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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-07-22 Daily Xml
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DEFENCE SERVICE PERSONNEL

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH (Waite) (15:24): I rise to speak on a number of issues to do with veterans and ex-service personnel. I will start with a report in the local newspapers concerning Lance Corporal Mason Edwards of the 2nd Commando Regiment, who lost his life when shot by accident during live fire battle inoculation in October at Port Augusta, at the Cultana Military Training Base. The Advertiser put the pertinent point in its story that, in some respects, Lance Corporal Mason was a forgotten soldier. It certainly made the case that his family felt that his sacrifice had not been valued to the same extent as that of the 17 Australian diggers killed in Afghanistan on actual operations.

I think this raises a very interesting point of principle that this house should recognise, and it is that as a nation we need to review the way in which we deal with accidents in training, and particularly fatalities in training, as they affect our servicemen as they train to deploy on operations. I intend to take this matter up. I must say that The Advertiser article did stir my conscience.

I spoke in the house earlier this week about a recent decision by the Defence Honours and Awards Tribunal and the government, with bipartisan support, to grant recognition to members of special forces involved in counter-terrorist and special recovery operations and how valued that decision was. I think this is a related issue.

It is very important to remember that, whether a soldier dies on operations or during the build up training for those operations, he or she leaves behind a grieving wife and children and/or parents and siblings. It is tragic that our system of defence honours and awards recognises those who are killed on operations but not necessarily those who are killed while training for those operations, even at the latter stages of pre-deployment.

It saddens me that the spouse of a soldier killed during pre-deployment training in Australia has no medal to pass on to a son or daughter, where the death occurs in Australia or in an overseas pre-deployment base. The difference is that it was in Australia or outside an overseas theatre of operations.

I am not suggesting that we go for an American style system of Purple Hearts, but I think there is a case for some medal to be given in the case of soldiers who die on pre-deployment training, if only for their families. I will be taking this up with the Chief of the Defence Force, the Chief of Army and the minister, and I will be pursuing it on behalf of the Edwards family.

I now move to the issue of pension support for veterans and ex-service personnel. In doing so, I declare, as I have in my register of interest, that I am eligible for such a benefit. I just want to make that clear as I speak. Military veterans and ex-service personnel are seeking a federal government commitment to index their pensions in the same manner as the age pension.

There was a promise from the current federal government that it would deal with this issue prior to the 2007 election—it has not. As it stands, these entitlements are indexed to CPI for members aged 55 and older, whereas the age pension is indexed according to the greater of CPI, male total average weekly earnings or pension beneficiary living cost indexes. The federal Labor Party's 2007 election policy was that it would fix it.

The coalition announced on 27 June that it will so index these pensions. I am calling on the Gillard Labor government to match that. I note that, after the coalition made its announcement, the Premier wrote a letter, on 1 July, as, I think, a backside covering exercise, to indicate that the veterans needed help. Ms Gillard has not responded. I think that is a tragedy.

It is shocking that our soldiers, Corporal Mason and others who have been killed may be examples, are facing a situation where their service pensions passed wives and children do not keep up with other pensions. I think this is a related issue to the one I raised earlier about people killed during pre-deployment training rather than on operations. It is an important issue and I urge the house to give it its attention.

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