More support for Australia's Prisoners of War THU 05 MAY 2011 Prime Minister, Minister for Veterans' Affairs A new Prisoner of War (POW) Recognition Supplement will provide former POWs with an extra $500 per fortnight in recognition of their special service and sacrifice. Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the payment acknowledges the severe hardship suffered by our former POWs. POWs were particularly subjected to horrific conditions and many returned home with physical and psychological scars that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. The Minister for Veteran’s Affairs Warren Snowdon said the new payment was an important initiative to show our gratitude and respect to these worthy Australians. “We have all seen the footage and heard the stories of our diggers in POW camps. “The way they looked out for their mates while in these camps reflects the Aussie spirit we are all so proud of,” Mr Snowdon said. Twenty-one former POWs from the Second World War and Korean War joined the Prime Minister and the Minister for Veteran’s affairs at Kirribilli House for the announcement. The new supplement will apply from September 2011 and is in addition to current benefits available to former POWs. The measure will be funded in the 2011-12 Federal Budget and will cost $27.2 million over the next four years. Ex POW Tom Uren wins 20 year battle 26 May, 2011 11:54 AM TOM Uren is celebrating. He believes justice has finally been served more than 60 years after he and his fellow prisoners of war slaved over the Thai-Burma railway in WWII.Justice for the 90-year-old was not found in retribution against the Japanese who held him prisoner but in compensation for his fellow veterans who suffered with him. Mr Uren was the federal member for Reid (which at the time included Holroyd and Parramatta) for 32 years between 1958-1990. He spent much of his married life in Guildford and is now chairman of the Parramatta Park Trust. He was a minister in the Whitlam government and said he hopes to be remembered for the 20-year campaign he ran to bring justice for prisoners of war under the Japanese in World War II. "I had my 22nd, 23rd and 24th birthday in prison camps," he said. "The brutality of what we went through is indescribable. "You'd go out and see some of your mates and they'd aged 50 years in a day." Mr Uren was attached to the Eighth Division which contributed 4 per cent of the Australians who saw active service during the war but accounted for 30 per cent of those who died. Over the last two decades he addressed parliament many times on behalf of former POWs. "The sacrifices of the ex-prisoners of war of the Japanese are unequalled as a group in the defence of freedom and democracy in the Second World War," he said in parliament in 1989. He told the house of how nine out of every 10 POWs suffered dysentery, 85 per cent went through malaria, one in three had jaundice and one in every 14 suffered cholera, a disease that had been eradicated in Australia. After more than two decades his calls for a pension for these servicemen were addressed in the 2011 budget. In a payment to be called the Prisoner of War Recognition Supplement, Australia's 900 surviving prisoners from World War II and the Korean War will each receive $500 a fortnight. "I've applied for this from every government since 1989," he said. "I want to stress this; If it wasn't for Julia Gillard we wouldn't have got the agreement we have." Fighter: Tom Uren spent 3 years in a prisoner of war camp during World War II and 20 years fighting for a pension for his fellow POWs. Picture: Carlos Furtado
