Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

Veterans in my electorate have been contacting me extremely concerned about the introduction of a $5,000 allied health service cap introduced in Labor's last budget. I've heard that, for many, these changes will mean they could be worse off than before the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. A $5,000 cap won't even last half the year for some. We also know—from the thousands of messages, testimonies and experiences of veterans—that, even before this cap has commenced, timely access to care is already extremely difficult. The wait time for a GP who actually understands the department's system and is willing to complete the additional clinical paperwork required for any DVA claim or exemption is longer, still.

DVA will fund allied health services above the $5,000 cap where there is a valid clinical need. But what, indeed, is a valid clinical need? How is it defined? We haven't seen anything, veterans haven't seen anything and nor have the veterans organisations. So who is this change actually for? It's certainly not benefiting veterans and their families—exactly the opposite! This change is for a government that's handing out billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies to massive corporations while claiming it cannot afford to look after the people who have actually served our country. What is abundantly clear to me, from my discussions with veterans, is that there is no trust that the government will look after them or put their best interests first. These are people who have given so much, often at great personal cost. Insultingly, the government slaps them with a new policy with next to no detail of how it will work and without acknowledgement of the very real impact this will have.

DVA is clearly not working for the people it's meant to serve. Veterans wait years in limbo for initial liability and compensation decisions. The system is already in deep crisis. Against this backdrop, the government is asking veterans to trust that a brand new, demonstrated clinical need mechanism—the proposed safety net for those who exhaust the $5,000 cap—will be accessed quickly, fairly and without becoming yet another barrier to care or yet another interruption to ongoing treatment. The royal commission specifically warned against precisely this kind of barrier. The commission's findings were unambiguous: interruptions to care, administrative friction and rationing of essential services are drivers of poor outcomes in this cohort, including suicide. A cap structured this way will cause harm. It may cost lives.