Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Veterans' Entitlements, Treatment and Support (Simplification and Harmonisation) Bill 2024. I want to acknowledge I have the Holsworthy military barracks in my electorate. The area of Holsworthy supports many of our current defence personnel and veterans, and also houses many veterans' families.

How we look after those who have put their own lives on the line for our sake and so that we can enjoy those freedoms that we cherish in Australia, how we treat returned veterans, really does determine our soul as a society, and we have never really got it right. The system is often extremely bureaucratic. We have failed many veterans who have returned from overseas duties very different to the way that they left, and we have not properly addressed the areas of not just physical health but mental health, suicidality and, in too many instances, suicide itself.

So we look at what sort of changes we can make to veterans affairs and how we support our veterans. I share in common with the honourable member for Nicholls a love of The West Wing, and there is a part in The West Wing where Toby Ziegler and President Bartlett are speaking about veterans entitlements. At the time, Toby is trying to obtain a wheelchair for a former veteran whose wheelchair is broken. He says to the President, 'Is there somebody I can just speak to that can get this wheelchair problem fixed?' Bartlett says, 'Yes, we have to straighten out the system.' Then he goes on to say: 'After the Civil War, veterans had to come to DC to get their pensions. They had to visit the office personally. They waited for a clerk to look through all of the Civil War papers until these were found. Do you know what the papers were found in, Toby?' Toby says, 'No, Mr President.' The President says, 'Red tape.' The President then says, 'That's where the expression "red tape" comes from.' I'm not sure I agree with President Bartlett on that. Having been a lawyer, I believe that red tape actually originated a lot earlier in England, with legal briefs. But there we have it—there has been far too much red tape in the past applied to veterans' interests and veterans affairs.

This bill addresses recommendation 1 that came from theRoyal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide interim report. That recommendation was to simplify and harmonise veteran compensation and rehabilitation legislation. The recommendation was further particularised to say:

The Australian Government should develop and implement legislation to simplify and harmonise the framework for veterans' compensation, rehabilitation and other entitlements.

…   …   …

(3) By no later than early 2024, the Australian Government should present to the Parliament, and seek passage of, its Bill for the proposed framework.

(4) If the legislation is passed, the Australian Government should, by no later than 1 July 2024, begin the process of implementing and transitioning to the new legislative framework.

The last recommendation around timing was:

(5) If the legislation is passed, the Australian Government should ensure that, by no later than 1 July 2025, the new legislation has fully commenced and is fully operational.

So, although we now have legislation, thankfully, before the House, the government is very late in introducing this bill. If it's unable to implement the first recommendation of the interim report, what guarantee or hope do we have for any of the other recommendations, bearing in mind that this government has now been in power for 2½ years? The proposed commencement date of 1 July 2026 that is in this legislation is a year later than the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide recommended and four years after the royal commission's interim report which recommended this urgent course of action.

The Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia, for example, wants the implementation date to be brought forward to the earliest date practicable. The organisation estimates that at least 2,000 Vietnam veterans will pass, between the passage of the bill and 1 July 2026. While I commend the government for finally bringing this legislation, I say that it has been delayed unreasonably and with no sensible explanation given by the minister or the Prime Minister as to why it has been so delayed.

The former coalition government committed $174 million in the 2021-22 budget for the first two years of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, including $28 million for the Department of Veterans' Affairs to be resourced to respond to information requests from the commission. As I said, the interim report was handed down in August 2022 and included a summary of work undertaken and 13 recommendations to be addressed on an urgent basis, three of which were veteran compensation and rehabilitation, improving claims processing by the DVA, and various procedural matters. What we have found since then has been significant delay on the part of the government, and I want to emphasise to the House the importance of legislating the recommendations.

I want to go through a couple of the facts and figures that came out of the report. There were 1,677 veteran suicides between 1997 and 2021, but it is estimated that the true number of veteran suicides in the same timeframe is more than 3,000. There is more chance of a veteran suiciding than of dying while serving our nation, and, of course, every death is a tragedy. Over the course of the royal commission, there were more than 5,800 submissions received, 12 public hearings and 894 private sessions. The commission heard from very traumatised veterans and their families.

While it is good that this legislation is now before the House, there have been many ways over the past 2½ years that the Albanese Labor government has failed our veterans, and it's simply not good enough. For example, there's no voice for veterans in cabinet. The first decision, when Anthony Albanese became Prime Minister, was to dump the Minister for Veterans' Affairs from cabinet.

See this speech in context