The veterans Royal Commission found the long-standing compensation system contributing to suicide and poor mental health. Today, the system changed.
The veterans Royal Commission found the long-standing compensation system contributing to suicide and poor mental health. Today, the system changed.
By Shane Wright
February 13, 2025 — 2.38pm
Defence veterans will get faster access to improved welfare and health payments including assistance for funerals or travelling for treatment after the largest overhaul of their entitlements system in 40 years.
The federal parliament on Thursday passed the changes which flowed from a 2019 Productivity Commission inquiry and the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran suicides which found the long-standing and complicated entitlement system was hurting the mental health of veterans.
Former members of the defence forces and their families have had to contend with three separate, and at times conflicting, compensation laws for the past 20 years. The oldest piece of compensation law dates from 1986.
The first recommendation of the royal commission’s interim report, released in August 2022, was to simplify and harmonise compensation and rehabilitation laws because of the impact they were having on veterans.
It said the failure of the previous government to address the Productivity Commission’s report into the veterans compensation system amounted to a “dereliction of its duty to Australian veterans”.
“It is clear to us that Australia’s veteran compensation and rehabilitation legislative system is so complicated that it adversely affects the mental health of some veterans – both serving and former ADF members – and can be a contributing factor to suicidality,” it found.
The new compensation system will reduce by hundreds of pages the red tape faced by veterans and their families. It will also end the differences in value between similar types of compensation.
Under the current schemes, there were differences in allowances to cover the funeral costs of service personnel of up to $12,000. They will now be treated the same way.
Veterans also could receive different levels of reimbursement for the cost of car travel to access treatment for their conditions, with that now standardised.
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The assessment system for compensation will be streamlined with the introduction of a so-called “presumptive liability” which means claims for injuries and diseases commonly associated with military service will be automatically accepted unless proven otherwise.
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Veterans previously excluded from accessing a Gold Card for health services, from GPs to dental work, should be able to access the system because of the overhaul.
The changes are forecast to cost about $200 million in extra payments to veterans over the first two years of their operation. All changes will be in place by the middle of 2026.
Veterans Affairs Minister Matt Keogh said the overhaul of the system meant veterans would be better off.
“This is going to be simpler, it means it will be less complex for veterans and their families and it means they get their entitlement faster,” he said.
The overhaul of the compensation system is on top of another issue raised by the royal commission which was highly critical of the backlog in veterans claims.
The government has cleared a 60,000 backlog in veterans’ claims, after employing almost 1000 public servants within the Veterans Affairs Department, in a move that has increased the cost of compensation by at least $13.3 billion.
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Shane Wright – Shane is a senior economics correspondent for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via Twitter or email.
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