CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS
Mr McCORMACK (Riverina) (10:51): When the 2021 census was conducted across the 12 local government areas I now represent, there were 4,627 veterans—people who ticked the box to say that they have served this country in the Australian Army, the Royal Australian Air Force or the Royal Australian Navy. To those men and women, I say: thank you for your service. I'm sure that that number from the census just conducted would now be much higher.
We owe those veterans a debt of gratitude, and I know that those veterans feel very betrayed. They feel very let down by the fact that this government has put in place in the May budget a cap of $5,000 on their allied health services. This limits their ability to access vital physiotherapy and important psychological sessions for their mental health.
Not every veteran is broken, but I know that the royal commission, when it came through Wagga Wagga looking into veterans and defence suicides, heard some harrowing stories. We owe it to those veterans, those ones who gave evidence at Wagga Wagga at the royal commission and right across the country, to do much better than what is being done for them now with this terrible cap that limits their access.
I stand here giving this constituency statement for the likes of Dean Pavitt, a former soldier who is now an amputee. He gave service to this country. He was injured in training at Kapooka, and he now bears the very real and genuine scars from that service, both in his mental health—and he has allowed me to say that—but also with the loss of part of his leg.
How can he be expected to get by with a $5,000 limit on the physical and the mental help that he so desperately needs and seeks? He's a good man, like all of those veterans, the more than half a million veterans across this nation. The minister has to make sure that this cap is scrapped.
If the Prime Minister doesn't scrap the cap, then the minister quite frankly needs to be ashamed of himself because he has gone along with what the department has told him. It wasn't in the royal commission's 122 findings. It wasn't in their recommendations.
It is such an impost, such a burden, such anxiety for our veterans who deserve better. Lest we forget.