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

This is a noncontroversial bill. It works on the back of a lot of things the coalition was already doing. It comes in a range of components. First, it aligns the entitlement of firefighters employed by the Australian Defence Force with civil firefighters in relation to oesophageal cancer and also other cancers such as mesothelioma, cervical cancer, that the qualifying period for employment with the Australian Defence Force will go from 25 years down to 15 years. This is to assist in the process that if you have these ailments and you have a 15-year connection, it will allow you to be an consideration for the support given to people suffering from those elements and those tragic diseases.

Second, it allows for payments from specified Commonwealth, state and territory employment programs to be exempt from a veteran's income means testing. This really just brings it in line with other social security requirements that are currently there and makes sure that, as a veteran goes out and tries to avail themself of these employment programs, it doesn't unduly affect them.

Third, it's for veterans who are caught overseas. If they have rent assistance, it goes for 26 weeks and then stops. But if they're caught overseas and whilst they're overseas a pandemic breaks out, or there's an industrial dispute or a war—god forbid—then their rental assistance will go beyond 26 weeks. This is something that's been allowed, but this entrenches the discretion to be able to do that.

Fourth, and probably most pertinent, it allows grandparents to work in loco parentis to support a child that is a child of a Defence Force member. This is incredibly important, as we know grandparents do often stand, in so many parts of our society, in the role a parent would have otherwise done. The cost of this, in the scheme of things, is not a lot. It's about half a million dollars over the forward estimates. That is going through the three parts of the act, with the DRCA, the MRCA and the VEA. This is basically a non-controversial arrangement that allows us to make sure that how we look after veterans respects the service they have given.

There's an interesting thing I'd also like to briefly note. On the weekend, it was the commemoration of the Sandakan Death Marches. The Sandakan Death Marches were at the end of the Second World War. They were where Australian prisoners of war, many from the 2nd 18th Battalion—a lot of them came from around my area—were marched in Borneo from one campsite to the next. Most of them were starved, brutalised and murdered. There were 2,324 allied prisoners of war, with 1,737 Australians. Six escaped—that was above the 1,737. Of the 1,737 that were forced to march, 1,737 died. Some of them were murdered after the end of the war. What happened was, if people became unable to walk, they sat down and they were bludgeoned to death or shot. In some instances, they were worked till they died. This is just another part of the tragic tapestry of why we have to remember those who have served our nation. There's a memorial in Tamworth in my electorate, where so many of the people in the death marches came from.

All the way through our history we've had to look after veterans, because if we don't look after veterans then we're not giving true respect to those people who have served our nation. This is yet another example of what we are doing today to work on a bipartisan mechanism. You often hear that we argue all the time—we don't. The vast majority of the bills in this place go through in a bipartisan process. This is to make sure that we quickly and efficiently get these changes through in such a form that we can continue to look after the people who offered their lives when they signed that piece of paper to serve our nation.

Debate adjourned.