Kate Chaney (Curtin, Independent) | Hansard source

The Defence Legislation Amendment (RCDVS Implementation and Related Measures No. 2) Bill 2026 is a further response to the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, building on the reforms that this parliament has already passed. That commission spent three years hearing the testimony of families who had lost someone and survivors carrying wounds that this parliament should have reckoned with long ago. It handed down 122 recommendations. The task now is to move more of those recommendations from paper to practice. This bill takes up this task on several fronts, and I support it. Let me briefly set out what it does.

For the first time, the Defence Act will contain a dedicated part devoted to the health and wellbeing of ADF members, veterans and their families. More than merely symbolic, this is a legal and cultural commitment that the lifetime wellbeing of the people we ask to serve is a core responsibility of the Defence Force, not an afterthought once the uniform comes off.

The bill modernises how Defence and the Department of Veterans' Affairs share and use information. The royal commission found something that should shame us: that fragmented systems, lost records and ad hoc, consent-by-consent information sharing have contributed to real harm. Veterans were forced to tell their story over and over at the most vulnerable moments of their lives. Risks that were obvious at a cohort level stayed invisible because nobody could see the whole picture. This bill creates a clearer framework for research, data analysis and evaluation so that we can identify suicide risk earlier and intervene before a life is lost.

I want to acknowledge the privacy questions this raises, because they are serious. We're talking about health records and deeply sensitive personal information. The RSL has indicated it's broadly supportive of this legislation and agrees with its intent, and I share that view.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 12:07 to 12:17

The RSL has indicated it's broadly supportive of this legislation and agrees with its intent. I share that view.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 12:17 to 12:27

The RSL has indicated it's broadly supportive of this legislation and agrees with its intent, and I share this view. The RSL will also rightly seek assurances about how veterans' data will be protected, how it will be used and who will be able to access it, particularly given the privacy failures which led to the closure of the MATES program in 2024. Veterans were right to be angry then and they're right to expect better now. The bill goes some way to answering those concerns. It keeps the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles in force, requires ministerial guidelines made with advice from the Information Commissioner, requires a proportionality assessment before information is disclosed, and defaults to consent wherever it's practicable. The principle is right; the answer to bad information sharing is not no information sharing but rather careful, accountable information sharing.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 12:28 to 12:46

The principle is right. The answer to bad information sharing is not no information sharing. Rather, information sharing should be careful and accountable.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 12:38 to 12:46

But the safeguards have to be real, not just on paper, and I'll be watching development of those guidelines closely to make sure that that balance holds in practice.

The bill also establishes, for the first time, a comprehensive legislative basis for the Defence health system, with a clear benchmark that care must meet or exceed civilian standards; it brings in proper quality assurance and improvement protections so that clinicians can speak candidly when something goes wrong; it strengthens support for Defence families, including allowing benefits to flow to former partners in the immediate aftermath of separation where there's family violence; and it implements mandatory discharge for members who are convicted of serious violent or sexual offences and sentenced to imprisonment, and bars such people from joining in the first place. The royal commission was unequivocal that sexual violence in the ADF is both a moral catastrophe and a driver of suicide. The RSL has strongly supported this direction, and so do I. Sexual misconduct has no place in our Defence Force, and this parliament should say so plainly.

So this is a good bill, and the broader reform effort around it has been welcomed across the veteran community. The RSL has called the recent budget a 'long-overdue investment in veteran health care'. The fee increase for allied health providers included in the budget, the largest in more than two decades, means more providers will be willing to see veterans, and there will be better funded care when they do.

But I can't speak about this reform package and stay silent on something that sits right alongside it and threatens to undercut it: the $5,000 annual cap on allied health services for veteran card holders, due to commence a year from now. I want to be clear that the cap is not in this bill. It didn't come through this parliament for a vote. It's a budget measure that the government can implement administratively through DVA. The appropriation that funds DVA passed without a formal division, so there was no moment at which any members voted yes or no to this cap specifically. Veterans deserve to understand exactly where the decision sits: it sits with the minister, who has the power to get the design right without coming back to this place. The detail to inform that design simply doesn't exist yet.

Let me tell you about a constituent of mine, a veteran I won't name. He attends physiotherapy and exercise physiology twice a week and sees a psychologist every fortnight for mental and physical injuries from his service. These are accepted conditions. He lives on incapacity payments, on a fraction of his former income, much of it going to rent. He's done the maths. Under this cap, his funding would run out in about five months. After that, he faces the prospect of fighting DVA for an exemption or paying out of pocket, and if he pays, in his words, he doesn't eat. He asked me a simple question: he asked whether it's fair that a veteran with accepted conditions should be pushed below the poverty line to continue receiving the treatment that keeps him out of hospital and out of a very dark place. I don't think it is, and I don't think anyone in this chamber, if asked that question directly, would say that it is either.

Here's what makes this so frustrating. The government says DVA will fund care above the cap where there is a genuine clinical need—good. But nobody has explained how a veteran applies, how DVA will assess the request or how quickly a decision will be made. DVA's own data show that around one in 10 cardholders use more than $5,000 a year. Those are not people rorting the system; they're veterans with the most serious and most complex needs—the very people this entire royal commission was about. If the exemption process is slow, opaque or adversarial, then for those veterans the cap is not a saving; it's a barrier between them and their treatment, dressed up as administrative efficiency.

There are some genuinely good things in the detail, and I'll acknowledge them. Psychology through Open Arms doesn't count towards the cap. The old rule forcing a new referral every 12 sessions is being scrapped, which removes a real and ongoing burden for anyone in regular treatment. These are improvements, but they don't answer the core question for the veteran living fortnight to fortnight: 'What happens when the money runs out, and how hard will I have to fight for additional funding?'

So my position is this: I support this bill for what it does, but the cap that sits beside it must not be allowed to hollow out the very wellbeing this bill is meant to protect. Being forced to choose between treatment and food is not an acceptable outcome of any policy passed or administered in this country.

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