Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures No. 2) Bill and move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House calls on the Government to remove any references to a notification of the Chief of the Defence Force, considering the impact this would have on a member's right to privacy and access to care".

The coalition will support the passage of this bill because it's necessary to keep the veterans' compensation reforms on track and to ensure the transition to a single, simplified compensation and rehabilitation framework operating properly from 1 July 2026.

I want to begin with a simple message to every veteran and every service member who might be watching this debate. To every Australian war fighter and every veteran warrior who has worn the uniform: we see you, we respect you and we will fight to make sure the system that's meant to support you actually works for you. This, for defence personnel, is not abstract. It's not theoretical. This is a person in uniform deciding whether to put their hand up for help. This is a partner filling out paperwork late at night. This is a family trying to navigate a system in the worst week of their lives.

Now, the coalition supported the royal commission's push to simplify and harmonise veterans' compensation arrangements, because the current multiact system is complex, difficult to navigate and too often confusing for veterans and for their families. That's why we supported the primary reform legislation and that's why we continue to support the objective of a single ongoing framework under the MRCA, reducing duplication, improving administrative consistency and making entitlements, claims and review pathways easier to understand and to access.

This bill is largely technical and consequential, but technical does not mean trivial when you are the person living with the consequences. These provisions go to continuity, clarity and certainty. Our priority throughout this process has been simple: no veteran and no ADF member should be disadvantaged during the transition, and review rights and entitlements must be preserved. This bill makes important clarifications to ensure the new single-scheme framework functions properly and fairly in practice. It clarifies and preserves review and appeal rights, including internal reconsideration and external merit review pathways, including through the Veterans' Review Board. It tightens transitional rules for claims and decisions spanning the commencement date to reduce legal uncertainty and inconsistent outcomes. It ensures dependent compensation is not distorted by timing technicalities, clarifies funeral benefit rules, aligns education assistance under the consolidated framework and clarifies impairment and additional disablement payment rules so assessments and payments remain correct and consistent. It also preserves key allowances in decoration payments, clarifies coverage for treatment related injuries and diseases, maintains non-liability healthcare arrangements and improves offsets in deductions to prevent duplication while protecting overall entitlements. That is what good legislative housekeeping looks like—making sure the intent of reform survives contact with reality.

But we should be frank. Parts of this bill are required to complete or correct the government's original package. Now, these are not new policy ideas. They are core implementation details that should have been settled the first time, and veterans and their families deserve stability, not rolling legislative corrections that add uncertainty to a system we're supposed to be simplifying. The coalition's amendment is saying trust and early help must come first. While we support this legislation overall, the coalition's amendment goes to a fundamental principle, which is trust. It calls on the government to remove the mandatory legislative requirements to notify the Chief of the Defence Force when a serving member lodges a Veterans' Review Board application or accesses non-liability healthcare.

Let me be clear about this principle. It's incredibly important. Unless there are extraordinary circumstances, it should be up to the war fighter whether defence is notified when they make a health claim. We recognise that there will be extraordinary circumstances where a member of the Defence Force makes a claim and the health condition they are facing may have consequences for them or for their colleagues and for others that that deserves notification. We are not blind to that set of circumstances. But there are many circumstances where it's just completely inappropriate that notification be mandatory to the Chief of the Defence Force when a member of the Defence Force makes a claim. If you want a force that is ready, resilient and lethal when it needs to be, you have to have a system where people in uniform can seek help early and with confidence, not late and in silence.

The government's rationale is operational—that notification supports defence requirements and helps access medical records—but it fails to take seriously how real people respond to perceived career risk and stigma. They will not seek care when they need it. The evidence is plain. Some serving members are reluctant to seek mental health support or other support when they believe it could affect their career progression or deployability. If you bake automatic notification into legislation, you risk reinforcing that fear, and you risk deterring early care. We know so well that in health, in so many different areas, early care is the key to pre-empting much greater care requirements down the track. This is a well-understood principle of health care, and it should absolutely be applied to those incredibly brave men and women who are prepared to put themselves in harm's way in the right circumstances for our great nation. When early care is deterred, problems get worse—as we know. Families pay the price, units pay the price and, tragically, in some cases, the nation pays the price.

If you're designing a system with the objective of preventing unnecessary health problems down the track, the test is simple: does this reduce the barriers to care, or does it add to them? And our view is simple: automatic notification in every circumstance is a barrier. We recognise that there are occasions when it's necessary, but automatic notification is a barrier. So we stand ready to work with the government on fixing this either through a clearer threshold—a consent provision—or, indeed, if appropriate, removing the clause entirely. But what we're proposing here immediately is to seek to refer the bill to a short Senate inquiry to work through the detail of this issue. We certainly hope that the government will work with us to make sure that we get the right outcome for our defence personnel.

Leadership in this place is about doing the hard work—the hard and sometimes unglamorous work—to make systems perform under pressure for the people who rely on them. There are a few groups in the country who have earned that seriousness more than the men and women who serve, the veteran warriors who have served and the families who serve alongside them. The coalition has a strong record of backing veterans and their families from establishing the veterans' covenant, to expanding Open Arms, to non-liability mental health care, and to employment initiatives and wellbeing centres across the country. That record reflects a simple belief that service deserves respect and respect must be practical.

So we won't stand in the way of technical amendments, but we will hold the government to account for incomplete delivery, and we will push for reforms that make one thing absolutely clear to every serving member and veteran—to every war fighter and veteran warrior—that you should never have to choose between your career and your care. You should never have to fight your own system for the support you have earned, and you will always have our respect.

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