Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question. One of the challenges that became obvious to me and to others is the fact that whilst we had very good systems in place, and developed new systems to support them, to address the needs of current serving men and women, we actually did not have in place what we should have had in place for families. So we have been moving in that space to provide support for families of current serving men and woman and also support for those people who may have separated from the Defence Force. Significantly, you would be aware, there was a restriction on who got access to some of these entitlements post service.

In the Defence white paper 2013 and in the budget, the government announced a $26.4 million package for enhanced mental health programs for serving and ex-serving personnel and their families, to be administered by the Department of Veterans' Affairs. DVA has in place a number of mental health initiatives. These include online mental health support information, GP services, psychologists and social work services, specialist psychiatric services, pharmaceutical support, post-traumatic stress disorder programs and hospital services for those who need it.

What we have done here, though, is expand non-liability health cover. This initiative expands the existing arrangements with support and immediate treatment for diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder, other anxiety disorders and depression without the need to lodge a compensation claim. That is quite important, because it means that people get almost immediate access to the treatment. These treatments will be expanded to include treatment for alcohol and substance misuse disorders. These arrangements have already been available to veterans with operational service, and this will be expanded to include veterans with eligible peacetime service since 1994.

It is important to understand that what we are doing here is expanding the range of people who now get access to these services. For example, those people who have been on operational service on border protection, those people who have been involved in humanitarian assistance, such as at Aceh, and those people who have been involved in other peacetime operations are now eligible to get these services. That is quite important, because we know that, whether it is in border protection or humanitarian assistance, some of these personnel have been exposed to really traumatic and quite dreadful experiences which have required them to seek support.

Prior to the passage of this budget, these people have not been able to access the support that other people with active service have been able to access—and that, to me, is really quite important. We are also expanding the amount of support that we are giving to the Veterans and Veterans Families Counselling Service to include these people. That is important. The VVCS is a very good organisation. It is the organisation that we go to to provide support in the veteran community.

But we have still got more to do, and I do not shy away from this challenge. As I said, we have 65,000 personnel who have now served overseas since 1999. We had fewer than 60,000 people serve in Vietnam. So the number of people we have now who have experienced war is far larger than the number who served in Vietnam. Clearly, we do not want to repeat the mistakes of the past—and we will not—and we now have to make sure that both in the short term and the long term, the needs of these people are properly addressed.

The seamless transition between DVA and defence is really vital in that regard. We have worked towards a system where that is close to happening. In many places it is very good and in other places it is a bit 'how's your father?' but it will be fixed. I am very, very pleased with the cooperation we now have as a result of an MOU between the Department of Defence and the Department of Veterans' Affairs in dealing with these sorts of issues.

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