QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Prime Minister) (14:58): I thank the member for his question. I'll say that both the Minister for Climate Change and Energy and the Minister for Veterans' Affairs might want to supplement my answer. I say this when it comes to veterans—we have significant additional investment in this budget as a result of the royal commission into veteran suicide and the response.

That comes on top of something like $800 million, which is the package in this budget. In addition to that, of course, one of the big expenditures that we had upon coming to government was addressing the backlog that was there of people waiting forever and ever. The member for Calare knows something about this because he stood up, to his great credit, to the former government—of which he was a part, as a minister—and said he was just not going to cop the cuts that were there in the budget.

Mr Conaghan: You took $9 million from my electorate— The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Cowper will cease interjecting. Mr ALBANESE: So we put significant investment in the budget to make sure— Mr Conaghan: and you haven't replaced it.

The SPEAKER: No, when I say, 'cease interjecting', that means cease interjecting. You'll leave the chamber under 94(a). The member for Cowper then left the chamber.

Mr ALBANESE: We put significant investment in our budgets to make sure that that delay where people literally were leaving this Earth while they were waiting for payments to come through—it was a complete outrage. It is one of the things that led us to a significant increase in public servants so that we could clear that backlog. I might see if either of the ministers want to supplement.