QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Mr RAE (Hawke—Minister for Aged Care and Seniors) (14:36): I thank the member for his question. We take our solemn obligation as a government to look after those who currently serve and those who have served our nation in our nation's uniform in our defence force and their families incredibly seriously. That's why we have been so committed to implementing the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide.

As part of trying to improve access to allied health care and remove the burden on veterans, we brought forward a package of measures to improve access to allied health, improving the fees paid to allied health practitioners so that they would provide better service to our veteran community where they were withdrawing service and also remove a cycle and replacing that with a threshold.

As part of that, we also committed and engaged with the ex-service organisations, with veterans and with families. I undertook that. The Department of Veterans' Affairs undertook that.

My colleagues here also engaged with their veterans community. We committed to listen, and we did. We heard, and we have responded.

As part of that, we are not proceeding with the threshold but we are also ensuring that we are increasing that access to allied health cover by maintaining that increase in fees so that allied health professionals will continue to service our veteran community, which is so vitally important here. In doing that, we've also taken a considered approach, engaging and listening and making sure that we can deliver on those royal commission recommendations.

That's what we have been able to secure in the Senate today with the passage of important legislation to implement and support 40 recommendations of the royal commission.