Labor has called on the Morrison Government to reveal where it will deliver two Veteran Wellbeing Centres announced for South East Queensland and Tasmania in the May Budget.

In Budget Consideration in Detail debate in Parliament this week, the LNP Member for Herbert Phillip Thompson let the cat out of the bag and revealed that the Tasmanian veteran hub would be located in the marginal Liberal-held seat of Braddon.

The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs Darren Chester needs to come out and confirm this and where the South East Queensland Veteran Wellbeing Centre will be based.

Given the Minister issued a joint media release with the Minister for Defence Peter Dutton about the South East Queensland veteran hub, it looks like this will be located in Mr Dutton’s electorate of Dickson.

The Government should be building these centres in areas with high veteran and defence populations, not playing politics and putting them in Coalition or marginal electorates.  

It is worth remembering at the 2016 election, the then Liberal candidate for Blair announced an unfunded commitment for a veteran hub in Ipswich, but the Government never honoured this and the initiative was subsequently dropped from their 2019 election policy.

The Government can’t keep reneging on this promise and should use this latest funding in the Budget to establish a much-needed veteran hub in Ipswich.

Ipswich has a large defence and veteran community, and is home to RAAF Base Amberley, the biggest air force base in Australia.

Further, while the funding for two new Veteran Wellbeing Centres is welcome, there was nothing in the budget to fast-track the delivery of a number of centres promised at the 2019 election that are now well behind schedule.

When the Government pledged six Veteran Wellbeing Centres at the 2019 election, the intention was that all six centres would be up and running in 2020.

It’s now 2021 and only half of these centres have been completed – in Perth, Adelaide and Townsville.

The remaining three centres – in Nowra, Wodonga and Darwin – are still yet to find permanent sites and only expected to open in 2022, a full two years behind schedule.

This blowout is looking more and more like another broken election promise.  

It just goes to show this is a government that loves making announcements, but never delivers.