Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

Part of your new section 38(2AB) deals substantively with a number of circumstances under which persons would find an exemption, dealing primarily with psychological or mental health conditions, an accepted war-caused injury, accepted defence-caused injury et cetera. The last dot point is ‘a psychological or mental health condition that has been accepted for the purposes of’ et cetera. Is there a provision for dealing with claims of a mental health condition when the veteran’s partner claims that this is the reason for leaving a residence but the veteran has not actually been assessed? That is a specific issue that you can go to, Minister, but the general thrust of my question is to understand more about this.

You have created a series of circumstances under which if certain things happen then you are in. Yet there are a number of circumstances that are not writ large, and we are not sure about the extent of those circumstances. Perhaps in answering that question you could just go through, in a general sense, the appellant process, particularly where a partner who has left is then able to appeal in some sense. One of the principal issues here, of course, is if somebody says and acknowledges that they have a mental health issue. They certainly are not going to come under the last dot point unless they have been diagnosed and certainly some veterans may not be prepared to put their hand up and say, ‘I have a mental health issue.’ It might well be self-evident but, if they have not actually been diagnosed because they do not choose to go down that path, the partner is certainly going to be in a very difficult situation. So I would appreciate it if you could help me deal with the assessment process.