MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Mr KEOGH (Burt—Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Minister for Defence Personnel) (15:49): I think everybody in this parliament accepts the very real obligation that sits upon all of us as members and on any government to live up to the solemn obligation to make sure that those who serve our nation in our uniform are properly looked after during their service and after their service and that the families they that support them are also properly looked after.
When I became the Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Defence Personnel, the first people that I contacted were some of the mothers who had endured the hellish tragedy of having their children who had served in our Defence force take their own lives. I'll never properly understand what that would feel like, but I did understand the importance of the campaign that they had run to ensure that there was a Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide.
I wanted them to know that I took that very seriously and that I would continue to engage with them in relation to the royal commission as it was being undertaken and to make sure that we lived up to what they were campaigning for in implementing recommendations from that royal commission. I also then set about making sure that I was regularly engaging with our serving personnel, our veterans and their families, not just at the senior level, not just in national organisations and peak bodies and generals and admirals but the vast majority who have served and are still serving.
At the first base that I visited I made sure that I got to have an informal engagement with our enlisted Army members. We had a barbecue, and I was really touched by one of the Army personnel there who had taken it upon himself to go around all his mates and bring up a list of their grievances and concerns. You'd make a good shop steward.
I get why he did it, because no-one necessarily wanted to come and front the minister with 'these are all of my things'. But I was really glad that he did it because the purpose of the visit was to be able to talk to our personnel and understand their gripes on the ground. What were the things that were seeing them leave the Defence Force?
What were the things that were causing them harm? What were the things that we could do better? I've continued to do that in my visits around the country, visiting subbranches of RSLs, Vietnam Veterans Association, new younger ex-service organisations representing our contemporary veterans, service providers and advocates—meeting people where they are so they can share with me their story so that I can build what it is that we need to be doing to make things better for them.
That's an obligation that I mentioned before. That is a national obligation. The reality is service has touched all parts of our country.
One of the things that I really like about the local war memorial in Armidale, a town that really grew because of its brickworks, is that the war memorial is made of bricks. It lists the names of those who passed away, who made the ultimate sacrifice in World War I. When you look at those names and at those last names, they're prominent families of the district, but they're also the names that lakes and parks and streets are all named after.
That reflects the impact of that conflict has had across our country for over a century where real families were impacted by service, not just by losing a loved one, whether it was a son or a daughter or a father or mother or sister or brother, but the flow-on effect that that can have throughout a community. It's engaging with those stories that has certainly made me even more determined to make sure that our government improves the story for our veteran community and for our serving personnel.
It's why, when I became minister, one of the first things that I did at this dispatch box was say sorry to our defence members and our serving personnel and their families for where things hadn't worked, because the first step is acknowledging those failures. It's why, after being sworn in in June and receiving an interim report from the royal commission in August, we provided the government's response in September.
We moved quickly, making sure that we were delivering additional funding to DVA—it is now the best funded it has been in three decades—so it could employ the additional people to make sure we got through that claims backlog of nearly 42,000 claims of veterans that had not even been looked at by someone in the department. Since that time, we have seen claims move quicker.
And we're seeing more claims come into the system. During the financial year before last, nearly double the number of determinations were made than in 2022. The financial year just closed saw an increase of nearly 20 per cent, and there is still more work to do.
The result of that has meant that the funding, the money going out to support our veteran community with health services, support services, rehabilitation, treatment and compensation has increased by 50 per cent. Yet there is still more to do. That's why we undertook the really important and complex work of making sure we fixed up the veterans entitlement system through the VETS act, moving to a single system so that, for veterans and their families, it would be clearer what they are entitled to, easier to access those support services and quicker to have their claims processed, delivering better overall service and support to our veteran community and their families.
It's why we've delivered, in the areas of Australia that have got the highest concentration of our veteran community, veteran and family hubs so people could have coordinated access to care. It's why we delivered, for the first time in decades, funding specifically for housing and wraparound support services to support our veteran community that were experiencing homelessness.
Of course, we also invested in a veteran employment program. And I find it so wonderful when businesses come up to me and say, 'How can I employ a veteran?' because they recognise the value of having veterans working in their businesses. It's why we did such swift work in delivering our government's response to the final report of the royal commission.
That wasn't the only report of the royal commission. Its second report was about the lived experience of those that came and gave evidence to the royal commission. It is truly tragic reading.
People should not have had to experience the things that those people experienced. We are so grateful that they shared those stories with the royal commission. Frankly, in parts, it makes you really angry at some of the things those people and their family members had to put up with—and they should not have had to.
The royal commission handed down that final report in September 2024. In December 2024, we provided the government's response—a pathway forward on over 100 of the recommendations and commitment to work through the remaining recommendations. By the end of last year, we had implemented a quarter of those recommendations, and we're on track for two-thirds to be implemented by the end of this year.
That included delivering what the royal commission itself said was its most important recommendation: the Defence and Veterans' Service Commission, which has been up and running since September last year, providing oversight on how government goes about implementing those recommendations. It's already doing its work. We've also made a significant change by delivering the Veteran and Family Wellbeing Agency.
The agency is tasked with those broader wellbeing supports. It's not just about processing claims through DVA, though incredibly important that is, but making sure that people who need assistance in accessing employment services, education services or homelessness services—the range of different supports—are able to do that. There's a place for them to go to get that assistance.
The agency is already doing that work, and it's great to see that it is delivering. I've never said that what government has done is closed and we don't need to do any more. We are working at pace to deliver the recommendations of the royal commission so that we can make the real change that our veteran community need and deserve so that they will have better access to services and support that our country owes them, because that's what they deserve as part of our obligation to our serving men and women.