Page 5045 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 26 October 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Kapyong, and then was captured by the Chinese and held as a prisoner of war. There was an ex-fighter pilot there who laid a wreath and who had led and been part of the first mission into North Korea as part of 77 Squadron. There was an amazing array of veterans, and it was great to see the community support for them.
Of course, we have Remembrance Day coming up next month when we will see all the organisations out there, and it will be an opportunity for us to purchase poppies and remember. That dates back to wars many years ago, but we should also bear in mind that there are many members of our community and their families and their friends right here and right now who are involved in struggles that are occurring in Afghanistan. We have now had 21 deaths in that conflict. This year 56 soldiers have been wounded, and it is 156 wounded to date. In fact, there were four wounded last week from the special forces task group—that was only announced yesterday—including three who were shot. I would like to mention that a good friend of mine was shot in 2007. Thankfully he was only wounded, but it is the sort of measure of the men and women that we have got over there that, although he was shot, he remained on duty and completed a four-month tour. It was the first patrol that he went out on that he was shot on, and he recovered in the field of operations and continued on with his tour.
While we are talking about Afghanistan, I would like to commend the contributions made in the federal parliament by the members there, in particular, led by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. I have read both their speeches; they are both very good speeches. Many others also stood up to recognise the role that our armed services are playing in the important conflict in Afghanistan.
Some of the issues affecting veterans—there are no World War I veterans left, but there are World War II veterans and those through to the current day—include issues of physical harm that they have experienced and disability but also the mental anguish. There are many people that are coming back from conflicts—I think Vietnam is probably the conflict we recall most when this issue comes to mind, but it is equally relevant for those who have served in more recent conflicts, as well as World War II—with some terrible mental trauma.
A lot of our veterans are obviously ageing. Many of our World War II veterans are well into their 90s, and our Vietnam veterans are also getting on in years. There was a motion that was discussed in this place last year that was brought before the house about pensions of our Defence Force members. It is an important point to make that our service personnel do not have their pensions indexed in the same way that politicians or other members of the community do. So the DFRDB is linked to CPI. I know that Ms Bresnan made some comment about that, and I was a bit disappointed, I have to say, that the Greens did not take that on as an issue during the federal campaign. I will continue to urge all members to advocate their federal colleagues to make sure that our Defence Force veterans do not face inequality. Many of them are just on a single income and have been seeing their income in real terms diminish over the years.
As Mr Coe said, there are many organisations in the ACT who are doing an amazing amount of work. He named a few, and I will just make sure I go through the list as
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video