MATTERS OF URGENCY
Senator DOLEGA (Tasmania) (16:23): I'd like to acknowledge the ADF personnel around the building today and this week as part of the parliamentary exchange. I welcome them to Parliament House. I rise to contribute to the urgency motion raised by the coalition.
I've got to talk about some of the things that happened with the Department of Veterans' Affairs under their watch whilst they were in government. They were the party that gutted DVA, leading to a huge claims backlog. Former veterans affairs minister Andrew Gee told the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide that, despite a huge backlog, he was forced to cut $430 million, a move that he labelled as 'counterintuitive'.
Since day one, we've worked to improve the lives of defence personnel, veterans and their families in Australia, with significant funding increases. The state of veterans' support funding when we came to government was a disgrace. There was a backlog of 42,000 new veteran claims that had not been looked at by anyone in the Department of Veterans' Affairs.
Do you know what? I can tell you a little story. I worked for the union that represented DVA workers: the CPSU.
The former LNP government, as part of their crusade against the Public Service, brought in labour hire firms to process DVA claims, and they were really nasty in the way they did this. Those workers that were brought in were employed with no sick leave, no annual leave and no job security. To add further insult, they were paid much less than those who were sitting next to them and directly employed in the APS.
These people served veterans. Not many people know that it actually takes six months for a worker, when onboarded at the Department of Veterans' Affairs, to be fully able to process claims. During the dying years of the former government, during their wasted decade, there was a revolving door of workers who simply didn't complete their training due to the miserable working conditions that they were hired under.
Those opposite actively sabotaged DVA from being able to serve veterans, who deserve so much better from their government. On this side of the chamber, we're committed to supporting our defence personnel, veterans and their families, and that's why we've made investing in the Department of Veterans' Affairs a priority. In fact, the Albanese Labor government has provided the department with more funding resources than at any time in the past three decades.
The Albanese Labor government funded additional DVA staff to clear those backlogs, with record claims-processing in the last three years. We also committed $15 billion in spending on payments and services for over 360,000 veterans and their families last financial year, $5 billion more than four years ago. The royal commission found that the previous veterans legislation system was so complicated that it poorly impacted veterans' mental health and increased the risk of suicide.
To address this issue, we introduced reforms to the veteran support system from 1 July, including once-in-a-century changes to simplify veterans entitlements legislation, improve integrity in the system and implement a more holistic wellbeing support approach to supporting veterans and veterans' families. These changes have simplified the veterans compensation system, making it easier for veterans and their families to understand their entitlements and making it easier for DVA to process their claims.
Our priority is to ensure veterans and their families can access health care and support when they need it. That's why we're investing $169.7 million into strengthening veteran cardholders' access to allied health services, including the largest investment in veteran allied health provider fees in over two decades. This addressed recommendation 71 of the royal commission, which called for increases to the DVA fee schedules to improve access to care.
For example, this means the fee paid for a standard physio consultation will increase from $75.10 to $110. This means more choice, better access and greater confidence in DVA healthcare arrangements for veterans. Importantly, we're reducing the burden of veterans having to return to a GP every 12 allied health visits for a new referral.
Instead, we've expanded this to a $5,000 threshold before a veteran's care is reviewed. The allied health threshold will not apply to some of our most vulnerable veterans, including those who are eligible for the special rate disability pension or the totally and permanently incapacitated pension and those who are catastrophically injured.