Election 2022: Veterans need PM in charge to finally end compo backlog

A major ex-service organisation has called for the PM to take on the Veterans’ Affairs portfolio in a bid to remedy 60,000 claims.

Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Defence Personnel the Honourable Andrew Gee MP, at the high fire power demonstration, at the Shoalwater Bay Training Area in Queensland, during Exercise Talisman Sabre 2021. Picture: Defence

A major ex-service organisation has called for the Prime Minister to take on the Veterans’ Affairs portfolio in a bid to remedy the 60,000 backlog of veterans’ compensation claims.

The Australian Special Air Service Association says that, by sending soldiers to war, the nation’s highest office must accept the responsibility for them on their return.

It also said the move was imperative to ensure veterans of the two-decade conflict in Afghanistan didn’t suffer the same fate as veterans of the Vietnam conflict, who returned home feeling abandoned by the political class.

In late March, Veterans’ Affairs Minister Andrew Gee threatened to resign on the eve of the federal budget after his attempts to obtain $96m to clear the massive backlog only garnered a quarter of the funding required. The 60,000 unprocessed claims, Mr Gee said at the time, was a “national disgrace”.

In the first recommendation in the organisation’s submission to the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicides, ASASA argued the Veterans’ Affairs portfolio required the gravitas of the Prime Minister’s Office – either Labor or Liberal – to resolve the extensive waiting times for compensation claims.

“If a prime minister stamps their personal imprimatur behind care, funding and support for veterans including claims management, a signal of national determination is sent to all involved,” the submission said.

“Prime ministers must give as much personal attention to the aftermath of war and its human wreckage as they do to the heroic declarations of it, even when we lose the fight, if mistakes are made or if it becomes an unpopular war.”

The submission argued that the portfolio’s junior ministers under consecutive governments had struggled to obtain the requisite funding which had resulted in the “unacceptable backlog in veterans claims for personal injury”.

ASASA national chairman Martin Hamilton-Smith pointed to former prime minister Tony Abbott’s decision to take on the portfolio of Aboriginal Affairs during his tenure, saying most of the legwork could be done by an assistant minister, but the problems required “leadership at the highest level”.