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

The government announced changes to allied health care in an effort to improve access to allied health care by ensuring that we are attracting more allied health professionals into providing those services to support our veterans. That means changing from a system of continual, regular referrals and GP visits to a $5,000 threshold. There'll be an alternative process for approval for all those veterans that have a clinical need that may be above that, recognising that the overwhelming majority of our veteran community go nowhere near that amount of use of allied health care. It also allows us to make sure that we're improving the nature of treatment and care for our veteran community. We've been clear about the way in which that process will operate for the smaller number of veterans who may use over that because they may have complex needs. We recognise that and we're engaging with them. We will be releasing a discussion paper shortly to fulfil that consultation process, engaging directly with veterans. I look forward to the shadow minister's feedback as well as that of veterans, our ESOs and our practitioners.

See this speech in context