Finally, a Coalition MP is saying what Labor has been saying for years now – that injured Australian veterans are waiting too long for their claims to be processed.
On the eve of an election, the Townsville-based LNP Member for Herbert, Phillip Thompson, has called out his own government for failing veterans and their families.
Mr Thompson now concedes that claims processing by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) is far too slow and the agency needs more staff to process a growing backlog of claims.
He agrees with Labor that there are too many poorly trained, high-turnover casual staff in DVA, and we need more well paid, highly trained permanent workers in the department to process claims quickly.
A so-called “budget boost” to help DVA speed up claims announced in this year’s Budget was just a two-year funding increase and short-term political fix designed to get the Morrison-Joyce Government through to the next election.
The reality is Mr Thompson and the Government have had years to fix these problems, and yet the treatment of veterans in Townsville and around the country has only gotten worse under their watch.
Thousands of veterans and their families are waiting 12-18 months to get assistance from the government they served. They are being let down by the very system that is supposed to be supporting them.
Veterans and their families will remember that Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Phillip Thompson had to be dragged kicking and screaming to support a Royal Commission into defence and veteran suicide.
Evidence given in hearings at the Royal Commission late last year showed that many veterans are suffering psychological harm as they wait to receive much-needed benefits.
The commission heard DVA has set itself a 100-day target to deliver benefits, however, this has more than doubled in recent years to 200 days and, in some instances, 14 months.
Meanwhile, the Government has failed to release a review of DVA’s claims processing undertaken by external consultants McKinsey, which was supposed to be delivered in December, while waiting times for claims have blown out even further in recent months.
Labor was always deeply sceptical of the review as it failed to look at the key driver of long claim processing times and backlogs, which is the impact of chronic staff shortages in DVA.
As the recent Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee inquiry into the public service found, the long delays with veteran claims are a direct result of the Government’s ideological cap on permanent public servants, which has forced DVA to rely on high levels of poorly trained labour hire contractors.
