Mr HUNT (12:50 PM) —I am pleased to speak in support of the Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 3) 2002. I am pleased in particular to be able to follow my colleague the member for Cowan, who has a distinguished career in the service of this nation and who also spoke with great passion about the protection of those memorials which honour the Australian war dead. I have been fortunate to have spent one Anzac Day at Ambon in Indonesia. I witnessed the beauty of the ceremony, the recollection, the power of the memory and I understood, as the member for Cowan set out, some of the profound memories and the extraordinary commitment which flow from the deeds of Australian service personnel in the past.

This bill today is very timely. It comes within the context of three developments. The first development is the Australian service personnel serving overseas in active combat in Iraq as we speak. They face a hazardous and indeed perilous task, a task which is dedicated ultimately to pursuing the objective of providing a people who have not had liberty, who live under the yoke of heavy oppression and who live in a police state—a state with none of the democratic freedoms that we have—with an opportunity and with hope for the future. But they do so knowing that their future is our responsibility to protect back here.

The second development is the release of the Clarke review into veterans' entitlements. Those recommendations contained within the Clarke review are under consideration and they provide for an extension of benefits in a number of areas. The third development, and one that I welcome in particular, is the statement by the Minister for Veterans' Affairs yesterday that a rock-solid guarantee will be made that any changes that flow from the assessment and analysis of the Clarke review will only be to the net benefit of veterans throughout Australia—a guarantee that no veteran or veteran group will in any way have their entitlements diminished. I think those three developments provide a very important context for the discussion and debate of the Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 3) 2002.

In turning to the express provisions of this bill, this bill makes beneficial amendments to the Veterans' Entitlements Act of 1986. In particular, there are four principal areas in which the benefits and changes accrue. Firstly, it is about indexing veterans' child related payments and ensuring that they are indexed consistently with family assistance payments. Secondly, it is about safeguarding the age pensioners pension bonus scheme time accrued so, if someone is eligible for the war widows or widowers pension, the accrued time is not lost. Thirdly, it is about amending the legislation so that veterans' partners pensions are paid from the date of initial lodgment of the application. The important thing here is that it establishes a regime in terms of application dates which is more favourable than the current situation for those seeking a pension. Fourthly, it is about ensuring consistency in determining the lump sum preclusion periods when people receive compensation lump sums.

In addressing the bill I wish to speak briefly about three elements: firstly, its background; secondly, its importance; and, thirdly, its provisions. I want to do so also by noting that within my own electorate there is a series of powerful advocates for the rights and concerns of veterans and the protection of their interests. The RSL groups on Phillip Island and at Bass, Kooweerup, Baxter, Somerville, Hastings, Dromana, Rosebud, Rye and Sorrento, amongst others, are strong groups committed to the individual care and protection of their veterans and also to the general improvement of veterans' entitlements.

Those concerns have, to a large extent, already been honoured and advanced. Earlier this year, along with a number of other members, I spoke in support of the extension of gold card access to all veterans who have served overseas since World War II. That means that those who have served in subsequent conflicts—Korea, Malaya, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Gulf War, East Timor and now Iraq—will, on reaching the age of 70, be entitled to complete and comprehensive health care coverage for all ailments, irrespective of the cause.

I turn to the background to this bill. It seeks to overcome a series of challenges. The first challenge is in relation to veterans' child related payments. With the introduction of the family tax benefit under the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999, we found that a number of provisions under the Social Security Act were repealed. A consequence of that was that child related payments under the Veterans' Entitlements Act no longer had a correlating benchmark; veterans' child related payments were unintentionally frozen at the level of the date of the introduction of the family tax benefit. That is the first challenge which this bill seeks to overcome.

The second challenge is in relation to commuted income streams and asset test exemption. Under the current scheme, pensioners benefit from a commuted means test exempt income stream. This is a challenge. I should explain to the House and to members of my community what commutation means. A commuted asset test exempt income stream means that moneys from any source which are transferred over to investment products such as superannuation, rollover annuities or ordinary annuities and other investments are working savings that do not reduce the amount of pension received. In essence, it is about preserving the benefit that someone can obtain from a veteran's pension. Under the existing legislation, where new investment products have become available, some pensioners receive incomes from income streams that are judged ineligible for exemption. This bill expands the scope of exemption to protect the right of the veteran to the full pension, irrespective of some of the other sources of income that they are receiving.

The third challenge that the bill aims to overcome is in relation to the transfer of benefits under the Pension Bonus Scheme. The Pension Bonus Scheme was introduced in the Social Security and Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment (Pension Bonus Scheme) Act 1998. The challenge is that under this scheme people eligible for an age pension, age service pension or partner service pension who defer their claims and their entitlement are eligible to receive a lump sum pension bonus. However, the current legislation does not allow for people who have accrued a bonus period through the age pension scheme to transfer this bonus period over to the war widow or widower. That is the challenge which we are seeking to overcome here. An accrued bonus period—the equivalent of long service leave or an entitlement—which is carried over is not applicable under the current legislation.

The fourth challenge is in relation to a veteran's partner's entitlements—the husbands and wives of our veterans. Under the current legislation, the partners of veterans qualifying for the partner service pension must be at least 50 years of age or have a dependent child at the time of application. The challenge here is that veterans' partners are paid only from the time that they reapply for the partner service pension, not from the date of their original claim if they are denied on a first attempt. This amendment to the legislation is effectively backdating the payment.

I will go through, in sequence, the importance of the changes contained in the bill. The first concerns the veterans' child related payments. The bill ensures that veterans' families receive child related payments that are adjusted coinciding with family assistance payments through the family tax benefit scheme. What does this mean in essence for veterans? It means that their child related payments are no longer frozen at the 2000 level. That is a very important development.

The second important development contained within the bill is that it transfers benefits to the Pension Bonus Scheme, overcoming the challenge that we identified. In essence, for ordinary veterans, the bill ensures that people who have already gone through the pain of loss need not be disadvantaged through losing their age pension accrued period entitlements in the transfer to the Pension Bonus Scheme.

The third important development is in relation to veterans' partners' entitlements. The bill ensures that partners of veterans receive their entitlements backdated to the date of the first lodgment of their claim. When a veteran applies for the disability pension at the special rate, their partner may also apply for the partner service pension. This is an important development.

The fourth important development is in relation to the lump sum compensation that they receive. The significant development here is that the bill ensures that there is consistency in the treatment of compensation payable in lump sums. When some people receive compensation lump sums, a preclusion period applies. This period affects the amount of pension payable. The bill ensures that there is a consistent approach in the calculation of multiple lump sums as a single lump sum so as to simplify the whole process.

This bill makes a number of improvements to the Veterans' Entitlements Act 1986. It is essentially about ensuring that Australians who have served, or who have had members of their families serve, receive appropriate child related benefits, that they receive an equitable distribution of pension payments and that they qualify at an early and appropriate time for those benefits. In the broad scheme of things, the bill is a reflection of the government's compassion towards the veteran community, its respect for their work and its appreciation for their service to the community. It fits within the broader context of reforms and feeds into the reforms which are likely to flow under the final assessment of the Clarke review, a deep and broad-ranging review into the range of entitlements offered to veterans who have served Australia overseas. I commend the Minister for Veterans' Affairs for her work. I join with the opposition in providing bipartisan support for this bill and commend it to the House and to the broader Australian community.