The Canberra Times
BY PHILIP DORLING
NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT
26/06/2009
Former Royal Australian Air Force maintenance technicians say the new
proposals for compensation for work-related health complaints are
inadequate.
A federal parliamentary committee has recommended compensation
be extended to about 2000 more Defence personnel whose health might
have been affected by an air force program to repair F-111 bomber fuel
tanks.
The F-111 deseal-reseal program, that ran from 1973 to 2000 at the
RAAF base at Amberley, Queensland, involved thousands of workers
using toxic chemicals and working in the confined spaces of the aircrafts'
fuel tanks to remove and replace sealants.
Owing to the nature of the work and weather conditions, workers were
allowed to dispense with protective clothing that in any case was later
found to provide little or no protection.
The chairman of the Defence subcommittee of the Parliament's Joint
Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Queensland Labor MP
Arch Bevis, said his committee's recommendations, if adopted by the
Federal Government, would rectify the shortcomings of a previous
compensation scheme adopted by the Howard government in 2005.
In tabling the report, Mr Bevis was highly critical of the Defence Department's
failure over many years to provide adequate support for former and
serving RAAF workers whose health had been placed at risk as a
consequence of their involvement the deseal-reseal program.
However, the F-111 Deseal Reseal Support Group president Ian Fraser said
the report still failed to sheet home responsibility to the Defence Department
hierarchy for deliberate decisions that risked the health of workers.
''The RAAF failed to provide duty of care,'' Mr Fraser said. ''We were cannon
fodder in the Cold War that required the F-111 to be operational and available
as a deterrent ... It wasn't a systemic failure in any way. It was a calculated
risk to destroy the lives of those who had to do the deseal-reseal work.
''Clearly the risk has paid off for the RAAF, the Government and
[Department of Veterans' Affairs].
The only people that have paid any price for this are the victims ...
We will all die before our time because our life has been shortened
by our exposures ... We have people dying in their 40s and 50s ...
We have had 20 to 30 years stolen from our lives and no one seems to
want to pay for that loss, nor do they seem to understand what has been lost.''
Mr Fraser welcomed some elements of the report, but said they were
peripheral to the core group that suffered the most exposure to the chemicals.
He said the most any of the worst-affected would receive would be payments
of $40,000.
''I would expect that an ex-gratia payment of no less than $500,000 would
be fair,'' he said.
''If this country can pay $420,000 to a stressed child for spending nine
months in a detention centre, then it can damn well pay decent compensation
to those they knowingly and purposefully injured and effectively killed in the
line of duty.''
Veterans' Affairs Minister Alan Griffin said the Government would consider
the parliamentary committee's recommendations.
WCV's: Well isn't this a turn of events! Victims being compensated at last!
Although as an Injured Worker of the Kennett era I am getting sick of the
picking and choosing going on here by the Government on whom they will
pay and who they won't pay!
Is the Government going to provide all Injured workers hurt in the
Kennett era ex- gratia payments too?
If this doesn't happen, then we are surely being discriminated
against?
First it was the Police Force with 23 Officers and now its the RAAF with
2000 workers, so when is this government going to realise that they need
to compensate us all and stop beating around the bush with their "we cant
afford it lies"...
As far as I am concerned the Government should acknowledge that
Kennett stuffed it up and now its time to pay the piper!
If they can afford to pay the 2000 RAAF victims 500,000 each or 10 million
for the group then as Mr Fraser says " they can damn well afford to pay us
what we would have been entitled to as well".
Why should we be left out?
No more bullshit Mr Holding, just do it!!!!
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