Vikki Campion: War widows wait as political payouts rushed through

While Brittany Higgins received the government’s version of a VIP pass with a fast-tracked compensation claim, those who lost mothers, fathers, husbands and wives were told to get in the queue at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Labor has rushed staffers’ payouts through the express lane while war widows have been told to wait.

While Brittany Higgins received the government’s version of a VIP pass with a fast-tracked compensation claim, those who lost mothers, fathers, husbands and wives were told to get in the queue at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In the same year that Labor ticked off on Higgins’ claim after a single day of mediation, nearly two-thirds of war widows had their claim processed late, beyond the 30-day deadline.

If they can fast-track a payment for Higgins why not war widows and orphans?

Veterans are looking at these compensation cases in parliament and shaking their heads.

All of whom, by the way, have been quiet about it.

If only they had worked overtime in an electoral office for a Teal instead of swimming the Pacific Ocean, retrieving dead bodies from the water around the boats of people smugglers.

If only they had lost a self-proclaimed future career in politics instead of offering their life for Australia, to suffer nerve damage, insomnia, uncontrollable shakes and the crippling of limbs.

If only media elites had weaponised their cases, maybe then the claims of orphaned children and widowed spouses would have been dealt with in a more expeditious manner.

The draft statement of claim said Higgins had been “diagnosed as medically unfit for any form of ­employment and has been given a very poor prognosis for future ­employment”.

Remember that this $2.5 million claim was not paid for her alleged rape but her stress in making a rape claim in her workplace and that her chances of pursuing a career in politics was ruined.

The $2.5 million figure in the early draft was based on Ms Higgins’ 2021 salary over a 40-year period, so essentially, it was calculated based on the presumption that Scott Morrison would have remained Prime Minister for the next 40 years – unless she believes you can just flit between different offices of opposing political parties.

In comparison, if you lost an eye fighting for your country, that’s a payout of $56 a week. Over 40 years, that’s $120,000.

Former staffer for Teal Kooyong MP Monique Ryan Sally Rugg received a $100,000 payout from the federal government for working overtime, “creating an unsafe workplace”.

Labor decided that the pain Higgins endured in making a claim in the parliament was the equivalent of 21 soldiers for 40 years having their eye shot out.

A soldier who loses a leg and an arm and an eye gets paid by the federal Government $789 a week, or over 40 years about $1.6 million.

Using this math, Labor believes the stress and loss of future earnings for a junior Liberal staffer were nearly $1 million worse than a soldier who lost an arm, leg, and an eye.

We’re starting to understand why they tried to keep these details secret for so long.

If everyone who had worked in Parliament House was entitled to payouts of that size, we’d have to create a contingent liability for about $10 billion.

This payout sets an absurd precedent for political staffers, some of whom were never going to have careers that hit the high notes.

There is something deeply wrong when Australia’s defence claims system is so complex and difficult to navigate that veterans sometimes wait more than 300 days for a decision, while political staffers with the ammunition to bring down a government get priority.

The guy who sacrificed his body waits. The widow whose husband died in conflict, or by suicide after years of struggling with PTSD, waits.

Last year, war widows told the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicides they only get a case assessor to consider their claim after they went to the media.

Another war widow whose husband died in Afghanistan was given an annual pension of about $13,000 a year on top of a lump sum when he died of $92,000. Over 40 years, the war widow gets $610,000.

How did Labor come to this $2.5 million figure? Where the death of a young husband and dad is worth a fraction of the price of a killed-off political career?

Any payout of $2.5 million magnitude would rely on the income tax of 140 people on about $80,000 a year for a financial year to pay for it.

It’s not just the value of it that seems overgenerous in the context of what we pay our veterans, but that while war widows waited, Higgins’s compensation was more important to be rushed through.

Labor has vowed to fix Australia’s veteran compensation and rehabilitation legislative system after it was found by the royal commission to be so complicated that it adversely affects the mental health of some veterans and can contribute to suicides. Yet war widows wait.

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