Mr EDWARDS (5:46 PM) —I want to relate to the parliament, in the debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2001-2002, the story of one of my constituents, Mrs Usher, the wife of a veteran who has unfortunately passed away. She looked after her husband for the last 22 years of his life, a period of time in which he was on a pension from Veterans' Affairs, but not a TPI pension because some of the disabilities he had were not directly attributed to his war service. Mrs Usher recently received a letter from the Minister for Veterans' Affairs—to `Dear Mrs Usher'—and I quote from that letter:

The minister concluded by saying:

Mrs Usher thought this was great. She was after a new quilt for her bed and she went out shopping for one. She narrowed it down to a choice of two or three but, because she did not have the money, she did not purchase it there and then. That was fortunate for her because next morning she received a follow-up letter from the Department of Veterans' Affairs:

So we have the minister pushing out the good news and leaving it to his department to front up when the bad news has to be passed on. I would have thought that if this minister had any decency whatsoever he would have written personally back to Mrs Usher instead of leaving it to his department. I call on the Minister for Veterans' Affairs to come into this parliament and explain to Mrs Usher and many other veterans why this mistake was made. Unfortunately, we have a Minister for Veterans' Affairs who has more front than Myers when it comes to photo opportunities but has a heart about as big as a caraway seed when it comes to the issue of getting up and fighting for veterans.

I have got a couple of examples of these things, the first of which is found with an organisation called the CT Group. The CT Group are former SAS servicemen who worked on counter-terrorist operations over a period of time. Many of these are young men now discharged. Some of them are as young as late 30s or early 40s and are on TPI pensions. Many of these former soldiers do not qualify, however, for the service pension. They put up a submission, which was passed personally to the minister by the member for Curtin some 18 months ago. The minister has sat on that submission and has done absolutely nothing. A media release recently put out by Martin Hamilton-Smith MP, Member for Waite, says:

I am going to come back to that situation in a minute but I really want to know why it is that the minister has not done anything about that submission. I want to know why it is that he has not given those former SAS soldiers the support they need and why it is that he has not helped them put their own submission together.

The other example I want to use is the one which relates to the appalling treatment that the minister has handed out to TPI veterans. Not only is his treatment of them as individuals appalling but it is very obvious that this Minister for Veterans' Affairs is playing wedge politics with veterans' organisations. Firstly, he is trying to use the national RSL to lean on the TPI association and, secondly, he is trying to create division within that TPI organisation. It is called wedge politics and this minister knows exactly the game he is playing. For some time now many TPI veterans have been pursuing the government over what they see as an erosion of their benefits.

The history of the issue is that there is some division in the TPI community, and that is recognised. That division comes about because, while there are some veterans who are well off, there are many others that are not, particularly those who have their TPI pension counted as income against Centrelink benefits. Some of those people are those former SAS soldiers that I spoke about. Part of that division came about when the national executive of the TPI association refused to listen to the rank and file. It ended with a vote of no confidence being passed in the minister and in the then national president. A new president was elected and despite being a sick veteran he has fought hard to represent his members and pursue their issues all to no avail. Indeed, this veteran organisation, made up of sick and disabled veterans, has had to do the work that this government should have done for them. This minister is on the record as conceding that the TPIs have a case but he has done nothing to help them develop their submission; worse, he has dudded them. In a recent letter sent to the National President of the Australian Federation of TPI ex-servicemen and women, he said this:

When the budget was brought down, people from all over Australia were brought into a lockup, including the national president of the TPI association. He was brought in and read through the budget. There was not a single thing there for TPI veterans—not a single thing. There was nothing from the government in response to their submission and nothing in relation to the commitment the minister gave that he would move to make sure the Veterans' Entitlements Act disability pension would not be counted as income for social security purposes. When this matter was in the Senate some time ago the ALP moved to amend it. The government refused to accept that amendment and they threatened to pull the Veterans' Entitlements Act unless we relented. We did relent; the minister indicated then that it was a matter that would be dealt with in the budget. I regret that he has chosen not to do so.

There are a couple of other issues that I want to relate to this minister. The first one is the payment to the POWs. It is a pity that it is not going to the prisoners of war in German camps. This minister is on the record as saying that he did not think the POWs should get compensation anyway. The second issue I want to relate is the nashos medal. Once again, this minister was on the record as saying that he was opposed to nashos getting a medal. He is obviously not the one who has fought for these issues; it has come about as a matter of intervention by the Prime Minister.

The last thing I want to say relates to the series Australians at War. I watched the series the other night when it dealt with Vietnam. It was interesting how the whole program hinged around the veterans of Long Tan. It is a disgrace that this minister still refuses to allow the veterans of Long Tan to wear Vietnamese medals. This is a right he has granted to every other Australian veteran group or individual. He still refuses to allow the veterans of Long Tan to wear the Vietnamese medals that they were to be presented with. I think that is a disgrace. They will get them. It will not happen under this minister, but it will happen.