Matters of Urgency — Veterans: Women's Health

Deborah O'Neill

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

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

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

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.

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