CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS

Ms FRANCE (Dickson) (10:37): Veterans and their families have made enormous sacrifices for our community, and, in return, we have a duty to ensure they are heard and supported to live good lives beyond service. My electorate of Dickson is home to over 5,500 veterans and sits right next door to Gallipoli Barracks in Enoggera. Over 2,000 active defence personnel live in my electorate, along with it being home to the sixth-largest population of veterans in Australia.

To recognise and ensure I am hearing from our veterans on a regular basis, I've established the Dickson defence and veterans advisory committee. The Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Matt Keogh, was present for the inaugural meeting of the Dickson defence and veterans advisory committee. During the winter break, I hosted the second committee meeting, where I was joined by veterans, RSL representatives and veteran support services to have an open discussion about the issues facing the veteran community in Dickson.

We spoke about the proposed changes to allied health, including significant increases to provider fees for physios, psychologists, podiatrists and occupational therapists, and the proposed allied health threshold. We spoke about the new Veteran and Family Wellbeing Agency and access to health care, including administration requirements for our local GPs. Hearing directly from veterans regularly and feeding their views back to the parliament and ministers are an important part of my job.

I take that feedback very seriously, and I hope our local veterans see my commitment and that of the Albanese Labor government to supporting those who served our country. That includes funding support for our local RSLs. Recently I had the great pleasure of delivering the good news to the Bray Park-Strathpine and Samford RSL sub-branches on their successful applications for funding via the Building Excellence in Support and Training Grants Program.

The Samford RSL is the recipient of $25,000 and the Bray Park-Strathpine RSL will receive $124,000 per year over three years. The work that our RSLs do in our community is invaluable, and I couldn't be happier that they are receiving the support they need to grow and serve our veterans. Thank you to our Dickson veterans who have taken the time to give me genuine feedback on how we can better support our community.

I am committed to being your voice in parliament.