Mrs IRWIN (10:49 AM) —The Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 1999 has been referred to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee because it contains a number of proposals which relate to election promises. The extension to HomeFront and the Veterans' Children Education Scheme were announced in the budget, as was the Home Support Loan Scheme.

The tightening up of the permanent incapacity test has not been given the same exposure but there is no doubt that it is a savings measure. It did not appear as an election promise and it did not rate a salute for service in the election policy document. I thought that served to lower the tone of the campaign material. It is a savings measure and a transfer to Centrelink for those who do not meet the test. The test will be applied to existing invalidity service pensioners. That is my reading of the legislation before us. Centrelink has been down this path with its disability tables. It attempted a cull and added an anxiety to large numbers of people with disabilities.

With so many employment programs having had the heave-ho, many chronic unemployed have found themselves being accepted as having sufficient disability to qualify for a disability support pension. It helps make Newstart figures look good. Labor's shadow minister, Wayne Swan, calculates that the cost of disability support pensions at the present rate of increase will draw level with unemployment benefits by next June. The government is now looking at putting the mutual obligation clamp on people with disabilities rather than screwing down the eligibility criteria for disability support pensions. Given the alignment of veterans' affairs and social security payments, you have to speculate whether veterans are going to be treated in the same humiliating way.

With this legislation, the Department of Veterans' Affairs is looking at embarking on a major project, although they estimate only 13 per cent of existing pensioners will have to be re-examined. This includes those people on the income support supplement who were brought over from the social security disability support pension in the first place. It is my understanding that they will be reassessed under the current tables used by Centrelink and sent back there if they do not qualify. They will go back across the great divide and onto a Centrelink payment which could only be Newstart. Presumably, if they do not qualify for the veterans' disability test, they will not qualify for Centrelink's test, and they will not get a sickness allowance unless they have a full-time job and have run out of sick leave. The only option is Newstart.

There comes a time in administering programs when the numbers have to be there to make the service delivery cost effective. One gets the feeling that this is all being done on a ship's deck in a good swell with the passengers being rolled from port to starboard and back again. But the disparity certainly has to be addressed. The old 85 per cent permanently incapacitated test does not have a clear reference elsewhere. Many will argue that war widows or widowers deserve a different measure and that, if you have been assessed as being 85 per cent permanently incapacitated, the matter should rest there because that is a serious level of incapacity.

This is going to cause distress to widows and widowers—the only people who qualify for the permanent incapacity income support supplement—especially when they consider the Centrelink 20 per cent criterion. It is not going to make sense to them. If they are going to have to slide to the other side of the deck over to Centrelink they will use the appeal mechanism. They will be angry and hurt and they will more than likely face hiccups in the transition back. Seamless government services are not a reality; we all know that.

It is also going to distress veterans because the implication is that they have been receiving something they should not have received and that they have to go through the test again. The alternative is to grandfather the legislation so that only new claimants will come under the new assessment. They would, of course, be the veterans of later conflicts and fairness has to prevail in whatever assessment method is used.

I can see where this legislation is coming from. I am just not sure if the journey is going to take into account the status of the people we are dealing with. These are honoured citizens. They are veterans. They are wives and husbands of veterans now deceased who sustained injury in defending our great nation. We have to be sensitive to these people, just as we have to be sensitive to all veterans, and I know the view of the Department of Veterans' Affairs is the same. Governments can get insensitive. This government was insensitive to start with. But we really should be careful because what looks good on paper may not necessarily be so in real life. We will not get to see that paperwork. We in the opposition are not provided with the winners and losers calculation in the cabinet submission bringing this forward, but it is not looking good. I am sure the department is bracing itself against the disquiet this measure will bring about among the very people they are exclusively set up to serve.

The Senate committee's findings will be interesting to many of us with active veterans' organisations in our electorates and those of us with some understanding of the veteran community. I know it will be interesting to my colleague the member for Cowan. I always try to stick up for the Department of Veterans' Affairs among the diggers because they are always saying—and I think unfairly—that they only got what they are getting because they took `them' on or fought `them' every inch of the way. It has always struck me as an odd choice of words—fighting a veterans' department—but the member for Cowan is actually having to do that. His fight for the six Vietnam veterans and their downgraded bravery awards is a tribute to him. Victory rightly belongs to the member for Cowan, the Hon. Graham Edwards, and the Vietnam vets. Veterans who do not meet the new impairment tables, the minister has told this House, will also be able to avail themselves of Centrelink services. The devil is in the detail again.

When the new tables for the child disability allowance came into play, it was found that cystic fibrosis—a cruel, incurable condition, especially for children—was not considered a manifest condition. It got left off the list. This legislation provides for veterans with manifest conditions to be excluded from the reassessment. But where is the manifest of the manifest conditions? Where is the list? The other elements in the legislation have the same sorts of implications.

As the daughter of Alan Welsh, a TPI veteran, I welcome any recognition of my parents' needs as they get older. The practical prevention of falls and accidents at home is desirable and its extension is welcome, particularly in this year of recognition for older people. The same can be said of the loans scheme to help with home modifications and essential maintenance.

The veterans in Fowler and their organisations are very much part of the community, and so they should be, not only because of what they put into the community through their organisations but also because they are honoured citizens. A lot of them are not getting any younger. If we fail in our obligations to them under the veterans' affairs legislation, then we fail our community.