Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

The Senate will now consider the proposal, under standing order 75, from Senator Lambie, which has been circulated and is shown on the Dynamic Red:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The Albanese Government must immediately scrap the proposed $5,000 cap on allied health services for veterans which is contrary to recommendations from the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide and represents a callous disregard for veterans' health and wellbeing.

Is consideration of the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the Clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The Albanese Government must immediately scrap the proposed $5,000 cap on allied health services for veterans which is contrary to recommendations from the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide and represents a callous disregard for veterans' health and wellbeing.

Yesterday, 18 August, was Vietnam Veterans' Day. It was our Vietnam veterans who first called for a royal commission into the treatment of Australian veterans by our government. Thanks to years of campaigning from veterans, mothers and families who are advocates, and the many Australians who stood beside us, we got the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. The royal commissioners were clear: one of the biggest triggers for veterans taking their own lives is the lack of timely, accessible and ongoing health care.

The minister and the Prime Minister embraced the royal commission's findings. On the day of the report's release, the Prime Minister said, 'Just as our veterans and defence personnel step up for our country, we have an obligation to step up for them.' I have asked: how is putting a $5,000 cap on our allied health providers stepping up for us?

DVA is supporting over 357,000 veterans, with about 3,000 of them receiving allied health services in excess of $15,000 a year. That's less than one per cent of us. The question is: How did DVA measure the effectiveness of those services? Did they get them back on their feet? Did they get us back on our feet? Did they improve our quality of life? You're not stepping up for veterans; you are now stepping on us veterans.

There is a growing number of organisations, including the national RSL—thank you, Peter Tinley; it's great to see the national RSL active again. I know you've been on those phones for over a month, Tinley. I've seen you walking the corridors up here, mate. Thanks for your support—all the veterans out there, all the ESOs and, of course, the mothers (it's always the mothers), like Julie-Anne Finney (thank you, Julie-Anne), speaking with one voice, saying, 'Scrap the cap.'

DVA's approach to veteran care is going backwards. Doctors and specialists are getting out because their fees are much lower when they treat veterans—and it would help if DVA would actually pay them on time. I know of at least five doctors over the last month who have stopped treating veterans because they can't afford it, and there are many on the sidelines saying that they can't hold on for much longer. Veterans are waiting months for DVA to approve a claim when their treating doctor has already delivered to DVA a report that proves their claim, or they get shunted off to mlcoa, an independent assessor that we do not trust, to get an additional report. It's just another slap in our faces.

You don't want to pay a little bit extra for our doctors; you want to go the cheap way. That is not going to save lives. If a doctor tells me that I have to get a procedure, I could be waiting up to 60 days for DVA to approve it, and for some liability claims it's taking well over 12 months just to decide on the initial liability claim. Are you kidding me! I'm lucky I have a good job and some savings that I can draw down on to pay for a procedure upfront. Most veterans do not. They cannot pay upfront.

According to DVA's own data, there are currently over 100,000 claims waiting to be ticked off. As I told the Senate last night, in some cases DVA has used medical reports that have been provided to them to assess claims and still have not paid for those reports. You are shameful—absolutely shameful!

I heard of another case yesterday. The DVA has asked for the same report three times and received that report three times—three times! This is an incident that is growing and growing. We are going back to the good old days. I can't believe how far we have come, and now we are going backwards. What is happening in that department? What you need to ask yourself is: how many veterans' lives will this cost? Is it worth the one per cent of us—seriously, the worst of us? It's not worth it.

This proposed cap on allied health services is totally out of step with the findings and recommendations of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. For the seven per cent of veterans like me that have ongoing chronic issues from our service, this is a hammer blow. Allied health—which includes such things as physiotherapists, psychologists, podiatrists and exercise physiologists, along with other allied health services—is often the difference between a veteran getting back on their feet or not.

So I ask Minister Keogh and the Prime Minister to please scrap this cap. I do believe it will cause suicides. But the shame of it is—I don't understand why you're having this fight with us. There are other savings that could be made in that department without hitting veterans. It is not worth it. And it is not worth your leadership, PM; it's just not. But, more importantly, it is not worth a veteran's life. So, once again, I am begging you to scrap the cap.

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I begin by acknowledging Senator Lambie's long and determined advocacy for veterans and her personal contributions both last night—here in this chamber, while I was in the chair—and earlier today. Sharing an experience like this in this chamber cannot be easy. Senator Lambie has taken her own pain and used it to fight for women and veterans without the same platform, resources or ability to pay. She brings this matter forward because she wants veterans to receive the care they need. That is the goal we all share.

Pelvic health conditions affecting women veterans have not always received the research, the recognition and the attention they deserve. On a personal side note as a former police officer, I still have hip pain decades later from wearing accoutrement belts. The government must take this seriously.

On the question before the chamber, there's an important distinction. The government is not introducing a hard $5,000 cap after which veterans allied health services simply stops. From 1 July 2027, there will be a $5,000 threshold at which further treatment is clinically reviewed. Where additional care is clinically required, DVA will continue to fund it, including multiple additional episodes when needed. But I understand why the word 'threshold' provides little assurance to someone who's spent too long fighting the system.

DVA will continue to consult veterans, families, providers and ex-service organisations to ensure that mechanisms are fast and simple and that they do not interrupt essential treatment. Senator Lambie's contribution should be heard as part of that process, and I want to honour that here today.

These changes also come with a $169.7 million investment into allied health provider fees, the largest increase in more than two decades. When Labor came to government, DVA was underfunded and underresourced. Almost 42,000 claims had not been looked at. Labor funded DVA, hired staff and cleared that backlog. Today, DVA is better resourced than in the last three decades.

Funding for veterans services, rehabilitation and compensation has risen from around $10 billion under the previous government to $15 billion just in this year. We have delivered the most significant reform for veterans entitlements in generations. We simplified the system the royal commission found was so complicated it was damaging veterans' mental health. We opened a $78 million Veteran and Family Wellbeing Agency and established the independent Defence and Veterans' Service Commission.

By the end of last year we had implemented 32 of the royal commission recommendations, and we expect to have implemented two-thirds by the end of this year. That is real change for veterans, and these allied health reforms build on that record. But no government should use its broader record to dismiss a veteran who says the system is still failing them. Senator Lambie has given this chamber a deeply personal warning about where those failures can lead. I cannot support this motion, because the proposed arrangement is not a hard cap on care. But the concern behind it must be heard. The test will be whether veterans like Kate and Senator Lambie receive the treatment they need without delay and unnecessary battles, and that is the standard veterans deserve. It is the standard our government accepts, and we will work to meet it.

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) | Link to this | Hansard source

I was in the Senate estimates room with Senator Shoebridge, and I think Senator Pocock was there too, when we were asking questions of DVA about these cuts and this cap. When you get down to why these things happen—it came down to, out of all our veterans, two veterans receiving over $100,000. That's it. Two veterans out of the whole thing. I think one was getting a lot of money on dietitian work. I think that was one of them. I don't know the other one; it was maybe podiatry, but I can't remember. At the time, we asked, 'What are you doing to stop the rorts from these providers?'

If I were to see something going wrong—if I see overbilling—I would go after the provider and say, 'What you're doing is wrong and you are no longer part of the system.' I'd take action against them. We were stunned to hear that no action was taken against the providers, but action was taken against every single veteran—more than 25,000 of them—who went over the cap, over the $5,000 mark, in 2024-25. So two providers are potentially taking advantage of the system by rorting it, rorting taxpayers and rorting veterans, as well as taking money out of the system, and the government's answer is to punish 25,000 veterans by putting a cap on allied health services. In some articles of war, collective punishment is actually forbidden on this sort of thing, but we're doing it to our own veterans.

Imagine going and fighting overseas and serving in your military—doing all of this—and then being the victim of collective punishment by your own government for the actions of potentially one or two people. They talk about the crime of going to see the physio. That's a very good point. Imagine going to see the physio and being punished for it. When we talk about these 25,000 veterans that went over the cap and the savings—I heard them say: 'It's amazing. We're putting $79 million into allied health.' That's great! You're pulling $748 million out of the system and you want to be congratulated for putting a bit more than 10 per cent back into the system. This is the wrong way to go about it.

I texted a gentleman from Scone that I was talking to last week about this. I haven't got permission to use his name yet, but, if it comes through while I'm talking, I will. This $5,000 for him is in two months. He's in dire straits from his service. He was a young, fit man; his body's failing him. He's had open-heart surgery. He's had all of these things. For him, the uncertainty about what this means is causing more stress. It's actually making his position worse. We can't sit here as the kind of nation we are and say that the ends justify the means in this case. How can we possibly say that taking all of this certainty and all of this care from people who have put themselves forward to go to war for us is a good thing?

When it comes to the ongoing consultations, I have an email from this same gentleman I was talking about earlier. It says: 'Can you suggest that he push the Minister for Veterans' Affairs to send any discussion papers to each and every RSL subbranch in the country? This will give a strong message back to the government of what they actually need and want. Everyone I talk to from my cohort of military mates is fuming, and they will tell the story that they need to, not the'—I'll remove the last two words from this because they're explicit. This is what I can't get down to. It is a missed call. People get these things wrong all the time, but it is a cap that serves no purpose. Imagine not fixing a problem. Imagine just extending how long the pain goes for if you get to your cap. It's a ridiculous thing.

We've seen this time and time again. The government can identify a problem, but it doesn't even know how to go about fixing it. An action where it ticks a box is what this government wants, not an action that fixes the problem.

I say to our veterans: you deserve better. I say to our veterans: this is uncalled for. I say to the 25,000 veterans that need this help—there were 25,000 last year, and there may be more in the future: you need this help; you deserve it; and we will restore it, because it is just part of our deal with you. We are breaking a covenant we made with you when you took the oath, when you went into uniform, when you agreed to serve your country.

We've heard the very personal stories from Senator Lambie. We've heard them around. It was an unbelievable thing, sitting in that chamber, just hearing that this is all because of a couple of providers that have done the wrong thing, and that no action was taken against them. Don't punish the people that do the right thing for the actions of a couple of criminals.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks, Senator Lambie, for bringing this motion and telling it again like it is. I know it's hard. I'm really grateful you've been able to tell it like it is, Jacqui.

This is about life-saving care. Allied health is not some abstract thing. I've heard from veterans about what it means to them. It means being able to go to the physiotherapist so you can get the chronic pain dealt with, so you can play with your kids in the backyard. It means being able to go the psychologist, and not just once or twice but maybe once a week, so you can get out of bed and engage in life. It's about being able to go to the occupational therapist, so you can stay at work and contribute and look after your family. That's what we're talking about here when we talk about allied health.

As to a $5,000 cap: if you really need the care, you could churn through that in a matter of months. And what do you do for the rest of the year? You spend your time begging Veterans' Affairs, through some as-yet-unplanned bureaucracy, to see if they'll let you go to the physiotherapist; to see if they'll let you go to your psychologist. Who would come up with this?

We asked questions about it in estimates: 'Who did you talk with? Who did you consult? How would this work?' There were no answers at all. It's a thought bubble designed to reap three-quarters of a billion dollars in savings out of the veteran community.

The cap threatens life-saving care. Veterans aren't mugs, and they can see that a cut is a cut. They can read the budget like I can read the budget, and they can see the three-quarters of a billion dollars that this miserable government wants to take out of their care.

The government says only one in 10 veterans will be impacted, but that's 10 per cent of all veterans. And they are the most vulnerable. They are the most in need. They are the most complex cases. They're the very people that we need to keep as far away as possible from the Veterans' Affairs bureaucracy and as close as possible to care. And this policy does the exact opposite. It takes them away from their physio, it takes them away from their psychology, and it feeds them into the mincing machine that is Veterans' Affairs bureaucracy. Who would come up with that!

They now claim they're 'consulting' about it. They're consulting on a policy that they've already put in the budget. That does not pass the pub test. That doesn't pass the kindergarten test. It sure as hell doesn't pass the test of veterans, who, as I said before, are not bloody mugs.

This isn't consulting. This is the same as we saw with the defence estate sell-off. They named the 70-odd properties they were going to sell. They told us about them. They published them in a list. And then they consulted on them. What is wrong with this government?

And do you know what? They've now come out and done the exact same thing they did with NDIS. They've come out here and said it's all about dodgy providers. They've said, 'Oh, there are people milking the system. It's about dodgy providers.' They ran it in the media.

To those in the media listening: we watched you recycle these stories from the government again. We watched you, and veterans watched you. They're on to you as well, because, when you run those stories for Labor, you give them cover to take away the benefits from veterans, just like you gave them cover to take away help for those who need it from the NDIS. This government is using the media like a hammer to smash the victims of the system, not the dodgy providers. I can tell you this: every veteran I've spoken to would join you in a heartbeat to go after a dodgy provider. We'd join you in a heartbeat to go after a dodgy provider. But this isn't designed to go after dodgy providers; this is designed to go after veterans, punishing them for service.

Let's also remember that the government that's taking three-quarters of a billion dollars off veterans care is the same government that's actually handing $5 billion to Donald Trump for a bunch of nuclear submarines we'll never get. It's the same government that is spending hundreds of millions of dollars building houses for US troops in Perth. Why are Australian veterans at the back of the queue? Why is it always the same—money for war, money for weapons, money for Trump but never money to help the veterans who actually went and did service for us?

You'll send a veteran to Iraq to fight in a war, but when they come back here and they need physiotherapy, they need psych treatment, you say: 'I'm sorry; I haven't got any money. I've given it to Donald.' Reverse this. Scrap the cap. Until you do, we'll keep coming back until it happens.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

One Nation supports Senator Lambie's matter of urgency. The Albanese Labor government is again denigrating and mistreating our honourable and deserving Australian veterans, the people we rely on to keep us safe; who put country first, ahead of their own lives and safety; and to whom every Australian owes a huge debt. These are our finest—decent, caring, disciplined, noble—and, in serving Australia, some have been injured or damaged. This government is now treating these women and men with a contempt that should be called out for the shame that it brings on all Australians.

I recently met with yet another group of veterans, the Coalition of Veterans Voices, concerned about Labor's interventions into veterans rights and care. These men and women are genuine, sensible and intelligent Australians alarmed at Labor's imminent curbing of veterans rights to essential allied health care needed as a result of their services to Australia. They said the minister, the Hon. Matt Keogh, who begrudgingly met with the veterans, declined to even shake their hands. What's wrong with Labor politicians? The group told me of the broken DVA claims processing—the uncaring system that hinders rather than helps—that seems not to have performance standards—and if it does, it rarely meet those standards. I was told that veterans are being denied their choice of provider. They're funnelled to a single provider contracted to the Department of Veterans' Affairs, where claims are then underestimated and delayed.

DVA's own figures reveal that last year the average time to determine an initial claim took 364 days—virtually a year!—of wait time. As at 30 June 2026, the department had 103 outstanding claims. This system is clearly broken and needs to be reviewed and rebuilt. By the way, Senator Grogan mentioned that when her government came into office the backlog was 42,000. It's now 103,000. The changes will not assist veterans. They callously short-change veterans.

Labor now has an upper limit cap of $5,000 on allied health services and treatment for conditions and injuries that occurred because of defence service. Doctors and our veterans are worried, and have every right to be worried. Labor claims that this cap won't hurt veterans with complex cases, and yet admits that a system to apply the funding has not even been designed. The cap is contrary to recommendations by the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. It's callous disregard for the health and wellbeing of veterans and is highly disrespectful.

Physiotherapy, occupational therapy, psychological services and other rehabilitation services are not discretionary needs—they're vital means to support vets to regain their health—and they need to be continuous, not capped and then having six months of no care before they're renewed. Veterans should be able to choose a practitioner who knows their care needs. A $5,000 cap is not a budget efficiency; it's a barrier to treatment. The cap must go. Scrap the cap.

In sync with this is the need for Labor to restore a veteran's right to choose their assessor and not be restricted to a government paid contractor likely to want to cut corners. Our relatively small Defence Force plays a vital role in defending the security of 28 million Australians, yet Labor fails to support vets under attack. When the ABC grossly misrepresented and harmed distinguished veteran Heston Russell, Labor did nothing despite the ABCs use of taxpayer funds. ABC lost a court case and failed repeatedly to apologise to Heston.

And former commissioner Paul Brereton undermined accused veterans, including our most decorated soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith. Brereton's inaction reflected Labor's failure to assist and support veterans. Diggers went to Iraq on the basis of weapons of mass destruction and then, two years later, we found there were no weapons of mass destruction. That was a lie, but no-one apologised. Why would anyone seriously wish to join the military if they knew that they would be thrown on the scrapheap or ignored and disrespected if they left the service through service related injury or conditions?

Are Labor's imminent caps on care the result of Labor's wasteful spending in other areas that's sending our country broke? Is this the Albanese government's trademark deceit and hypocrisy? Three words frame Labor: waste, hypocrisy and deceit. This inept Albanese government tries to look good, not do good—words, no substance. Yet, despite Labor's hype, misinformation and propaganda, Australians are waking up. One Nation and I completely support this matter of urgency.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support Senator Lambie's urgency motion today. In doing so, I thank Senator Lambie for her leadership on this issue and on all the issues, big and small, that affect veterans.

At the Australian War Memorial, there is a truly haunting exhibit called 'Deathmin' by Kat Rae. I encourage all senators to have a look at it next time they're at the War Memorial. It shows a stack of DVA paperwork over 1½ metres high received by Ms Rae following her husband's death by suicide. Rather than describe it for the Senate, I thought I'd read Ms Rae's description of this exhibit and what it represents:

After my veteran husband Andrew suicided in 2017, I inherited a stack of post-death admin. This "deathmin" contains thousands of pages in which Andrew requests support for his broken body. Eventually, DVA paid $7 fortnightly, later reduced to $5. Three months before Andrew died, payments ceased.

…   …   …

In the army, you are taught that no matter how tired you are, you cannot lean against walls. Heavy with fatigue and leaning precariously like the fate of so many, Deathmin is weary and wants to rest.

Deathmin is a counter-monument to the strong, upright imagery often conveyed in the Australian War Memorial. At my height and Andrew's weight, Deathmin embodies the burden placed on veterans and their families. It asks bureaucratic institutions to care for the people they say they will.

This is the lived reality of many veterans and their families across the country, and many I speak with here in the ACT, of battling with the DVA at every turn just to get the care they need.

Now we have this—a cap on the amount of allied health services a veteran can access each year. Yet more bureaucracy that a veteran has to engage with to receive health care—another form, another appointment. It might not seem like a lot to people who make these rules and introduce these caps, but it all goes on the stack. It's on the shoulders of veterans and their families. It's another doctor's appointment. For those who don't live in Canberra, it is pretty hard to get in to see a GP. We know that the vast majority of GPs don't even accept a white card here in Canberra.

In introducing this cap, the government is saying, 'If you sustain an injury in service to this country, then we're only going to pay to fix some of it.' As I understand it, this is the first cap that we have ever, in the history of our country, put on veterans' health care. Truthfully, I find it offensive. People have talked about the kind of contract we have with veterans. If you're willing to serve our country and put your life on the line, and, in many instances, put your family through it—they're there with you. They're the ones moving around the country. They're the ones worrying about you when you are deployed or doing exercises off the coast or up north.

We say we will look after you when you break your body, when you have mental injuries or when you suffer trauma, and, as has been well ventilated, my understanding is that the minister didn't even consult with veterans on this. Surely, we can do better than that—an arbitrary cut without consultation and an unprecedented cap to go after a few shonky operators. Let's go after the operators. Send the cops. I'm sure the AFP would love to go after operators who are screwing over veterans. Why don't we do that? Surely, that's the starting point rather than putting another burden on veterans. I know the government will say, 'Well, they can go to the GP, and they can work around it, and we can extend their cap'—but why? What are we doing this for? Surely, we can do better than this.

Again, thank you, Senator Lambie, for your work on this. How much you have their back is often commented on by veterans in the ACT.

Sue Lines (President) | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the urgency motion moved by Senator Lambie be agreed to.