Albanese Labor’s price tag on the promise of mending veterans

Dear Editor,

Albanese Labor wants veterans to applaud higher allied health fees while ignoring the $748 million saving attached to the wider reforms.

The fees are welcome. The $5000 annual threshold is not.

DVA helped design the measure. Finance tested the savings. Senior ministers chose the trade-off and Cabinet approved it.

Anthony Albanese, Jim Chalmers and Matt Keogh therefore own the decision.

A saving of that size must come from somewhere. Either less treatment is funded, access becomes harder, or veterans and providers eventually give up.

If fraud is driving the cost, investigate the providers involved and recover the money.

Do not force every veteran who crosses an arbitrary figure into another approval process.

Former Veterans’ Affairs Minister Andrew Gee once threatened to resign when his department was denied the money needed to clear its claims backlog.

Matt Keogh should have fought just as hard before clinically necessary care became a Budget saving.

Repatriation is not charity.

I expand on this argument at markcroxford.net/read

Regards,

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

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