James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I certainly support this motion and I would like to start my contribution by paying tribute to its mover, the member for Stirling, commending him on bringing this motion here to the chamber and, of course, acknowledging and recognising his service to this country and the service of his wife and all those men and women who have served the people of Australia—not just current veterans but also veterans from generations gone by. Recently, we acknowledged the anniversary of Victory in the Pacific, which is obviously a very significant element of the end of the Second World War, and it underscores the contribution that Australian men and women provided to this country in that conflict and so many conflicts throughout our history—and I acknowledge them.

The Americans tend to claim developing the term 'red tape', and they say that it comes from the difficulty for civil war veterans in accessing benefits and entitlements from the United States government. I think the red tape was in fact the ribbon that war records were tied in, and, when people went to seek and obtain entitlements from the US government, it was a very difficult process because they had to search for the service records of those personnel manually and through the process of tying and untying the red tape around the bundles of documents.

Although there are some other suggestions as to where that term came from, I think it's appropriate to acknowledge that there's been a long history of challenge in veterans across the world being properly supported by their governments after they've provided service to their countries. That's not because governments haven't wanted to—clearly—provide the support that our veterans deserve but there have always been bureaucratic red-tape challenges in properly identifying our veterans community and, therefore, making sure all veterans are getting the services that they are absolutely entitled to in our country.

I've certainly found, in a little more than 12 months, as a member of parliament it's rewarding but heartbreaking when you help a veteran to access services that they should have been getting from our governments ever since they left the ADF. There are some people, beyond question, who are entitled to services from our government, not just the federal government but state and territory governments as well, who are missing out on those services. Some of the worst examples are those living in homelessness and those living with very serious mental health issues who are not being properly supported by government. That's not because of any budgetary constraint. We know that veteran support services are demand driven. Anyone who's entitled to those services, when they apply for them, receives them. There's no limit on the Department of Veterans' Affairs budget. But there are so many people who are not properly being supported to get access to those services.

That's why I think the prospect of putting this question into the census process is a really important one. There's no strong body of data and evidence that identifies what our veterans community is compared to the number of people who are accessing the services they're entitled to. Clearly, asking this question and getting that data is going to give us an excellent opportunity to look at the areas where there are enormous gaps between the number of veterans we identify through the census process and those who are actually receiving the benefits and entitlements that they are absolutely entitled to for the service they provided to our country.

I think that will also send a really clear message to other jurisdictions, the state and territory jurisdictions et cetera, that it is really important that we do a much better job of data sharing between agencies at the Commonwealth and state and territory level. That's another big problem I've been made aware of, very consistently. There might be a certain agency in a state that is working with a veteran client and the Commonwealth is not having that flow of information to the Department of Veterans' Affairs and other agencies and, quite probably, vice versa. I think we'd all agree that it's vitally important to make sure that all agencies that provide support to veterans are sharing information with each other, to make sure that all the support possible is put in place for veterans. This will send a really clear message that we value our veterans communities and we want to make sure that they're given the support that they're entitled to by all levels of government. By putting it in the census, it clearly elevates it to that level of significance. That's why I commend this motion to the chamber.

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