ADSO Policy Objective – Restoring veterans’ disability payment (VDP) obligations
Veterans Disability Payment. VDP is a compensation Payment for wounds and injury caused in military service. It is NOT a welfare pension. VDP has two rates: impairment for pain & suffering and Incapacity for the inabiity to work.
There are two issues relating to the Billy Hughes PM 1917 Promise: “We say to them – ‘You go and fight, and when you come back we will look after you’ ….we have entered into a bargain with the soldier, and we must keep it!”
That Promise gave rise to a national obligation, to maintain for disabled veterans and their families a replacement income that maintains a reasonable standard of living and a non discreptionary financial commitment to it. Successive Governments have broken the obligation.
1. The Veterans’ Disability compensation payment for Totally and Permanently Incapacitated Persons/Special Rate (Impairment with Incapacity to work) has declined to an amount that no longer maintains a reasonable standard of living. . This is unconscionable and a sad reflection on the Nation’s obligation to care for its most severly disabled veterans and their families. The benchmark standard must be restored.
2. The Veterans’ General Rate Disability compensation payment (Impairment without incapacity to work) was wrongflly excluded from the 2009 Harmer Review of Commonwealth pensions and its recommended and accepted structural increases . The purchasing power parity that previously existed was lost and must be restored.
Both the LNP’s and the ALP’s Veteran Policies have continued to ignore both matters.
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