James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to start by addressing the Labor government's Defence Amendment (Defence Honours and Awards Appeals Tribunal) Bill 2025. This is a stinker of a bill. This bill has rightly caused deep concern and anger across Australia's veteran community. Let me be absolutely clear. This is a bill that should never have made it this far. It is an unnecessary and mean-spirited attack on our veterans and the Defence Honours and Awards Appeals Tribunal and puts a use-by date on the words 'we will remember them'.

This bill would impose an arbitrary 20-year time limit on reviewable decisions made by Defence about honours and awards. So, in practice, if you served your country decades ago, your right to have your service properly recognised could simply expire. This is wrong and it is unfair. There should be no expiry date on honour and gallantry. Labor should hurry up and admit they got it wrong and abandon this legislation completely.

A Senate inquiry into this bill was due to report this week, but the reporting date was yesterday pushed back until 21 November because Labor's proposal has triggered outrage. Put simply, the Albanese government should just bin it. Labor has managed to unite 62 of the 63 submissions to the inquiry in opposition against this bill. Veterans, their families, historians and ex-service organisations are all saying the same thing: this legislation is unnecessary, inappropriate and offensive to those who have served.

The Defence Honours and Awards Appeals Tribunal itself opposes the bill. Its chair gave scathing evidence to the inquiry:

… in what parallel universe can Defence even contemplate claiming that the wellbeing of its people is enhanced by stripping them of their present rights to challenge Defence decisions …

The tribunal—an independent body established, ironically, by Labor in 2011—has also been clear that this bill would abolish existing rights of ADF members and veterans and their families. How can this possibly be justified? The New South Wales RSL told the Senate inquiry, 'We feel this bill will be completely detrimental not only to veterans but to their physical and mental health. It will also devalue their service.'

These are the voices of people who have served our nation—the people who ensure that we sleep safely in our beds at night. These are the voices of the organisations who support them and of the families still fighting for overdue recognition. Yet, despite this, the Minister for Veterans' Affairs is missing in action and the Prime Minister is silent. Labor is yet to provide a single compelling reason for why this change is needed. This bill doesn't honour service; it undermines it. It doesn't strengthen trust in Defence; it erodes it. It doesn't matter how much they try to polish this bill; it still stinks. The coalition stands with our veterans. We will not support legislation that puts an expiry date on remembrance or on recognition. If Labor had any sense or any understanding of what it means to serve for this country, they would withdraw this bill.

I stand before you today to highlight the teal hypocrisy that has emerged in the wake of the 2025 federal election. For six years now, Australians have been hoodwinked by the so-called teals who present themselves as grassroots community candidates when, in reality, they are anything but. Recent funding disclosures show that donor network Climate 200, which bills itself as a community crowdfunding initiative, distributed close to $11 million to 35 individual teal candidates during the election. But here's the kicker: that fortune was made up of donations from high-flying business moguls, hedge-fund managers, share traders and private equity. So where are the climate-conscious grandmas that Simon Holmes a Court would lead us to believe are the majority donors? Where are they?

These donations are well and good. Private individuals and organisations should be able to donate to the political candidates and parties they choose. However, the hypocrisy of the teals is beginning to be shown to the Australian people. Perhaps that's why they went backwards at the 2025 federal election, despite their top funded 10 candidates spending between $1.2 million and $2.1 million per electorate. These hypocritical teals preach accountability, transparency and a commitment to a clean and green Australia, yet laid out bare now is the reality that they are overwhelmingly accepting large donations from millionaires whose wealth is generated and supported by investments in fossil fuels. One such donor provided $666,000 to a Climate 200 backed teal candidate. This person manages an asset firm whose fund holdings include oil and offshore drilling companies, including Karoon Energy and Noble Corp.

Despite their repeated rhetoric about grassroots community campaigns, a commitment to political transparency and being strong backers of climate action, the teals have proven themselves to be hypocrites of the first order. In the lead-up to the 2025 election, the ABC offered all 35 teal candidates backed by Climate 200 the opportunity to declare where they were getting their money from. Only 19 were willing to provide some information on the record about their donors. Perhaps this had something to do with all that money coming from fossil fuel investors. It is a classic attitude of do as I say, not as I do that they've inherited from their elitist donors.

Australians deserve to know, when a teal candidate speaks of ending fossil fuel subsidies, whether they can trust them if their campaign is funded by a major investor in a fossil fuel company. When they say they stand for community, is that credible if their funding comes from high-rolling donors whose interest is not the local kitchen table but global investment portfolios. The teals promise grassroots community campaigns, but instead we had slick, multimillion dollar campaigns funded by deep pockets and vested interests.

When it comes to misleading the Australian public, Anthony Albanese and this Labor government really do take the cake. During the most recent Senate estimates, the Foreign minister and officials from the Prime Minister's own department refused to provide basic details about the return of ISIS brides and their children to Australia from Syria. This is despite Mr Albanese previously denying reports that a number of ISIS brides were set to return to Australia by the end of the year. Not only has the Prime Minister not told the truth about the fact that ISIS brides were returning to Australia; his own department and Foreign minister were refusing to provide basic details about the repatriation of radical jihadis to our shores. This is a deliberate attempt to keep the Australian people in the dark.

These ISIS brides are individuals who decided to, of their own accord, join a radical Islamist death cult with the express aim of developing a global caliphate. The fact that such individuals have returned to Australia under a cloud of Labor secrecy is a matter that is highly concerning to all Australians. The public has a right to know basic details, including exactly how many ISIS brides have been resettled in Australia, where they are residing, if they're a security risk, if they are facing criminal charges and if they've been let free into our communities. The government's secrecy on such a serious national security issue is unacceptable. Australians deserve to feel safe not just in their own homes but in their community. But, instead of being transparent and upfront with Australians, Labor is quietly bringing home individuals who once turned their back on our country—people who willingly joined a terrorist organisation that sought to destroy our very own way of life—and the worst thing is that the Labor Party do not want you to know about this.