DVA counted the savings before it built the safeguard

Dear Editor,

This week Veterans Minister Matt Keogh was spinning veteran wellbeing to a Labor-friendly McKell Institute audience, with a few invited and compliant ex-service organisations representatives in the room.

Earlier this month at Senate Estimates, his own department had already shown veterans the harder reality.

The Department of Veterans’ Affairs announced a $5000 annual allied health cap, counted $748 million in gross savings, and left the safeguard for veterans who need care above that cap for consultation later.

That is the wrong order.

Veterans’ Affairs was not built as a normal insurance or medical claims office. It grew from the repatriation tradition and the obligation Australia carries when service damages a person’s body, mind, family life or earning capacity.

My simpler formulation is this: if you send them and bend them, you mend them.

Provider abuse and overbilling should be dealt with firmly. But a provider problem should not become another permission fight for veterans trying to keep treatment going.

Keogh is entitled to say the government is reforming a difficult system after the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide.

But veterans should not be asked to accept wellbeing language while DVA counts savings first and builds safeguards later.

I argue this more fully at markcroxford.net/read

Regards

Mark Croxford
20-year Navy veteran and former media and political adviser to a Minister for Veterans’ Affairs

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