Page 1004 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 21 April 2021
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The history to this, for members who may not be aware, is that in other jurisdictions there was an establishment of veterans affairs ministers and ministerial advisory councils on veterans affairs. On 24 April 2009, the then Leader of the Opposition and I called for that to occur in the ACT. The Canberra Liberals established the shadow minister for veterans affairs, called for a council, called for specific initiatives for veterans, and at that stage the Labor-Greens government refused those calls.
But some years later they did acknowledge that this was required. Every other jurisdiction by that stage had a minister for veterans affairs and they had established that. It was a bit clunky to start with, but, as I have said in this place before, when Mr Ramsay took the helm after the 2016 election he showed a real interest, got on with it and formed a real connection with veterans.
So it was a great disappointment to me and to veterans when, after the latest election, the minister for veterans affairs and seniors—and I know that it annoyed Ms Lawder and seniors groups—was just dropped from the administrative arrangements. What had been previously something that I think that this government had put an effort into, Mr Barr, as Chief Minister, just scrubbed it from the administrative arrangements.
We asked questions about that in this place. There was a lot of communication from veterans groups and from seniors groups and then, begrudgingly, Mr Barr, after we asked again in question time, finally established those arrangements. That was the first mistake. That was the first black mark and mistake by the Chief Minister, and what it did was cause suspicion within veterans groups. A lot of veterans I spoke to are very upset that the ministry had just been scrubbed like that
The second mistake was to appoint a Greens member to the position of veterans affairs minister. The reasons for this are that every veteran is a former or current serving defence member; you are someone that has served in the Army, the Navy or the Air Force. Many of us have been on operations and understand what cutting defence expenditure and capability means.
It is without question that that is the policy of the Greens, and if you go to their website there is a title in one of the documents that says, “CUT MILITARY SPENDING”. It states:
The Greens believe we should stop wasting money and redirect these funds where they are needed.
The Greens will reduce military spending. If you go through a whole bunch of press releases from the Greens, the Greens’ peace and disarmament spokesman said today:
… buying new military technology for future wars was “the worst way to spend $200 billion” …
It is a little unclear how much they want to cut out of defence but if spending it on defence is the worst way to spend $200 billion, I assume that he wants to cut $200 billion out of defence. And certainly that is the title of his press release.
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