See the question and answer here then in the right hand margin click on Veterans Pension
It was pleasing to hear Jacqui Lambie reaffirm the PUP’s commitment to support all veterans.
The question presented was different from that submitted by the exclusion of the second highlighted sentence:
“The PUP has won public support by the announcement that they will block the Mining Tax Repeal Bill until the Government reverses its plans to axe the education allowance for 1,240 veterans’ orphaned children. In 2009, owing to their inadequacy, the Age and Invalid pensions were raised. But war veterans’ invalidity pensions, despite also being inadequate, were not. Would PUP apply the same willingness to support the 29,000 Totally and Permanently disabled veterans to raise their pensions?”
At the end of the day its omission had no impact on Jacqui’s reply. But for the audience and viewers it did not reveal the discrimination that was applied to invalid veterans by the 2009 Harmer Review and the Labor Government’s acceptance of its exclusion of any veterans’ invalidity pension increase. That subject could have opened a revealing discussion from Penny Wong and Marise Payne.
It seems that Marise Payne may not have understood the difference between a veteran’s disability pension and a superannuation pension. Her mention of the DFRDB increase brought a flash response from Jacqui questioning the exclusion of 166,000 others (under age 55 DFRDB superannuants and all MSBS superannuants, preserved beneficiaries and contributors).
We thank Jacqui Lambie and the PUP for their support of the veterans’ community. Her passion, honesty and forthrightness is to be admired.
An ADSO priority is the restoration of DVA Disability Pension Indexation to parity as legislated by the Coalition in 2007 but removed by Rudd Labor in 2009. Unfortunately, the Abbott Government will remain complicit in the Rudd Government’s actions until the lost parity is restored.