MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Dr WEBSTER (Mallee) (16:09): This week, Australia marked 60 years since the Battle of Long Tan. On 18 August 1966, 105 young Australians and three New Zealanders of D company, 6RAR, faced an enemy force many times their size. Eighteen Australians were killed and 24 wounded.
We honour their courage with the words 'lest we forget'. We cannot honour service at a memorial and then ration care when veterans need their country, yet this is exactly what Labor is proposing. From 1 July 2027, veteran card holders face a $5,000 annual limit for allied health services.
That's psychology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, exercise physiology, podiatry, dietetics, social work and more all within one $5,000 envelope. Let's remember who Labor's $5,000 cap affects: gold card holders, white card holders, war widows and dependents. It affects Mallee residents, from my electorate, one of whom I am seeing next Wednesday back in my electorate office.
From Mildura to Daisy Hill and from Brim to Merbein, I have heard loud and clear the outcry within Mallee and, even just beyond, from Maiden Gully, in the Labor held electorate of Bendigo, about Labor's cruel cap on allied health services for veterans. The gold card represented a promise that this nation would care for those who served their country. Labor has now put a cap on that promise—a price tag.
Labor booked $748 million in savings from veterans and their families in the 12 May budget. The DVA calls the cap 'a threshold for review of clinical effectiveness'. Changing the word 'cap' to bureaucratic gobbledegook and capping allied health services with a dollar figure does not change the complex needs of veterans.
Labor is complicating this policy gaffe by increasing provider fees while fixing the veterans' annual allied health envelope at $5,000. A standard psychology consultation rises from $163.40 to $260. At that rate, $5,000 buys around 19 sessions a year—less than one session a fortnight—assuming that's the only service they need.
For a veteran living with complex trauma, that matters. For a veteran managing both PTSD and a service related physical injury, as we heard earlier, the question becomes brutally simple: do I see my psychologist, or do I see my physiotherapist? That is not integrated health care; it is care rationing.
The Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide made 122 recommendations after hearing devastating evidence about systems, bureaucracy and delays that failed serving and former ADF members. Its lesson was not that veterans needed another administrative hurdle. Yet the process for approving treatment beyond the $5,000 cap has not been finalised.
Veterans may require further medical justification and prior financial approval. That means more forms, more uncertainty and more bureaucracy. Ten national veterans service organisations have told the Minister for Veterans' Affairs they do not support the cap.
RSL Australia has warned of constraints and contradictory messages about access to care. Julie-Ann Finney, whose advocacy following the death of her son David helped secure the royal commission, has described capping treatment as unfathomable. Yet veterans advocates who travelled to Canberra had their first request to meet with Minister Keogh refused.
Veterans and their advocates are still telling us they are not being heard. A veterans affairs minister should not need political pressure before making time to hear from our veterans. Lest we forget.