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Where are they now?

John Negus.

Roger Bailey is looking for John Negus. John was on 34 RTC at Radschool in 1964, graduated as a Radtech Air and was posted to Williamtown in early 1967. He left the RAAF in 1970. The last I heard of him was he got a job on a South Pacific island as a computer programmer.  Pretty forward thinking getting qualified as a programmer, at that time, when he was already a Radtech.

If you can help, let us know and we’ll pass on the info to Roger.

DFRDB.

We get nearly as much correspondence on this topic as we do from the man-made global warming/climate change/the end is nigh believers/non-believers so we thought we’d devote a page to it. It doesn’t affect us as we didn’t do long enough to get a pension, but going by the amount of emails we get on the subject, it does affect an awful lot of people.

Those that took an advance on their retirement benefit early on are being ripped off big time by their Government – and that’s not how it’s meant to be. The Government is supposed to be there to support you, not rip you off.

Herb Ellerbock is a retired Warrant Office Class 1 who served for 20 years in the Australian Army. He is a systems and database analyst who has, since his departure from the Defence Force in 1983, conducted an IT consultancy business. Herb has written an excellent exposé on the scheme, you can read/download it HERE and when you read it you just wonder why Government would be so stupid as to alienate so many of its ex-service men and women. Why does the Government insist on having its service men and women continue to make re-payments on a loan well after the loan has been repaid in full?

It just doesn’t make sense.      

The problem with this sort of decision – you never get to know who the person is/was who made it in the first place. It would be nice to be able to front this person and ask him/her why it was made. These faceless and completely unaccountable people make decisions that adversely affect thousands of people, it’s just not right. Surely there had to be a reason behind it, if so, let’s hear it.!!

Money wise, it is just piddling amount in the Government’s overall scheme of things, from a total budgeted income of about $550 billion (that’s $550,000,000,000) the amount in question is probably equal to half a day’s interest on the Gov’t’s war chest – nothing, but to the ex-service men and women who are trying to make ends meet from their DFRDB pension it’s a helluva lot.  The Gov’t has probably spent more on legals and inquiries in trying to continue dragging repayments from its constituents than they would if it just admitted fault and played fair.

The last thing ex-service people in retirement want is to have to fight a tight-fisted Government. These people are at the end of their working lives, they’ve devoted the best years of their lives in defending this wonderful country, now they are being exploited.  For what reason??

The sheet at right is the information blurb put out by the Government back in 1973 (Click it to get a readable copy). Nowhere does it say you’ll be paying back your advance for the rest of your life. People went into this scheme thinking once the advance was repaid it was repaid. They certainly got a shock.

But – at long last things might be changing. Thanks mainly to three blokes Herb Ellerbock, Jim Hislop and Ken Stone, who have worked tirelessly over many years, the Commonwealth Ombudsman has become involved and an enquiry has been announced. Although, at the moment it’s just another enquiry, we think this time, as in all good enquiries, we think with this one we know the outcome before it starts. The Ombudsman asked for submissions some time ago (closed 30 June) and Ken Stone has submitted an excellent 45 page submission on behalf of the estimated 55,000 affected DFRDB Superannuants.

You can read it HERE.

HERE is the latest info on the whole sorry mess. This was presented by the Australian Defence Force Retirees Association.

Good luck to you all.

Recently Alan Jones, from 2GB in Sydney, interviewed MP Llew O’Brien re the commutation fiasco, you can hear it HERE.