Brian Burston (NSW, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

My question is for the Minister for Defence, Senator Payne. Justice Mohr, a former Navy stoker who rose to become a major general and later a judge in the Supreme Court of South Australia, was perhaps the most appropriate person to conduct a review into warlike service and service entitlements and, as such, was appointed to conduct a review to be later known as the Mohr review. Because of his deep understanding of service life and his analytical skills, Justice Mohr found that either the Navy got it right and the Army and Air Force got it wrong or the opposite was true. By this I mean that, in correcting the allocation of servicemen to zones attributed to war service or active service, the Clarke review was accepted by the government because it allowed the deception to continue that combat troops were not deployed to hostile environments outside of Vietnam. Minister, can you advise the house why the government commissioned the Mohr review and the recognition of service for veterans in 2000 and then, when it did not like the outcome which was in favour of the veterans, commissioned the Clarke review in 2002?