Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Lambie, thank you very much for your question. I know personally a number of Vietnam veterans, including my partner's father and many of his friends. Vietnam veterans have taught Australia and Australians a salutary lesson about how we should address rehabilitation, how we should approach the conversation that you have raised. I haven't had the benefit of reading the entire report to which I think you may be referring, but, in the decades that have passed since that time, we have incorporated those lessons and endeavoured to make more responsive the processes that we use and the work that the Department of Veterans' Affairs does. Senator Lambie, you know that it has been an extraordinarily dynamic environment in recent times. We have a growth in the number of ex-service organisations way beyond the days of the RSL, and many of us have watched them grow and supported them in their work and the efforts that they make.

What we do know is: we must have a much more effective transition from Defence to ex-Defence, if you like—from being a serving member of the ADF to being a veteran, who may or may not be supported by Veterans' Affairs, because we are, of course, aware that not every veteran chooses to engage in that way. In that conversation, Minister Tehan and I are working very hard on a much more seamless transition between the two organisations to make sure that nobody leaves Defence without the material and the support they need to function and to provide for themselves in a world outside that environment. That may relate to medical records. It might relate to financial records. It might relate to psychological challenges. It might relate to all of those things combined. So we work very hard to make that transition as seamless as we possibly can.