Portfolio — 25 March 2026

The Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Minister for Defence Personnel, Mr Keogh, used Question Time on 25 March to lay out the government's case for its $203 million investment in veterans' advocacy reform, anchoring the intervention directly in evidence of market failure [TA-260325-house-8e0b2c08f739:s169]. The centrepiece of his statement was data drawn from a recent Senate inquiry documenting that commercial veteran advocates have charged commissions as high as 29 per cent of statutory compensation payments and imposed contract break fees above $27,000 — figures the minister presented as the concrete harm driving the government's response [TA-260325-house-8e0b2c08f739:s169].

The practical instrument for redirecting veterans away from commercial operators is the Building Excellence in Support and Training Grants Program, whose funding the government has doubled and whose grant terms have been extended from one year to three, giving ex-service organisations the runway to employ and train their own free-to-use advocates [TA-260325-house-8e0b2c08f739:s169].

The minister placed this squarely within the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide framework, citing recommendation 99 as the mandate for ensuring veterans can access safe, high-quality free advocacy services [TA-260325-house-8e0b2c08f739:s169]. The policy signal is clear: the government is treating predatory commercial advocacy as a systemic integrity problem for DVA, not a fringe consumer issue, and is using grant longevity and funding scale to make the free-service pathway genuinely viable.