Portfolio — 13 May 2026

Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Defence Personnel Matt Keogh used 13 May to advance two distinct but thematically linked items — a landmark military discipline bill and a veterans' health funding announcement — both framed as delivering on Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide recommendations.

In the House, Keogh moved the second reading of the Defence Force Discipline Amendment (RCDVS Implementation and Related Measures No. 1) Bill 2026, describing it as one of the most significant reforms to Australia's military discipline framework in decades [TA-260513-house-ee1b85aea947:s132]. The bill's scope is broad. It gives military police a standing power to carry, handle and use equipment including body-worn cameras and tasers, removing the previous patchwork of state and territory agreements that governed such use [TA-260513-house-ee1b85aea947:s132].

Taser use is limited to self-defence situations where no reasonable alternative is available, and body-worn cameras must record any deployment. The bill also establishes a Defence mental health tribunal with authority to order treatment, care or detention for persons unfit to plead or acquitted due to mental impairment [TA-260513-house-ee1b85aea947:s132] — a measure with cross-portfolio implications touching both the Defence Personnel and Health domains, as flagged in the Stage 1 observations.

A further provision allows the extinguishment of historical homosexual service conviction records for conduct that would not constitute an offence under current law, enabling affected Defence personnel to have those convictions removed from their records.

During Question Time, Keogh announced an annual monetary cap on allied health services for veterans, pitched as sitting well above the usage level of most veterans [TA-260513-house-ee1b85aea947:s176]. He said the cap targets overservicing by a subset of practitioners and is designed to restore integrity to the system. That measure runs alongside a $169 million increase in fees paid to allied health professionals announced in the budget, which Keogh said makes accessing care easier for veterans [TA-260513-house-ee1b85aea947:s176].

The paired approach — lifting fee rates while capping aggregate service volume — is the portfolio's stated mechanism for improving access and curbing fraud simultaneously [TA-260513-house-ee1b85aea947:s176].

The connecting thread across both activities is explicit: Keogh anchored the discipline bill and the health funding settings alike to the Royal Commission's recommendations, consistent with the portfolio's stated implementation focus following the 12 May budget. The discipline bill addresses the justice and accountability architecture the Royal Commission scrutinised; the allied health measures respond to the Commission's findings on veteran welfare and service access.

Policy staff should note that the mental health tribunal provision and the historical conviction expungement each touch adjacent portfolio domains — Health and Attorney-General respectively — though the records attribute both solely to the Defence Personnel portfolio.