Unofficial advice from the Veteran’s Affairs portfolio is that the error in the ministerial statement on the centenary of Anzac will be corrected in the final version of the Senate Hansard, available in a couple of weeks. The original wording was, ‘Annually, government spending on commemoration represents less than 0.1 per cent of the entire $12 billion Department of Veterans’ Affairs’ budget for pensions, compensation and health care treatment for veterans and their families’ (HH emphasis added).
We have been advised that the correct percentage is actually in the order of 0.73 per cent of $12 billion, or about $88 million annually. We’ll keep an eye out for the corrected version. As the late Spike Milligan once said: ‘you have to watch these things, you know’.
21 May 2015