Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

All right. I will look forward to that. I think I know the answer on the back of that because I would have thought it was a great opportunity to sit me down. If you have not taken that, that is your issue and not mine.

Let us look at our other concerns in relation to this. As I am sure the parlia­mentary secretary has been told by now, the Vietnam Veterans Federation and the RSL are extremely concerned about this matter being dealt with by regulation. I will tell you what else they will be concerned about. I read from the last part of the addendum to the explanatory memorandum:

The Repatriation Commission will be issuing appropriate policy guidance to the Department of Veterans' Affairs staff to ensure offsetting occurs in line with the legislation and long-standing practices outlined above. Ex-service organisations will be consulted during the development of this material.

'Ex-service organisations will be consulted during the development of this material.' Why would they have any faith that they are going to be consulted about this when they were not consulted prior to the budget? They were not consulted until this matter was referred off to a Senate inquiry and they have not been consulted in relation to the addendum to the explanatory memorandum. Why would they have any confidence at all either that they are going to be consulted or their views are going to be listened to?

If you come back to me and say that you have put in place the IT systems, which we support—and I accept the words of the department that they need to ascertain whether there are going to be further offsetting issues—then we will talk to you about this schedule. But we are not prepared to take this from legislation into regulation. We do not believe the undertakings are sufficient to enable us to support it going from legislation to regulation.

I am amazed, quite frankly, that the government itself is prepared to impose a layer of risk on this by bringing this schedule in now. Get the system sorted out—we support you in getting the system sorted out—then come back into this chamber and say: 'We've got the systems worked out. We are confident that those systems will mean there will be no adverse impact for any veteran and we need to change the legislation to enable things to be done by way of regulation.' At that stage we will be quite happy to talk to you about it, but we are not prepared to take the authority of this chamber and give it to the department by way of potential regulation or other inter­pretation. We are not prepared to remove the right of this chamber on this matter. I am absolutely amazed that the government is prepared to do so. Get the systems sorted out. We support your systems being sorted out. It seems a lot of money but if that is the view of what is required to sort the systems out, go for it; it has our support. But do not come here and put the cart before the horse.

I say to the Greens that if they are serious about ensuring that there is no adverse impact for any veteran then they will abandon the quite obscene sign-up to this addendum to the EM and they will say to the government as well, 'You come back when you have put your systems in place and then we will talk about whether schedule 2 is required.' The government has failed to justify this schedule. The government has been told by the ex-service organisations that they do not support this schedule. The government has been asked by those ex-service organisations not to rush into this because the ex-service organisations quite rightly want to be 100 per cent sure that there will be no adverse impact. Perhaps the parliamentary secretary, given everything I have said today, can tell me this: what is the requirement for this to be done now, prior to the systems being put in place? Why can this schedule not be removed? I will speak to the minister as soon as those systems are in place and both he and I are confident that there will be no adverse impact. Then we can get it through this place very, very quickly. But at the moment there is no justification. At the moment the ex-service organisations are opposed to this. The parliamentary secretary has the opportunity to actually support the removal of this schedule, get the systems in place and then come back so we can talk about it. (Time expired)