News-Info-Alerts

Re: Australian POWs May Get Settlement

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: August 10, 2002

"The Canberra Times

55 years on, POWs set to get compo
By LINCOLN WRIGHT

After a wait of more than 55 years, surviving Australian soldiers imprisoned in Japan's notorious POW camps during World War I look set to receive financial compensation in tomorrow's federal Budget.

About 2700 soldiers captured during the Pacific War of 1941-1945 are expected to receive a one-off payment which has been speculated to be as high as $25,000.

Treasurer Peter Costello hinted yesterday that tomorrow's Budget would contain the measure, which he described as a priority for the Government because of the great suffering of the POWs.

It will cost about $67.5 million to the Budget's bottom line and is not expected to be taxable.

But the 2700 surviving soldiers represent only 12.2 per cent of the 22,000 Australian soldiers imprisoned during the war. Australian POWs held in Japanese camps accounted for 4 per cent of all Australians who saw active service, but represented 30 per cent of all the dead.

The POW compensation move comes as the Howard Government tries to reclaim support among older Australians who, according to a leaked memo from Federal Liberal Party president Shane Stone, believe the Government is mean and tricky.
Mr Costello told the Network Nine's Sunday program that elderly Australians would be looked after. "Within the limits of Budget responsibility, we're trying to make sure we address their concerns," he said.

Tomorrow's Budget will also contain new spending measures for pensioners and self-funded retirees, expected to cost an extra $1 billion a year. There is speculation that pensioners will receive a cash bonus of $300 and that retirees will receive tax concessions by having their tax-free thresholds on income raised.

Mr Costello was putting the finishing touches last night on the 2001-2002 Budget, his sixth, which will inaugurate a new wave of welfare reform. Government ministers have said the Budget was expected to remain in modest surplus or balance.

However, a complication has emerged. Some government funds will be used to deal with the fallout from the collapse of insurer HIH. But its impact on the Budget bottom-line is still unknown.

Labor's Treasury spokesman Simon Crean described the POW compensation yesterday (if it were in the Budget) as "terrific", but criticised the Government for belatedly realising the importance of developing national infrastructure and for fiddling the numbers.

In particular, Mr Crean said the promise of helping pensioners with a bonus should be looked at very closely because the Government did not deliver on its 1998 promise to give all people over 60 a $1000 rebate.

"This is John Howard and Peter Costello at their trickiest best, because they're trying to cover their meanness," Mr Crean told Network Ten's Meet the Press. The long-awaited POW compensation has already been enacted by several of Australia's war-time allies. Britain decided to grant its soldiers a 10,000 payment, and Canada and New Zealand followed suit.

Speculation about the compensation has been welcomed by the Returned and Services League and politicians like former Labor government minister Tom Uren, who spent several years in Japanese camps.

Mr Uren has been pushing compensating the Japanese POWs for years on the grounds that they suffered living under barbaric conditions of slave labour, poor nutrition and violence.

Last night, Mr Uren said that one reason why compensation took so long was that the veterans' affairs bureaucracy had always opposed compensating groups, as opposed to individual cases.

He said Mr Howard had played a significant role in changing this traditional approach, as had the RSL. Mr Uren met Mr Howard last November and urged him to compensate the soldiers, receiving what he called a good hearing. "On this measure, at least, [Mr] Howard deserves some credit," Mr Uren said.

The acting national president of the RSL, Rusty Priest, also welcomed the move, but said that the RSL had passed a resolution at its National Congress that all POWs, not just the Japanese POWs, should receive compensation."