 per cent. But I don't think it's reached the high notes that we needed it to.

As to the streamlining of DRCA, MRCA and VEA, I think that in the end we ended up not with three acts but with four, because DRCA, MRCA and VEA still continue on, and then you've got basically MRCA 2.0, which everybody's going to be part of. Now you've got four. You've got the residue of the previous acts and now the new one that's encompassing them.

I hope that we can understand that our nation, unfortunately, lives in a time when we are going to have stresses placed on us that we've never experienced in our lives, and I don't believe our nation is prepared for them. Obviously, with an assertive China pressuring you into a sort of vassal state relationship, it's going to need resilience for you to stand up against that and push back. You have two approaches to doing that. You can rely totally on the United States of America and believe that your defence policy is them sending their sons and daughters over to our hemisphere to die on our behalf because we weren't ready for it. I'd be very, very worried about that defence policy. That is not a very secure defence policy; that is a very foolish defence policy. The other approach is that you become resilient in your own nature in such a form that you'll never be as strong as the totalitarian power that wishes to put you into a vassal state but strong enough that they wouldn't bother trying. There's too much concern if they try.

We are not there. We are not even close to there. We are a thousand miles from there. It's in so many forms that we are weak. For instance, our Collins-class submarines are basically—well, at times, we can't get one into the water. That's your whole platform, and you're not able to basically get one of your ships into the water. Spare parts—we don't make them. So, if you lose a spare part from one of your platforms, it basically becomes defunct. There are fuel supplies and things you don't even think about. We do not have the storage of fuels to maintain a conflict over a sustained period. If the supply lines are cut—people just have to cut your supply lines and wait for you to run out. That will happen pretty quickly.

The big thing is that we seem to have lost the culture of people going into the services. I'll give you a classic example. In the past, high schools had cadet units. They were everywhere; now they're not. There's only a handful of places with cadet units. Sometimes people think, 'Oh, well, you know, we don't have to worry about that.' You do. To go into the Defence Force, as you would understand clearly, Deputy Speaker Wilkie, is quite an experience, especially when you first walk through the gate. You hear people just screaming at you and throwing your stuff around everywhere and making a noise which is apparently 'left, right, left, right' and marching people here, there and everywhere. How do you break the ice into that? For a lot of people, it's just in your family. There's a family culture. There's an awareness of it because your family has all done it. Unfortunately we had deaths in the family of people that served in wars. But a lot of people just have no connection to the Defence Force whatsoever. Maybe movies would be as close as they get.

If we're going to reinvigorate our nation's capacity, it's this holistic view of getting cadet units going again. Cadet units break the ice for people to go into reserve units. We used to have reserve units in regional towns. They're not there, depots. That's how I got into it, going to my local. I used to drive 200 kilometres to parade at Roma—200 at night and 200 kilometres back home, so a 400-kilometre round trip to parade on a Tuesday night—and then go away to do the things you've got to do. But in the end they moved the depot out of Roma. The depot was going to be on Queen Street, Toowoomba. That's 450 kilometres away. That's basically where it all stopped. I was still enlisted, but I couldn't parade. We've got to move those depots back into regional towns. Places like Parkes or Forbes should have a reserve depot. It should be culturally applicable that people who've been to high school continue on and say, 'You know, I'll just continue on with my service at a reserve depot.'

Also it's very important, as I used to say for Veterans' Affairs, that, when you get out of the services, you should step down not out. 'Stepping down' means still having a connection to the culture of the Defence Force, which reserve units gave you. It's also so good for people coming through to be mixing with regs—to be mixing with people who have been in regular service in the Defence Force. That was done by depots. When I was there, there was Sergeant Brett Field; he'd been in Somalia. I had the great honour of being trained by people such as Warrant Officer Perry, who had been a forward scout in Vietnam and was an Aboriginal gentleman. You wouldn't meet these people unless you had a reserve unit. They still utilise that as their connection. I think that gives people a great sense of psychological attachment to, strength in and resilience for the job they've got to do.

Finally, of course, if you've got reserve units, you get regs because people can make the switch over. I just had a gentleman up the other day who was a very distinguished returned servicemen with his son. They were going shooting on our place. I got into discussions with him, as he was camped on our place: 'How'd you get in?' It was via reserves. Then he did a number of tours of Afghanistan. He'd been in East Timor. He's still in the services now, actually, but he got in via the reserves, and that is something we've got to reinvigorate.

I might just say in closing—I know this is tangential, but it's important—that the firearm legislation that was passed the other day is an infringement on this person's rights. These people are good people, and I don't have one; I have a number who come onto our property to go shooting. That's what they do. They bring their families with them—their sons predominantly. We've brought in laws that are going to start putting caveats on their capacity to stand on the land they love and have served and have offered their lives for, and I think that's wrong. I don't agree with the firearms legislation at all, but there should at least have been an amendment in there for ex-service men and women who don't own properties—they're not wealthy people—but go shooting on properties. These are people who have shouldered arms in defence of our nation and have taken on the terrorists in Afghanistan. We shouldn't be querying why they need firearms. They do it because it's their recreation. They're showing their kids. I was looking at this gentleman's kids and I was saying, 'If there was ever a person who's trained to be in the Defence Force, it's that man's son, who no doubt will follow his dad and do an incredibly good job.'

Obviously, we need the bill. I'm not certainly not going to hold this up. My whole issue with this bill is that it should have been expedited and already completed by now.

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