House of Representatives

Second Reading Speech

Authority: Mr GEE (Calare - Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Minister for Defence Personnel)

Mr TUDGE (Aston - Minister for Education and Youth)

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Mr GEE (Calare - Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Minister for Defence Personnel)

The Australian government's commitment to supporting our veterans is unceasing. Today I introduce legislation that will cut red tape and streamline assistance to veterans and improve their wellbeing.

The Australian government's reforms address recommendations made by Mr David Tune AO PSM in his Independent Review into the TPI Payment and the Productivity Commission's report A Better Way to Support Veterans.

The Australian government has listened to the needs of the veteran community and announced through the 2021-22 budget its intention to bring forward these important changes to 1 January 2022 - more than eight months earlier than first announced.

These reforms will simplify the administration of some payments for veterans and their dependants.

This will be done by exempting disability payments from income testing under the Social Security Act 1991, simplifying payment arrangements for 14,000 veterans and dependants.

The Australian government will also increase access to rent assistance for our most disabled veterans.

This will benefit approximately 6,900 veterans and their dependants.

Specifically, the first schedule will implement the government's commitment to exempt the adjusted disability pension - defined in the Veterans' Entitlements Act 1986 - from the income test under the Social Security Act.

This will remove the need for the Defence Force Income Support Allowance, known as DFISA.

Introduced in 2004, DFISA was paid as a top-up to ensure that veterans who received an age pension under the Social Security Actwere not financially disadvantaged.

Changes in this schedule will ensure that veterans will receive the same payment as before, but the administrative process will be much simpler.

While an administrative change, this will make DFISA redundant and this bill will remove all relevant references to DFISA from the Veterans' Entitlements Act.

The second schedule will remove the disability income rent test from the Veterans' Entitlements Act.

This will mean that disabled veterans will now have access to the same rent assistance as those who receive it from Centrelink.

It will increase rent assistance payable to veterans or enable some disabled veterans to receive rent assistance for the first time.

The disability income rent test results in severely disabled veterans receiving less rent assistance than those with a lower level of disability.

In particular, this measure will benefit totally and permanently incapacitated (TPI) veterans, who presently do not receive any rent assistance due to the amount of compensation they receive.

The third schedule will remove references to the term 'disability pension' in the Veterans' Entitlements Act.

In future, this payment will be referred to as the 'disability compensation payment'.

This change will clarify that these payments are compensation and will reduce the potential for the payment to be confused with Department of Social Services disability support pensions.

The measures contained in these first three schedules will commence on 1 January 2022.

The bill's fourth schedule relates to the simplification of pension indexation.

Currently the Extreme Disablement Adjustment, Intermediate Rate and Special Rate pensions - colloquially known as the TPI payment - are split into two components for indexation purposes.

Each is indexed separately.

The fourth schedule will remove this anomaly so that the whole amount is indexed as one.

This measure will commence on 20 September 2022.

This will simplify DVA's legislation, policy and procedures.

It will also help avoid confusion for veterans about the purpose and structure of the Extreme Disablement Adjustment, Intermediate and Special rates of disability pension.

The fifth schedule in the bill introduces a pilot program for earlier access to rehabilitation.

This non-liability rehabilitation pilot will enable individuals to commence DVA-funded rehabilitation before a liability decision has been made under the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004 or the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation (Defence-related Claims) Act 1988.

The government introduced this measure in the 2021-22 budget in response to recommendation 6.3 of the Productivity Commission's Report A better way to support veterans.

This report had noted that existing legislative requirements made it challenging to provide timely rehabilitation services.

Under these amendments, a two-year pilot will be established to bridge that gap to enable veterans to start their rehabilitation program sooner.

This measure aims to encourage and enable access to voluntary rehabilitation for 100 veterans for each of the two years of the pilot.

As the Australian Defence Veterans' Covenant states: 'For what they have done, this we will do.'

Australia owes a great debt of gratitude to all our veterans.

This bill provides new measures to better support their wellbeing and that of their families.

We want our veterans to know that Australia is proud of them and that our country will always be there for them.

I commend the bill to the House.

Debate adjourned.