Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fisher for bringing this motion forward, and I also acknowledge all our service men and women, past and present, and thank you for your service to our country and the freedoms that we enjoy today.

I come from a region with an extremely proud military history. In fact, the Mid North Coast has the largest cohort of veterans in the state. As the federal representative, it is untenable to hear of the stripping of funding, programs and general resources from those men and women who have served our country. From the moment this new government came into power, the active deprioritisation of veteran support began. In my electorate of Cowper, the previously secured funding of $5 million for the Veterans Wellbeing Network Mid North Coast was immediately redirected. The money had been confirmed by the Department of Veterans' Affairs in the 2022 budget, much to the relief of the dedicated volunteers supporting our 9,000-strong veteran cohort and their families. The proposed network represented better value for the taxpayer, in that it funded not one but three physical centres, located from Grafton to Taree, for the same amount of money that a single centre in other electorates had previously been provided. But, by June 2022, the news came that, rather than being used to fund such a model, the money was now being redirected to a single wellbeing centre to service smaller numbers of veterans, in a Labor seat, due to a Labor election promise. Neither the October budget nor the most recent announcements have rectified this clear misappropriation of funds.

Just last month, we saw the removal of funding from the Soldier On Australia Pathway Program. Jody Geostis, our local Soldier On programs officer, was made redundant. She let me know that she had been advised that the DVAs Enhanced Employment Support for Veterans grant program, which assisted the Pathways Program, had not been renewed. This grant program had been her primary source of funding. RSL Australia also received funding under the same DVA grant previously, and they, along with Soldier On, had been advised that there was no identified alternative government funding stream available.

Now, we hear of another bipartisan program, which was introduced by the coalition in 2018 and subsequently championed by both the new minister and the new assistant minister sitting opposite just last year, has been unceremoniously dumped without warning or explanation. It's nothing short of negligent. The program was devised to maintain incapacity payments for veterans and was further improved to provide 100 per cent of veterans' preinjury earnings for them to undertake full-time study as part of a DVA approved rehabilitation plan, a sensible planning plan, a sensible program. In May last year this House debated and passed the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation and Other Legislation Amendment (Incapacity Payments) Bill 2022, and we were grateful, as a coalition, for the recognition of the successful program contained within the bill and to see the extension of the 100 per cent subsidy for another year. Eight months later, what do we see? The entire program is now coming to an end. There's been no formal announcement of the removal; it's just quietly being discontinued without consultation or rationale. If the program was unsuccessful in some way, where's the analysis?

I'm calling on the government to show our veterans and their families the respect they deserve and to provide them with the resourcing that they desperately need. I can't understand why the department would do this. If you look at the rates of suicide and the multitude of other issues that are endemic amongst our veteran community, any removal is completely inappropriate. The 600 veterans per year that will be impacted by Labor's decision to scrap the scheme deserve better. In the few seconds I have left, through the chair, I implore the minister to reinstate the funding for my veterans and allow them to have a place to go for their wellbeing.

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