{"id":13516,"date":"2021-10-23T00:43:02","date_gmt":"2021-10-23T00:43:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/?p=13516"},"modified":"2021-10-23T00:43:02","modified_gmt":"2021-10-23T00:43:02","slug":"morrison-government-fails-newcastle-tpi-veterans-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2021\/10\/23\/morrison-government-fails-newcastle-tpi-veterans-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Morrison Government fails Newcastle TPI veterans again"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nLabor condemns the Morrison Government for its failure to accept the recommendation of a bipartisan Senate inquiry that the Totally and Permanently Incapacitated (TPI) pension for disabled veterans be increased.
\nThe Morrison Government\u2019s \u201cresponse\u201d to the independent inquiry is just another blow for the 879 TPI veterans in the Newcastle Hunter region.
\nThe Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee Inquiry into the TPI Payment (Special Rate of Disability Pension) reported on 1 July 2021, recommending that the Government consider an increase in the TPI Payment.
\nAt the time, Labor\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0on the Morrison Government to respond to the committee\u2019s unanimous recommendation, to ensure our most disabled veterans were not left behind.
\nThe Morrison Government\u2019s response is appalling.\u00a0No commitment has been given for additional support for TPI veterans, preferring instead to simply \u2018note\u2019 the recommendation, which the government may (or may not) take into account when\u00a0considering future policy options for TPI veterans down the track.This is a huge slap in the face for Australia\u2019s 27,000 TPI veterans.
\nThe Australian Federation of Totally and Permanently Incapacitated Ex-Servicemen and Women (TPI Federation) has been raising the issue of the TPI Payment for years, but the Liberal Government remains tone-deaf to their pleas.
\nBefore the 2019 election, the Prime Minister as-good-as promised to increase the TPI pension rate, but since then he\u2019s ignored his own colleagues\u2019 advice and has consistently refused to raise the pension rate.
\nAfter sitting on a review of the TPI Payment for more than a year, Scott Morrison announced in last year\u2019s Budget that he would only provide rent assistance to around 10 per cent of TPI veterans, leaving most disgusted as they will miss out.
\nIn response to Labor\u2019s questions in Senate Estimates last year, it was\u00a0revealed<\/a>\u00a0these benefits would not start to flow until September 2022 while they made changes to legislation and IT systems.
\nFollowing pressure from Labor and TPI veterans, the Government brought this forward to January 2022, but has still failed to legislate the changes and is running out of time to deliver them.
\nOn top of this, we know that the Department of Veterans\u2019 Affairs is struggling to deal with a huge\u00a0backlog of veterans\u2019 claims for a disability pension<\/a>, with 68 per cent of claims yet to be finalised as of April this year.
\nIt\u2019s just not good enough and our veterans and their families deserve better. Only Labor is on the side of Australia\u2019s ex-service men and women.
\nThe Senate inquiry report and Government response can be found\u00a0here<\/a>.\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Labor condemns the Morrison Government for its failure to accept the recommendation of a bipartisan Senate inquiry that the Totally and Permanently Incapacitated (TPI) pension for disabled veterans be increased. The Morrison Government\u2019s \u201cresponse\u201d to the independent inquiry is just another blow for the 879 TPI veterans in the Newcastle Hunter region. The Senate Foreign … Continue reading “Morrison Government fails Newcastle TPI veterans again”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newcastle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}