Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker, congratulations on your election to that high office. I want to start my remarks by thanking the community of Burt, across the cities of Gosnells and Armadale and now the Shire of Serpentine-Jarrahdale, for putting their faith and trust in me to continue as their elected representative in this place. I'd also like to congratulate the newest members of the Labor caucus from Western Australia: the member for Bullwinkel, Trish Cook; the member for Moore, Tom French; and our newest WA senator, Ellie Whiteaker. I congratulate them on coming to represent their communities here in this federal parliament. Particularly, I'd like to call out the new member for Bullwinkel, who, with the creation of that new seat, absorbed some of the suburbs that I represent. Indeed, the house that I grew up in and many of my family have moved into the electorate of Bullwinkel due to the redistribution. I know she'll be a fantastic representative for that community—one that I hold very dear to my heart as well. It was great to hear her first speech here earlier today.

When we went to the election in May, the issue of the cost of living was an incredibly important one, especially for my community in Burt. What our government promised to deliver were further rounds of tax cuts, a 20 per cent reduction in student debt—importantly including apprenticeship debt—$150 of further energy bill relief and new Medicare urgent care clinics being delivered. We have one in Gosnells now, and even I have used the Medicare urgent care clinic in Gosnells. During the election campaign I managed to dislocate my toe. It just goes to show that fitness is not all it's cracked up to be! Importantly, we've also delivered two Medicare mental health centres. Now, these are incredibly important for the service that they provide, but they're also a great demonstration of community advocacy and need.

Since I've been the member for Burt—for some nine years—I have run, I think, eight Burt Young Leader Forums, which involve inviting student leaders from all of the high schools across my electorate to come and present on issues important to them, to decide amongst themselves the most important of those issues and to discuss what actions could be taken to resolve them and what action could be taken by not only federal government but also state government, local government and even themselves as student leaders. One issue that has been raised time and time again has been mental health and, in particular, supporting student mental health. That is why I'm really pleased that our government has been able to deliver these two Medicare mental health centres to my community, making sure that mental health care is even more available to the students and the community in my electorate—something that's been raised with me so many times.

In the course of the election campaign, I was also very proud to be able to make a number of commitments supporting a broad cross-section of the community that is Burt. This included a $1.4 million commitment for a roof, basically, over the bowling greens at the Thornlie Bowling Club. I've been working with the Thornlie Bowling Club for many, many years—indeed, before I was elected to this place—about the need to expand the community facilities at the club, and we've now been able to deliver a whole new clubroom building. That's not just about supporting the club; it also supports the tennis club that was previously next door, as well as providing additional community meeting facilities that were not available there before. Covering the greens there will mean that they'll be able to operate all year round, and not just through rain; importantly, as you might have heard, Perth gets pretty hot, and being able to put those greens under cover means it will be a much more accessible community facility. The Thornlie Bowling Club is one that hosts many competitions, metropolitan and statewide, and it will allow them to continue to do that on an even larger scale.

We also committed a million dollars for the building of a multipurpose community facility for the Tigray Orthodox community. This is a rapidly growing community in my electorate, one that has been somewhat overlooked. It's great to be able to provide them with a facility that will provide sporting options and the capacity to host large community events, something that they need and that our broader community in that area of Kenwick needs as well. It will include an indoor basketball court.

We've committed $50,000 to the Chinmaya Mission in Perth. Again, this is a growing, vibrant community, located in Forrestdale. It will make sure that they are able to continue with their community lessons, education programs and support, which they provide across the age ranges, I must say. Having the playground will enable them and their families to be able to do that in a much greater way.

We also committed $50,000 to support a new playground at the Armadale Community Family Centre, and that will be shared with and be accessed by the childcare centre that's located next door. The Armadale Community Family Centre provides a very important resource to support families in Armadale. Armadale and the suburbs around the community centre have a very high saturation of public housing and low-cost and community housing. A number of services are provided to support families in the community to connect to other services and to have the support of one another. Providing them with a better playground is much needed and long overdue.

We're also providing a million dollars to the Hindu Association of Western Australia. This is an incredibly important association for the entirety of Western Australia and particularly for Perth. They used to be located in my electorate. They are now located in the electorate of Tangney, quite literally over the road from my electorate. But their community expands throughout the electorates of Burt and Tangney and across the entire metropolitan area. We are providing them with funding to support classrooms, a multipurpose hall and additional parking. The facilities they currently have are so well used that the road they sit on has quite possibly one of the worst traffic snarls in the entire community, and so having that additional parking is desperately overdue and, I know, also supported by the City of Gosnells for that reason.

These are very important additions and commitments that we've made to our community in Burt, and I've been happy to be able to make those commitments as the local member, but I'm very proud to be able to be doing that as a minister in the Albanese Labor government—being able to be part of our focus on addressing cost-of-living-concerns and making sure that we're delivering for people where they need it. The reforms that we've made through changes to the Fair Work Act to make sure that people are protected in their workplace and have greater security in their employment, where we have seen not only inflation coming down but real wage growth as well, whilst maintaining high levels of employment, is incredibly important. My community is often the first to see an increase in the unemployment rate and the last to see increases in the employment rate, so being able to maintain unemployment at a low level while seeing wages grow in real terms under our government is incredibly important,. and I know everybody in my community is very happy to see that interest rates are starting to fall as well.

As part of the Albanese Labor government, I'm incredibly proud of what we have been able to deliver in my portfolios of veterans' affairs and defence personnel as well. Over the last three years, we've been able to achieve great change when it comes to how we support our veterans and their families. We've invested in the Department of Veterans' Affairs' frontline claim-processing capability, which has included a huge investment in increasing the number of staff—and not just the number of staff but also making sure they are public servants employed in ongoing employment jobs. That's meant that we've reduced the reliance on labour hire. It's meant that we've reduced the rate of churn in the department. It's meant that the efficiency and effectiveness of how we're able to process those claims has increased incredibly. The Department of Veterans' Affairs is now the best resourced that it has been in three decades.

We also undertook one of the most significant reforms to veterans' entitlements legislation in four decades with the Veterans' Entitlements, Treatment and Support (Simplification and Harmonisation) Act 2025. This will see, from the middle of this year, a movement where three separate, complex schemes of veteran support will converge into one scheme going forward. This will mean that it's easier for veterans to understand and navigate the system that is there to support them, it will make it easier it for the advocates that work with our veterans to be able to provide that advice and support, and it will make it easier for the department to be able to process those claims by simplifying the system that underpins it, which means that veterans and families will be able to get access to the support that they need more quickly.

This is all part of us delivering on our responses to the interim report and the final report of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. This was a royal commission that we called for when we were in opposition, and in September of last year we received the final report from the royal commission. By December, in almost record time—in fact, it probably is record time—we'd provided the government's response to all of those recommendations. This came on the back of the work that we had undertaken in relation to all of the recommendations that had been made in the interim report of the royal commission, which we received in August of 2022.

We are now in the process of working through the implementation of those recommendations from the final report of the royal commission. This started with the establishment of a taskforce in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to provide that integrated advice across government, Defence and the Department of Veterans' Affairs on how we stage out and implement the 122 recommendations that were made by the report.

Importantly, what we also did at the beginning of this year was to legislate the establishment of the oversight body that the royal commission itself said was the most important recommendation that it had made—a body that will oversee the work undertaken by Defence and the Department of Veterans' Affairs in supporting our serving personnel and veterans and their families, making sure the government delivers on the intended outcomes from the recommendations of the royal commission. Earlier this year, we legislated the establishment of that body, which will be the Defence and Veterans' Services Commission. It will commence legislative operation from September of this year, and we have already appointed an interim commissioner who is starting the work of that commission, which will be incredibly important and give confidence to the veteran community around Australia that governments, not just now but into the future, will continue to have a focus on delivering on the supports that our veterans and their families not only need but deserve.

As part of the government's response to the royal commission, we've also funded the Department of Veterans' Affairs to undertake important co-design work with the veteran community, firstly, in relation to the establishment of a wellbeing agency within the Department of Veterans' Affairs. This represents a critical shift in the approach that has been taken in supporting our veterans and families. Largely, the support provided to veterans and families has been focused on medical support, mental health support, processing claims and access to compensation. But the broader wellbeing of our veteran community, whilst having been something often spoken about, has not been the key focus of a government agency. The establishment of a wellbeing agency, on which the department has been undertaking consultation with the broader veteran community around the country for a number of months now, will be an incredibly important change in that approach, to make sure that we have that broader aspect of connection when it comes to housing support, employment, mental health and physical health—a connection which is so important.

A number of these things have been done for some time within the department or by other organisations and services, but bringing them together in a more coordinated way will be incredibly important. It will allow us to bring together, in an important way, the veterans and families hubs that we have been rolling out since our election in 2022. I was very happy to be able to join the member for Brand in Rockingham last week to announce the location of a new veterans and families hub, the Goldsworthy Veteran and Families Centre, in Rockingham. That will be an important contribution to the network of veterans and families hubs that we've been rolling out in an area where we have located Australia's biggest naval base.

The department is also doing work with our ex-service organisations in relation to the recommendation for the establishment of a peak body for ex-service organisations. This has been something that has been much talked about for a long period of time. It was raised with me as soon as I came into the portfolio some three years ago. It was something that had been spoken about by many but had never been able to be delivered upon. It's fair to say that it is a broad church in the veteran community. We funded the Department of Veterans' Affairs to undertake this work with the veteran community. I say to the veteran community engaged with this work: the royal commission made the recommendation because it saw the benefit that can come from having a unified peak body representing the interests across the broad cross-section of the veteran community and the ex-service organisations that represent it.

For such a body to be a success, it will, of course, be incredibly important that it represents that broad cross-section appropriately, in terms of geography, across our federation, in terms of the three different services of Navy, Army and Air Force, and in terms of those that represent those who served in the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the conflicts and peacekeeping that have occurred since. Making sure that all those different interests and others across the veteran community are represented will be the thing that ensures the success of an ex-service organisation peak body. It will need to be a body that is owned, not in a legal sense but in a tangible sense of connection, by the veteran community. That will be the thing that will ensure its success and ensure the delivery of that recommendation by the royal commission. So the work of DVA in engaging with the veteran community to make sure we find a model that is supported by the veteran community for this will be incredibly important.

DVA is also supporting the ex-service community in the establishment of an independent institute of veteran advocacy. Through public consultation that occurred last year, this is a sector led institute that will be responsible for training and accreditation for compensation and wellbeing advocates working with veterans and families as they engage with DVA. This is about lifting the standards in the sector. It will enhance governance standards across the advocacy sector and ensure that there is a focus on approved advocates that have undertaken the required training to support our veterans, making sure that veterans are not taken advantage of by some unscrupulous actors that exist in this ecosystem. I say to all veterans and their families: if you need support and advocacy support in engaging with the DVA system, please make sure that you choose an accredited advocate on the register. You can access the register at www.advocateregister.org.au.

I'll be working to continue the momentum on what we have already achieved when it comes to improving our supports for our serving personnel, veterans and their families. We campaigned for the royal commission, and I'll work tirelessly to ensure that our government's response to its recommendations are implemented so that all of those that have selflessly served our nation in our uniform receive the services and supports not only that they need but, frankly, that they deserve.

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