Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Defence Personnel. How is the Albanese Labor government supporting veterans and are there any threats to this?

Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Paterson for that very important question. She's a great advocate for the veterans in her community. I've visited the East Maitland RSL with her a number of times. It's great to visit and meet the local veterans in her community in Paterson.

Under the Albanese government, DVA is the best resourced that it has been in decades. Veterans and families are now receiving the services and support that they need faster. We've employed an additional 640 staff in DVA since we came to government in 2022, and we've cleared the unallocated claims backlog of some 42,000 claims that we inherited. This has led to more demand for support and services to actually be provided to veterans and families—supports and services that veterans deserved but were prevented from receiving by the last Liberal government because they weren't processing veterans' claims. Our success in processing claims has meant that more veterans are now lodging more claims with more conditions per claim, because they now have confidence that their claims will actually be processed.

In February 2025, all new initial liability claims were being allocated to a staff member within 14 days. Back in 2022, under the last government, it was taking around 200 days. But let's look at what they were dealing with back then. In 2021-22, there were just under 66,000 claims lodged with the Department of Veterans' Affairs. Last financial year, it was 89,530, and, in the eight months to February of this year, we've already had 65,412 new claims lodged with DVA. Under the last government in 2021-22, they made 94,629 decisions in the whole year. Last financial year, DVA made 200,200 decisions. Up to February of this financial year—just eight months—148,294 decisions have been made.

So we can see why it's important to maintain the staffing levels in DVA so that those staff can keep doing the vital work to process claims and provide services and support to our veterans. Yet we saw, earlier in the week, Senator Hume, the shadow minister for finance, saying that the opposition thought that they should roll back those additional staff that have gone into DVA.

Senator Lambie, a great advocate on behalf of veterans across this country, called Senator Hume out on this on television just this morning. Senator Hume seemed to have some form of amnesia; she didn't know what Senator Lambie was talking about all of a sudden. But it's okay, because Natalie Barr reminded Senator Hume that it is the opposition's policy to roll back the additional public servants that our government has hired. We know what will happen under this opposition. They will cut, and you will pay. (Time expired)