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

I thank the member for his question. I give a shout-out to Alicia, who's the representative for Burt for the National Youth Parliament.

The promises element of the question that was made is completely unclear to me, but what is really important is what we are doing when it comes to allied health. It's about making it easier for our veteran community to access allied health services, because we have been hearing for a very long time that providers have been cutting back on providing these services or threatening to cut back on these services because of the fees paid to them.

We have committed nearly $170 million to make the biggest increase in fees being paid to allied health service providers in 20 years. This is incredibly important. We are matching that with removing the burdensome 12-session allied health treatment cycle, where veterans have to continually go back to see a GP to get a new referral every 12 sessions. As part of that, we're replacing that with an initial $5,000 threshold, and, as part of moving to that $5,000 threshold, we have committed to engaging with the veteran community to make sure that that works as seamlessly as possible.

I've been engaging with the veteran community, with ex-service organisations and with the practitioners that deliver that support. We were in the process of finalising a discussion paper to be able to deliver that consultation process.

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