MATTERS OF URGENCY

Senator CADELL (New South Wales—Nationals Whip in the Senate) (16:17): I move: That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency: The Albanese Government's betrayal of Australian veterans through its attempt to rip $748 million from allied health care with a $5,000 cap—now cynically rebadged as a "review threshold"—and the need to scrap it so veterans' care is determined by clinical need, not Labor's budget bottom line.

It was an interesting process when we went through the estimates process and were hearing about the reasons this came about; $748 million is a lot of money. But, when we get to the core of it, we hear about two veterans using two providers where they went over $100,000. We know who the providers were.

One was a dietician; one, I think, was a podiatrist. They were billing at least every week for these services. Other senators were in there; we sought answers to the questions: What action have you taken against the people who are rorting the system?

What have you taken against these providers that are doing the wrong thing? The answer was none. We've heard about the Fraud Prevention Centre, which had 120 people and now has 200 people.

So we had 120 people doing nothing before—they were taking no action—and now we've got 200 people doing nothing to prevent this fraud. But 25,000 veterans have to pay the price of not going after people committing fraud in this system—providers. It is a sickening thing.

These are people who served our country. These are people who joined the armed forces with a promise we made to them that we would look after them, a promise they relied on, a promise for allied health services for their injuries, for their physiotherapy, for their psychological health—for so many things. Now this government wants to back away from it for the budget bottom line.

Let's not pretend it's anything more than that. This is not about veterans' health. This is not about their wellbeing.

This is about cutting money out of the budget—$748 million. When I went to my hometown in the Hunter Valley and talked to Ruth Rogers at Singleton RSL, Ruth told me of her troubles and of how she needs these things and how people she supports as an advocate need these services every day, every week. Now they have to jump through a hoop.

We heard today this question: how are you going to approve these things in 28 days when you can't get recognition of injury for 350 days? It just doesn't make sense. We haven't met these KPIs, and these people deserve better.

That is why we saw veterans march to Parliament House. That's why we saw veterans put their medals down on the front steps of Parliament House. It's because this government has broken Australia's promise to them.

James Burns, up in Scone, has launched a petition, which we can all go and sign. It's a petition that meets with the Senate requirements, so we can debate it. When he came here, he talked about how he will easily go through the $5,000 of allied health in a month.

The guy can't walk to town. He has an electric scooter that will get him from his house to town and from his town to home but not around town. It'll run out of battery before he gets home.

He can't get one upgraded. What do I say to him and to the people like him right across Australia? 'You'll now suffer. You'll pay the price because this government can't control its spending.

You will pay the price because this government betrayed our oath.' That is why this is such an urgent motion. We have a private member's bill—potentially two—that can turn this around. We have the ability to give integrity to the oath we made to our veterans, who went overseas, who served in Australia during disasters.

We can put them in harm's way, but we no longer want to help them get out of harm's way, and that is not good enough. It is certainly not good enough for any parliament that I want to be part of—to think that these people are replaceable, that these people are expendable and that these people don't need the care that they so desperately do. The difference made by this cap for these 25,000 people could be life and death.

It could be the psychological help to get over the trauma of what they've seen, what they've done, what they've been involved in. It could be the health care they need to avoid living a life of pain, through physio, through chiro and things like this. But now we have this cap.

It is not good enough. Our Australian veterans deserve better. That's why it must stop.

The cap must be scrapped, and anyone who says anything different has to have a look at themselves.