Mr FILING (1:12 PM) —I am indebted to the veterans of the Korean War Journal for an extract relating to entitlements for Korean war veterans in the United States and for their motto, `Freedom is not free'. I am interested in it because, from time to time, things such as a person's wartime service entitlements and what the community or nation ought to do for veterans is factored in on economic or financial considerations alone. In other words, there is a tendency to look at the ways to reduce or minimise the entitlements as a draw-down on the Commonwealth's finances.

Obviously, as we look at the Veterans' Entitlements Amendment (Gold Card) Bill 1998 , it is important to recognise that people who have offered to sacrifice themselves in service to their country deserve special recognition for that sacrifice. The previous speaker, the member for Murray (Mrs Stone), mentioned the sacrifice of youth in the context of veterans' commitment to their country. The member for Murray made much of that, and I think she is right, but in the context of this bill, the use of that line of argument militates against what is in the bill a very serious restriction on veterans' entitlement for a gold card.

The purpose of the bill is to extend full repatriation health care benefits to Australian veterans who are aged 70 or over and who have World War II qualifying service. In the first instance, I join with the RSL in commending the government for this decision. It is surely well deserved for those who will receive it. Over the years, I have written many letters asking for this kind of recognition for service men and women, to the previous Labor government and the current Howard government. I think it is fair and just that veterans be rewarded for their willingness to make this sacrifice for their country.

In order to qualify for the gold card, veterans will have to be aged 70 years or over and have served within prescribed geographic locations within prescribed dates. The gold card is the popular name for the repatriation health card for all conditions and is issued by the Department of Veterans' Affairs. It will enable holders to access health care as though they have top-of-the-range cover in a private health care fund. It is a very significant measure for most veterans who qualify to receive it. Gold card holders will receive benefits such as treatment as a private patient in a public or private hospital, their choice of doctor, pharmaceuticals at a concessional rate, optical care, physiotherapy, dental care, podiatry and chiropractic services. Access to the card is not means tested and its benefits are not restricted to an illness or incapacity that is accepted as being war service related. Further, the introduction of this measure will mean that many World War II veterans will receive real and worthwhile recognition for their wartime service from a grateful nation.

However, there are some drawbacks with the way the government has limited access to the gold card. I accept that fiscal responsibility has to be a consideration in public policy but, equally, fairness should prevail. I would like to examine the two major drawbacks to the government's approach in a little more detail.

The first of these is a failure to adequately recognise the service of veterans from other conflicts. Both the government and the opposition have made the point that they consider it appropriate that access to the benefits that a gold card provides should be linked to the time frame when a particular term of service occurred. They then qualify the type of service as that which would expose the service person to a particular level of threat and finally say that a minimum age of 70 years is the cut-off.

I cannot see any logical consequence of service in wartime in a particular war as being somehow more important than wartime service in another war. The simple fact that a qualifying age of 70 years is applied indicates that the government and the opposition both recognise that veterans can best be rewarded by giving them a greater degree of security in their ability to access high quality health care in their senior years. The key to this repatriation benefit is that it provides a health benefit to veterans in their later years, not that it is roughly 54 or 55 years since the end of the Second World War and somehow fits a precedent relating to veterans of the First World War.

It has been established quite clearly that Vietnam veterans, though having to pass clear-cut and extensive health and fitness tests before joining the armed forces, now have an average level of health and fitness which is lower than that of the equivalent age group in our community who did not serve in Vietnam. I would suggest that research will show that this is consistent with veterans from other wars. Surely the Australian community recognises that people who have put their lives at risk and have had their health damaged as a consequence should receive health care support.

There are many veterans from the Korean War who have reached the 70-year threshold, served in locations where they were at great personal risk and who are facing deterioration in their health. To exclude them from equivalent access to a gold card as we see granted to World War II veterans through this bill and to use the excuse that it will cost either too much or that it has not been 54 or 55 years since the end of the Korean War, in my view, is to devalue their service. Seventy-year-old veterans from the Korean War and Vietnam veterans who are approaching 70 would, in my opinion, be justified in thinking the government somehow thinks that their service is of a lesser quality than service from World War II.

I might add at this point that in an article in the Financial Review Peter Walsh had two particular concerns relating to the extension of gold card benefits to World War II veterans. He made the observation that, in coming 54 or so years after the end of the Second World War, it has effectively excluded those Australian World War II veterans who have since passed away. In actual fact, during their lifetime, particularly during their latter years, they received a lesser recognition for their service than now is the case for the surviving veterans from World War II.

Peter Walsh then went on to make the comment, `Why should this particular benefit be extended to millionaires or to those who are in comfortable financial circumstances?' The interesting situation, as was mentioned, is the case of those who are required, in the case of Vietnam service, to have undergone extensive health tests before being eligible to serve. Of course, there was no consideration given to a person's financial circumstances before they served in World War II or in the Korean War. In other words, it was not of any interest at the time to those who were responsible for enlisting men and women in the armed services, and therefore neither should it be a consideration in the extension of the gold card benefits to those veterans who would be otherwise entitled.

In that case, Peter Walsh, in endeavouring no doubt to extend his normal economic rationalist view to the extension of benefits to veterans or to other members of the community, has taken that particular circumstance a little too far, and I am sure the shadow minister at the table would disagree with his former colleague from the Labor Party. In the case of the 54 or so years that have passed since the end of the Second World War before this benefit has been extended, I think there are good grounds to question why it has taken so long, considering, for instance, that in 1975 Judge Toose did a milestone report on veterans' entitlements.

There are many veterans from the Korean War who have reached the 70-year-old threshold. They served in locations where they were at great personal risk and, as I mentioned earlier, are facing deterioration in their health. In the case of Korean War veterans, this and the previous government have not even felt it a responsibility of theirs to construct a Korean War memorial in Canberra; rather, they have made an donation equivalent to the Korean government's to a fund for construction. A Korean War memorial will be built in Canberra only if enough public and private donations can be collected. I am advised that Korean War veterans from the United States, presumably unable to understand that the Australian government would not adequately recognise the war service, have recently donated $12,000 to the Australian memorial fund. I have placed on the Notice Paper a motion which calls on the Australian government to:

(1) immediately allocate whatever funds are required to meet the shortfall for the construction of a war memorial in Canberra to Australia's participation in the Korean War; and

(2) undertake to celebrate a consecration of the memorial to demonstrate that, despite the more than 45 years since that conflict ended, the importance of Australia's contribution to this major UN operation is respected by both the Government and the broader community.

I look forward to the opportunity to debate the merits of this motion with government members when it comes up. Such a memorial and the question of access to the gold card are tangible measures that should be taken by this government as a matter of priority.

I would also like to turn to comments by the RSL in Australia. Whilst applauding the government for this new measure, the national president of the RSL highlighted his expectation that veterans of other conflicts should also be rewarded for their service as they reach their senior years.

The second drawback in the two that I am talking about in the government's approach is that it denies a gold card to those veterans who did not perform active service in a prescribed location. I have concerns about a number of veterans who did make significant sacrifice—the member for Murray (Mrs Stone) mentioned that sacrifice of their youth—but failed to be deployed into one of the geographic locations where they could be considered by the department to have been at risk—through no fault of their own, I might add—after having put themselves in a position to be deployed at any particular time to one of those locations.

In my constituency I have a number of instances of these types of anomalies. In one particular case, one constituent underwent detailed and dangerous training, was posted to Alice Springs and received two 28-day leave passes in four years. He is ineligible under these rules, because the government did not deploy him to Darwin or overseas. But he did suffer hardship and risk anyway, and in my view he ought to be entitled to a similar benefit.

I would like to see a system where all servicemen and servicewomen who achieve a certain level of service, perhaps 15 years, as was the case for defence service home loans, should be able to access the level of health care provided by the gold card when they reach the age of 70. If this government found that this is not acceptable due to cost, all veterans—that is, all people who have undertaken operational service, irrespective of where and when it was undertaken—should be included in this measure as soon as they reach 70.

I have made specific mention of the Korean War as our first major UN contribution, but since then many Australian servicemen and servicewomen, and policemen and policewomen, have served in a variety of locations around the globe at significant risk to their safety. Unless every operation they participate in is specified, they are unlikely to become eligible for a gold card should they reach 70 years of age.

I might add another important rider to this: because these measures are introduced in this piecemeal fashion, people become suspicious, in my view, as I think a member from the opposition has pointed out, in the sense that they are introduced in the climate of an impending election campaign. Clearly, the coalition, through some of its other measures, most notably the nursing home changes, has upset and, in many instances, made insecure a large number of senior Australians, and I would imagine that it is anxious to win back the support of the people it has lost as a consequence of some of these changes.

The Prime Minister (Mr Howard) has said in his statements in recent times that he wishes stability, security and safety to be the prevailing set of circumstances in the community. I would challenge the Prime Minister and say that in actual fact much of his legislation that is reformist has contributed to the level of insecurity in the community, the sense of insecurity fuelled and fed by change which people find difficult to understand or difficult to come to terms with. In many instances, it is purely and simply because it is a change for change's sake. In cases where people are elderly and perhaps have become used to a set of circumstances over a number of years, the changes that have been mooted or introduced by the coalition in a number of instances contribute to a level of insecurity which, as we know from Hugh Mackay's most recent works and some of his most recent articles, is prevailing at a very high rate in our community.

Some members in recent times have probably been questioning why the community is behaving in particular ways electorally, but I would say that insecurity, a sense of alienation and a sense of powerlessness in the decision making process have very heavily contributed to this. Unfortunately, the government, elected as it was with a huge mandate, has contributed to this by fuelling this level of insecurity through many of the changes it has either introduced or mooted during its period of office.

In my view, there ought to be a uniform benefit extended, as far as the gold card is concerned, to those servicemen and servicewomen who have served in operational areas, at the very least, on achieving the age of 70. It seems to me to be unfair and undesirable that it becomes a political football at election time and that announcements are made in what I consider to be a piecemeal approach.

I mentioned earlier in relation to the Korean War memorial that, if people are looking at how a government views the contribution made by servicemen and servicewomen to the cause of their country or to the causes that their country has undertaken, the lack of a Korean War memorial—in other words, full funding from the federal government—is a grave disappointment. It certainly would be a grave disappointment to many of the Korean War veterans in the Australian community.

I would like to conclude by reiterating that, although on the one hand this is a very desirable measure as far as the World War II veterans who served in operational areas are concerned—and I commend the government for making these changes, something that I have wanted to see for a long time and have made numerous representations about—I am very concerned that, by doing so in this way, the government has sent an unfortunate message, probably one that was not foreseen or intended, to veterans of other conflicts who may have also reached the age of 70 years or who are approaching the age of 70 years that their service in operational areas was in some way less onerous or less of a sacrifice than the service of the World War II veterans.

I also want to point out the cases of those particular veterans who served in Australia and who, through no fault of their own, were neither transferred nor sent to operational areas, as defined by the bill, but were prepared to risk their lives on behalf of their country and, in the cases in my electorate, to sacrifice a substantial part of their youth in the service to Australia in remote locations. In the case of the constituent that I mentioned, in effect he was separated from his family for four years. In my view, this merits the benefits that a gold card provide.

I believe that a country like Australia, particularly with its geographic location and the fact that it is a continent and a place that is very difficult to defend in a time of warfare, must as a matter of great priority not only give significant recognition to the fact that people have been prepared to serve and have served their country but also make sure that that service does not become in effect a political football around election times.

I hope that, in reviewing the way in which the legislation has progressed, the government might care to consider the interests of those Korean War and Vietnam War veterans who are approaching 70 years and, I might add, the interests in the future of Australian servicemen and servicewomen who have served in operational areas in other capacities but have also undertaken their duties at a risk to their own lives. I commend the bill, with those reservations.