Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise this morning to put some remarks on the record with regard to this important piece of legislation, the Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment (Omnibus) Bill 2017. As always when it comes to legislation and matters that involve our veterans, I'm very mindful to acknowledge the wisdom that has been shared with me by many veterans over the course of my years involved in parliamentary life in particular. That's one of the things that people don't see and which is often not reported about the work that we do: the incredible trust that people place in us in giving us their stories, the acts of hope that they engage in when they speak about the challenges that they face, and the power of individual stories to help us understand the real, practical and structural challenges that face many Australians.

When I think about veterans, I think about many of the people that I've encountered, but I think about one in particular, who was a student of mine. I've known this boy since he was in my year 7 English class. I've been at parent-teacher nights with his mother, who is a worker in the local health profession near where I live. I've seen him grow throughout his life. I saw him on his 16th and 17th birthday years, as he joined the Reserves, and the pride he had in that. I was very privileged and felt very honoured when he came back after he signed up to show me himself in uniform. Over the course of the years, I've engaged with this young man about his life in service, seen him rise to the challenges of opportunities that he has been given, and seen remarkable achievement. He was very proud to be an Australian soldier. He was very proud of the work that he was doing.

But, like many of those who have served our nation across the generations, he is now a veteran. He's not a token veteran, which I think too many Australians have captured in our memory—that on the 11th of the 11th and 25 April we attend, look at people, see the uniforms and do what's right in honouring those veterans on those days. We're good at acknowledging that. But veterans are young men and young women with families. Veterans are people who live all the days between 25 April and 11 November, and all the days between 11 November and 25 April when it comes around again. They have to manage their lives and families, and their families have to manage and interact with them.

Not every person who serves in our armed forces leaves with a deficit, and I really want to put that on the record today. Being a part of the armed forces is a life-enabling and enhancing experience for very many Australians, but, sadly, some people leave our forces in not-very-good shape, and right now we are facing significant challenges of inadequate response, not just for the broad community but particularly for our veterans' community, as to their access to the health services that they need and the counselling that they're excluded from because the rate the government currently pays for veterans to access mental health services is so inadequate that ordinary civilians are getting treatment from local psychologists over the top of our veterans. That's a reality they're confronting. Another reality they're confronting is an inability to get their cases managed properly through the Department of Veterans' Affairs, in transition—as they move out of the military and into the care of the Department of Veterans' Affairs. This problem is made very clear to us as representatives, over and over. That's why, even though this bill will not resolve all of the issues confronting our veterans, it is a significant step in addressing some of the things that are wrong and that need to be attended to.

This bill is supported by Labor—and I acknowledge the remarks of Senator Reynolds with regard to that matter—because we believe the changes that are here before us for consideration today will clarify and improve or streamline the operation of the law and the processes within the Department of Veterans' Affairs. It's a really important thing that, if you're not in very good physical shape or mental shape and you're a veteran, you shouldn't have to fight a system. The system should be serving you, as a person. This is the problem, writ large, that I keep confronting over and over in the conversations that I have with veterans. One veteran put it to me very articulately when he said, 'If I operated as a serving member of the forces with the standard of lack of care that I receive when I seek assistance from the department and its agencies, I wouldn't have been serving in the forces for very long.' We're talking about young men and women who've met incredibly high standards of professional life within the forces. They've served. They've excelled. I think it's fair for them to expect that the treatment, as they leave the forces, be commensurate with the quality of service and standard that they employed in their own service life. It's that mismatch that offends them so much.

This bill addresses some of those concerns in a practical way, but directing people to do particular things doesn't always achieve the cultural shift that I think is required to meet the expectations of our veterans currently. The remarks that I make in support of this legislation are somewhat coloured by an uncertainty that the department and those who are employed within the department, who are doing the day-to-day interactions with our veterans, may not reach the standard that this legislation is seeking to achieve. I think we need to be mindful of that. I want to put that on the record today, because there needs to be a shift in standard and a shift in culture, of which this is just one small part.

During the debate of this bill in the lower house we saw the government adopt Labor amendments to schedule 1, to remove the ability of veterans' applications to the Veterans' Review Board to be dismissed on terms considered to be frivolous, to be vexatious or to have no reasonable prospect of success. I'm pleased to say that the government did backflip on that, and that was a good decision. We have to protect the unique nature of the Veterans' Review Board. It is, and it has to remain, a place where veterans can appeal decisions that have been made by the Department of Veterans' Affairs. From my conversations with veterans, I know that this is a very significant safeguard for our veterans. It has to continue to provide a place for them to seek protection when an arbitrary decision has been made. It needs to be open to critique, and that's what this will do.

Again, Labor welcomes the government's adoption of our amendment to schedule 1 to ensure that every veteran continues to have the opportunity to be heard in those circumstances. Schedule 1 is an important part of this legislation. I might make a few more remarks with regard to that. The board currently has some legacy matters to deal with that make it difficult for it to do its job, so schedule 1 is going to modernise and improve the operations of the board. It will ensure that, while it's carrying out its functions, it will be able to pursue these particular objectives of providing a mechanism that is accessible to veterans and that is fair, just, economical, informal and quick; providing a review place that's proportionate to the importance and complexity of the matter; and promoting public trust and confidence in the decision-making of the board.

These are all very important issues, and I do want to speak briefly to the issues of 'fair, just, economic, informal and quick'. One of the concerns that has been raised with me very frequently is the challenge for veterans who live at a distance from the city—the cost of trying to get to these meetings that they're called to, including meetings where they're called on to go and see a specialist. They can be waiting for a very long period of time, as part of a process of claim, to be called in to have their case reviewed in some way. I experienced the anxiety just by sitting in a room with these men, who were telling me about waiting for months and months and months for something to happen, and then how finally they'd get a call to say that, within 24 hours, they'd have to show up, and, if they missed their appointment, their whole access to the basic living dollars that come to their account was going to be constantly compromised. That is one of the reflections that I want to make on the culture—that the differentiation of power between those who are making decisions and those who are obliged to comply with directions seems incredibly unjust and disrespectful to our veterans community. So I hope that, with schedule 1, in claiming that the board is going to make this fair, just and economical, we talk about not just the economics of the board's capacity to do its job but the economic impact of making it possible for our veterans, with a reasonable notification period and with reasonable resources, to actually get to the hearings that they need to attend.

I'd like to touch on another schedule, schedule 5. This is a very important one to our veterans because it amends the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004 and the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation (Defence-related Claims) Act 1988 to facilitate information sharing between the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Commission, the MRCC, and the other body that is critical to ensuring that our veterans get their fair and adequate payment for living, the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation. That's a very important communication gap that has existed, but is vital with respect to certain service-related compensation claims.

As it stands—prior to this legislation being introduced and hopefully passing through this place today—due to the information-sharing provisions, if somebody is medically discharged from the forces and they undergo a medical, when they go to the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation to organise payments they have to undergo a second medical. When they go to the Department of Veterans' Affairs for assistance, they then undergo a third medical. This goes to the point that I was making about the system driving unhelpful, costly and personally impacting behaviours onto the veterans. The system is demanding that the people serve it, instead of the system serving the people, particularly our veterans—who, I remind you, we must honour daily, not just on those occasions of remembrance on 25 April and 11 November.

The amendments within this bill seek to enable information sharing between the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation and the Department of Veterans' Affairs. That is going to be important in reducing some of the reworking, and the trauma of having to go through multiple recounts of one's story, and multiple and unnecessarily expensive referrals through a range of doctors. The amendments are designed to enable the CSC to get the relevant claims information that's held by the Department of Veterans' Affairs, where that access is going to assist the CSC in the performance of its functions and powers. Access to the department's claims information, particularly relevant medical and rehab information, would not just assist the veterans but also assist the CSC to make speedier superannuation benefits assessments. That, in turn, would assist the department to determine a person's entitlement to incapacity payments.

And there we have what's at the heart of this. It's one thing for us to talk about honouring our veterans; it's another thing to make sure that they have the wherewithal to live. Those who have mental health challenges or physical disabilities as a result of their service are entitled to live with a degree of comfort and a degree of mental ease that their payments are safe and secure and that they're just and reasonable. That is not the case for too many veterans. It simply is not the case. I sincerely hope that the changes that are foreshadowed here in this piece of legislation translate into that action—change that will enhance the lives of our veterans.

One of the challenges is not just the sharing of information but the length of time that it takes for these processes to be undertaken. I'm sure that I'm not the only parliamentarian in here today who will speak on behalf of the veterans, who are just sick of it. Some of the stories that I've heard about files involve part of a file kept in one state and another part of the file kept in another. In this day and age we haven't got the real NBN, but we've got enough capacity for information to shift around. People can scan documents and email. The challenges that have been faced over the years by veterans whose files have gone missing or who have had to wait for months as things have disappeared, as people have left things on their desk and gone on leave and no-one's taken over their case load, are real, practical challenges that need a response. And again I say that this legislation is a pointer to the change that needs to be undertaken. But this legislation needs to be taken seriously, not just as a minor change to practice but as an indicator of a significant change to practical realities that improve the lives of our veterans.

I also want to discuss this specific schedule from a mental health perspective, in my role here as the shadow assistant minister to the member for Franklin, Julie Collins. We are giving voice to Labor's concerns about adequate funding for mental health services in the broader community. We have a particular duty to respond to mental health challenges in the veterans community. The Department of Veterans' Affairs, during the Senate inquiry into this bill, emphasised that the changes that are expected as a result of the implementation of this bill should improve access to care and support. They noted that these should be of particular benefit to those with mental health conditions.

It was argued that the changes would ultimately be of most benefit to recipients by enabling quicker determinations. We know a couple of things about why speed is very important in terms of people getting a response to their illness, because we know that the longer we leave people in a situation where they feel particularly unwell the longer that victimhood status can continue and identity becomes fixed around unwellness rather than helping people quickly get the care and support that they need. Whether that's for somatic, physical health or mental health, people need to be able to access those services in a timely way, in a time close to when their injury occurs, so that they can have the best possible chance of getting well and returning to full participation in their family, in their community, in their workplace and in the broader community—perhaps even here into this place.

We know that the 2010 ADF Mental Health Prevalence and Wellbeing Study was the first major mental health audit that had happened in the ADF. We had nearly half the ADF members participate in the study, so it was a pretty good sample size, and it found that, of those who responded, half of the ADF population had experienced a mental health disorder in their lifetime. That sounds alarming, but I really want to put it into context. For the general population, that's pretty normal. We actually experience mental illness in the general population at a roughly similar rate. At any one time, one in five Australians might be experiencing mental ill health. The study noted that this is due to a range of stress factors caused by the nature of their work. The study found that the most common mental disorders in the ADF were anxiety disorders, with the most prevalent anxiety disorder being post-traumatic stress disorder.

Sadly, I'm going to run out of time to speak about the challenges of suicide ideation and access to services, but I hope that I've made it clear in my remarks that Labor does support this legislation. But the legislation is only an indicator of significant change that needs to be undertaken, and veterans certainly will be very much the focus of my mental health efforts in the coming period.