Podcast interview - The Issue, 7News Australia

SUBJECTS: Veteran entitlement system reform, Defence and Family Wellbeing Agency, Defence and Veteran Royal Commission, 2026 budget, next election

MATT KEOGH, MINISTER FOR VETERANS’ AFFAIRS AND DEFENCE PERSONNEL:  We’re not lifting people up and shifting them into a new regime.

TIM LESTER, HOST: He claims before he took the job, funding for Australia’s half million military veterans was a disgrace. Now, Minister Matt Keogh’s answer. A giant overhaul of veterans’ affairs is just days from kicking in. The issue? Are we finally about to get a system that does our veterans justice?

Phillip Thompson, Liberal Spokesperson for Defence Industry (file): Matt Keogh’s a liar.

LESTER: Or are the Minister’s critics right when they say he’s making a mess of it? Hello, welcome to The Issue. I’m Tim Lester. Almost exactly 500,000 living Australians have served in our military. Eighty-five thousand more are currently serving. A spotlight is about to hit the department devoted to supporting the wellbeing of veterans, as it tackles its most far-reaching reform in generations. Add to the July 1 changes, the government’s response to the Veteran Suicide Royal Commission. There is plenty to discuss with Minister Matt Keogh, so today he is tackling The Issue. Matt Keogh, thank you for speaking with The Issue. You're a lawyer, corporate lawyer, I gather, from Perth, who came to parliament in a stormy time. Tell us about the by-election that saw you come to Canberra.

KEOGH: Well, certainly the last week of the by-election was a stormy time for the Liberal government, Tim. You might recall that we started the week going into the last week of the by-election between myself and Andrew Hastie with Tony Abbott as the Prime Minister, and within a few days Malcolm Turnbull was the Prime Minister just before the by-election. And I'm sure many column inches have been written on trying to analyse how that impacted on the by-election, and how the by-election impacted on the internal mechanisms of the Liberal government at that time. But less than a year later we had the general election, a new electorate of Burt had been created, the area I grew up in, and which had been carved out of Canning, which I fought the by-election, and I was very pleased to be elected as the first ever member for Burt in 2016.

LESTER: What was it like coming to Parliament in a storm like that, or didn't it affect you that much?

KEOGH: Look, I think by the time we got to the 2016 election, you'll recall it was almost a hung parliament. Labor did very well in that 2016 election, and coming off the tumult that had been the Abbott years, and then changing to Turnbull. And we had a large number of new MPs on the Labor side coming into Parliament, so obviously, for those of us who are new, we were quite excited about that. A little disappointed that we didn't win the election, but you know, we made great gains at that point, and the by-election was almost a distant memory.

LESTER: Matt, the biggest shakeup of veterans compensation and assistance in decades certainly takes effect in days under your stewardship. How are you feeling about it?

KEOGH: Well, maybe that's an example of where bringing a lawyerly brain may have been able to assist. People have been talking about trying to harmonise and simplify the three very different, complex legislative schemes that provide support and entitlements to our veteran community. Having these three different schemes, the Royal Commission itself said, was something that contributed to suicidality in the veteran community. And so I could see it was really important that we applied full effort into. Trying to have a better system that was simpler and easier for people to understand what they were entitled to, and how they could access it. But also easier for the department to administer, so it could do its job faster, so our veterans and veteran families could get access to the support they need more quickly. So as we get to within a few days now of that new regime kicking in from the first of July, I'm very aware that whenever you make a change, there's probably teething problems that come with that, and we'll need to work through those as they unfold. But importantly, what it means is that going forward, we're going to have a better system, a modern system to support our veterans and their families.

LESTER: Well you understand the possibility of teething problems, what are the ones that worry you? What in this transition do you think? Oh, gee, I hope that holds?

KEOGH: Well, I think one of the things people always worry about is the IT systems frankly, Tim. I always worry about that. And you know, I used to work in the call centre for iiNet. So I'm pretty familiar with that, though, you know when you bring in a big change, how that can affect, but I think importantly, also because we're moving, we made sure that we gave people enough time to understand what these changes meant. And there may have been reasons that particular veterans decided that they wanted to stay under the existing regime that they were under with a new claim instead of waiting for the new system. So we've seen that reflected in an uptick of claims in the lead up to the 30th of June under the existing regimes. And we're anticipating there will be some veterans that have held off making a claim because they want to bring it in under the new system. And so that sort of rush of caseload coming into the department of claims is the thing you know we're aware of, that we're looking, we've been preparing for it, but one of the things that we're anticipating will occur.

LESTER: Right, and Matt, you say no veteran will see a reduction in their payments as a result of the change. How are you going to know that six months on? What's going to tell you or raise an alarm if that's happening?

KEOGH: So one of the important design features of what we've done here is that we're not lifting people up and shifting them into a new regime. People keep the entitlements they already have. If they've already brought in a claim, they're already getting compensation payment, they're already received something, they continue to receive that as is. So none of that goes backwards, they keep that. The way the regime works is that for any new claim that comes that a veteran brings forward, that will be dealt with under the new system. And in most cases that's actually better for the veteran, because the new claims are being dealt with under a 21st century system. There's some greater supports there under that system for a lot of veterans. So, to give you an example, one of the things that has been a long running campaign has been our Nashos, those people that went to, were conscripted during the Vietnam War, but didn't necessarily go and fight in the Vietnam War. And because they weren't involved in the war itself, they were covered by a particular part of the veterans' entitlement system, which meant they had no possibility of ever having access to a Veterans Gold Card. Under the new system that they will be falling into if they have a new claim that from an injury that they've, that they've received as a result of their national service, when they were conscripted, when they were doing training, or where an existing condition has been exacerbated in a material way, they'll be able to bring that claim under the new system. And if they've reached the invalidity threshold, or the points threshold to get a Gold Card, they'll be able to get a Gold Card for the first time, and so that's an example of where this system actually works more beneficially for a particular cohort of veterans that meet that threshold, which was closed off to them before.

LESTER: The Department of Veterans Affairs famously had a backlog of 42,000 claims. Now, Labor proudly, from its own point of view, cleared the backlog. But it now has 100,000 claims on hand. Explain to me how that's not a whole new backlog that's worse than the original one that you dealt with?

KEOGH: So the 42,000 backlog of claims that we inherited were claims that were sitting in the department that no one had even looked at. Now we have a system where, when a claim is made to the Department of Veterans Affairs, firstly, within 14 days, somebody looks at that claim and says, "Is all the information that we need to make a decision here?” So instead of it sitting around for months and months and months, even a year, and then realising, oh, it's missing a report, and sending the veteran back a year later to then go get another report, someone's looking at that within 14 days, they're doing an assessment of the claim. Seeing if there's any information missing or that's still needed, going straight back to the veteran or their advocate and saying, can you please get this additional information, so that we're getting decision-ready claims much more quickly. And that also means when the relevant decision maker within DVA gets that claim, they can make the decision much faster. Now, in terms of the 100,000 odd claims that we have on hand at the moment, the vast majority of them are allocated to someone now to be making a decision. And what we're seeing is a claim comes in  - this year, for example, a claim would come in, it would be looked at by someone within 14 days, and the time then taken to make that decision on initial liability, that is, is this condition that the veteran has connected to their defence service, and should we be paying for their health care and support, is made within a matter of months. So there's a lot of claims sitting there on hand, but we're actually moving through them a lot more quickly than we were able to before. And that's because we've put efficiencies into the system, but it's also because we've brought on a lot more staff into the Department of Veterans Affairs just to get through that work. And what we've seen by doing that, people have seen that that's working. It's also meaning we're actually getting much more claims being made to the department as well.

LESTER: Matt, you announced in the budget what looks like a substantial increase in the allied health fees area. Big money. But at the same time you bring in a cap of $5,000 for each claimant, which looks like, and in fact I think is an attempt to save money. If you're saving money with that cap, you're taking it from somebody, right? Who's paying it?

KEOGH: So what we've got at the moment is a system where for access to allied health a veteran needs to go to a GP to be referred to that allied health professional, and then after the 12 sessions with that allied health professional, which could only be in a matter of weeks, depending on how frequently they use that particular allied health service, they have to go back to the GP, get another referral, as you would imagine, that takes up a lot of GP time. It's very frustrating for the veteran. But what we've also seen is that through that system there are a number of veterans that are continuing to receive a service through an allied health service provider that's not actually providing the benefit we would expect it to be providing for that veteran. Or there are also some instances where allied health providers are basically keeping the veteran on the hook, because it's someone that they can keep billing DVA for that service, but the veteran doesn't actually need to be provided with that service. So we're moving, we're getting rid of that treatment cycle of having to go back to the GP, which is not working for GPs, it's not working for veterans, and we're replacing that with a $5,000 allocation of allied health care. So it means a veteran knows they can go and access at least up to $5,000 worth of allied health services, but what we actually see on the ground, just to be clear, is that the sort of median level of use of allied health services by a veteran is about $1,900 a year. And we will have in place a system to ensure that if a veteran is approaching that $5,000 allocation, that if they've got a genuine clinical need that they need to go over that, then we will approve them to be able to do that. But it also means we can assess some things that we're seeing in the system where maybe a different treatment is actually what's required, so that they can get a better overall wellbeing outcome. It means that we can make sure that we're applying the right lens over that service and support that's being provided to that veteran to get the outcome they actually really need. So this is about trying to make sure that veterans get a better overall outcome. And the other part of that, as you mentioned, is the nearly $170 million investment we're making in an uplift in the fees that DVA pays to allied health providers. So, the Royal Commission recognised this, that the fees DVA pays to a whole range of health service providers are quite low. And the feedback we've had from veterans is that sometimes they find it difficult to find an allied health service provider that will service them because of the rate that DVA pays them. And so we're making the biggest increase in two decades to allied health service fees to make sure that we've got more allied health providers available to support our veteran community.

LESTER: But that ceiling for veterans using allied health services, $5,000, has riled one veteran to confront Matt Keogh directly and very much in public.

THOMPSON (file): These are lies you are peddling.

LESTER: MP Phil Thompson, who survived an IED attack while serving in Afghanistan, takes up the issue in Parliament with such passion, it gets him booted.

MILTON DICK, SPEAKER (file): The member shall remove himself from the services of the house for 24 hours.

LESTER: He then spoke with The Issue about the allied health changes.

THOMPSON (file): It spits in the face of every soldier, sailor and aviator in the country.

LESTER: Matt, you would be aware that the North Queensland MP, Phil Thompson, on our podcast called you a liar with regard to this. He's called you it elsewhere as well. Can I get you to reflect on his concerns for a moment? I don't think you'll think you're a liar, but do you take anything from Phil Thompson and his criticism, particularly on this issue?

KEOGH: Well, the first thing I want to say about Phil, and I've known Phil quite a while, and I get on with him pretty well, and you know he served in the Australian Army, and he is a great advocate for his veteran community up there in Townsville, but also more broadly. And I really respect his service and what he does now, advocating on behalf of veterans in the Australian Parliament. I am a bit concerned about the way in which Phil has approached some of this debate. Absolutely, I understand people may have different views about how we make certain policy changes that affect our veteran community, and I'm happy to have those discussions in the Parliament, in interviews like this with people across the country. And we did that when we were doing the legislative reform previously. But I think people do need to be careful that they don't create unnecessary fear in the community about a change that we are making when we're also being very clear …

LESTER: Has he done that?

KEOGH:  I think some of the language that Phil has used has created a degree of fear about a change without being clear that we're also going to provide a pathway for people with a genuine need who need more services to make sure that they're able to get those services that they need. We're not here making these changes to take away from people supports that they need. We are here making a change, so that when people need to access allied health services, it's actually more available to them by making these fee increases. But also making sure the system works properly, so that instead of some over servicing that we've seen from some service providers that we're actually getting the right sort of service and support that a veteran needs, so that they get the best overall outcome for themselves. That's what we're trying to do here. So I understand that Phil takes some umbrage with the way in which we've gone about this. But as I said, we're going to work with the sector to make sure that it works as seamlessly as possible. But the key thing here is that we do need to find a way to increase those fees that we're paying to those allied health providers, so that we make sure they keep continuing to do that work, supporting our veterans. But we also need to make sure when we run this system that we don't have people taking advantage of it. Because we've been able to free up the system, make sure it's processing claims faster, we've got more people coming into it, it has been attracting some services that are seeking to take advantage of veterans and take advantage of the veteran support system for themselves. And we've got to make sure we've got the right systems in place to put a brake on that, but also making sure veterans can come through and get access to the services they need. That's what we're going to be developing over the next few months as we roll this out in from one July 2027. So there's plenty of time for people to be engaged in that process to develop those new systems, as well as to make sure people are very comfortable with how they work well in advance of them kicking in.

LESTER: It’s been almost two years since the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide handed down its final report. The inquiry, brought on in response to 1,600 known cases of Defence Force personnel and veteran suicides in Australia between 1997 and 2020. Matt Keogh is the Minister overseeing the Albanese Government’s response to the Royal Commission findings.

Is there any greater test of your job as Veterans Affairs Minister than delivering solutions on the problems identified by the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide?

KEOGH: Certainly, the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide delivered some very considerably difficult, complex, but very necessary recommendations in its interim and in its final report. When we were in opposition, we were calling on the then government to hold this Royal Commission. We could see the national tragedy that is the rate of suicide that we were seeing across our Defence and veteran community. And so implementing these recommendations is incredibly important, and you know we have really taken about that really seriously. And you see that in the reforms to the legislation that will come into place from the first of July this year. You see this in the way in which we moved very quickly to implement what the Royal Commission itself said it was its most important recommendation that was setting up a legislated oversight body looking at making sure that government is implementing those recommendations from the Royal Commission. And we had that legislated by February of 2025 the Royal Commission's report only came out in September of 2024. We legislated it in February 2025 It was up and running by September, which was when the Royal Commission said it had to be up and running by. And not only have we done that, but we've also been moving forward on the other recommendations that were there. So we had 32 of those recommendations complete by the end of last year. We're on track to have two thirds of the recommendations implemented by the end of this year. And that includes things like the establishment of a new wellbeing agency, a Veterans and Families Wellbeing Agency that will look at those broader wellbeing outcomes that the Royal Commission spoke about. That it's not just about your classical sort of processing a claim and providing healthcare. We've got to look at broader supports for the veteran community. That's what this agency will be doing, and that will stand up in the middle of the year. We've also started work on the sexual violence prevalence review that the Australian Human Rights Commission is doing. And later this year we will start the recommended Military Sexual Violence Inquiry. So there's a range of things that we are moving quickly on to get implemented, because we recognise the seriousness of getting these recommendations that the Royal Commission gave us implemented.

LESTER: Matt, 86% of ADF members who committed suicide had, we believe, consulted health services tried to get health service help in the last 12 months of their life. What's that tell us about just how difficult an issue this is? And what do you do to fix that? How do you, how do you help if medical help is failing?

KEOGH: So, within that statistic, which is a really important one, it's not necessarily that the veteran was seeking help around that issue. But what it also means is that they were seeking help for something. And so there is work that we need to do in uplifting the skill and capability of our medical professionals across the board. Because veterans don't just access veteran specialist health services. They show up at emergency departments, they go to see their local GP. They may access services like Lifeline, which obviously are targeted at trying to reduce instances of suicide. But at the same time they may be accessing some other health service. And so it's important that we do provide that uplift, that capability growth across our medical services, so that where there might be a red flag that they, that those services are able to either offer the right support or refer a veteran to the support that they need to get.

LESTER: The Commission found 800 reports of sexual assault in a period of five years, and reckons that 60 percent under-reporting means that the real number is far, far higher. Now you're a lawyer. At what point does this not simply be a failure of culture, but a failure of criminal justice?

KEOGH: Certainly, I think there's failures. I've been really upfront about that. And I'm really disappointed whenever I hear these stories, meet with victim survivors about what they've had to confront, what they've had to deal with. It's shocking, and it shouldn't be happening. And I've been trying to be very clear about how what our expectations as a government, and I think as a community, are around this behaviour that should not be occurring should not be occurring at all, but definitely should not be occurring in our Defence Force, and that is why we have made policy changes to be very clear that if someone is convicted of offenses like this that will result in an automatic termination from the Defence Force. We have got laws going through Parliament that will make that part of the Defence Act, to be very clear about that expectation. We've also now started, which was a recommendation of the Royal Commission, reporting convictions that happened through the military discipline system, that are the equivalent of a criminal conviction, to make sure that they show up on someone's criminal record, so that they're not being if you like potentially hidden by the fact that they're dealt with through military justice as opposed to through the normal criminal justice system. And we're continuing to work on improving how our military justice system interfaces with and supports victim survivors using the civilian criminal justice system, which is usually set up much better to support victim survivors and to deal with these sorts of cases, to make sure that they're appropriately dealt with from a criminal point of view as well.

LESTER: So, can you confidently say today that that is better today than it was when the Royal Commission brought it to light

KEOGH: I think it's better. But I still think we've got more work to do, and that's what we're working on in the implementation of the recommendations. But also that's why the Royal Commission itself said we needed to have a further inquiry specifically into military sexual violence and that's what we will be starting in the second half of this year. And the recommendations that come out of that inquiry will specifically go to how do we make this system and our Defence Force work better in that regard.

LESTER: And in the same vein, on the question of veteran suicide, can you say today that the suicide rate is lower than when the Royal Commission was investigating and reporting on this? Is it better? Is it getting better?

KEOGH: At one level I can certainly point to statistics that seem to indicate that we're seeing a lower level. I wouldn't say … no level is good. But I'm also conscious, and the Royal Commission was clear about this as well, that the way in which we gather these statistics and report these statistics does mean that there's a degree of ambiguity, which would suggest that there's a higher rate of suicide than we necessarily identify in all of the statistics at the moment. So one of the things that we just funded in the budget, for example, is a National Veteran Data Asset. And part of that is going to centralising and better capturing information around veteran suicide, so we have an even better picture of it. Part of that's also a degree of coordination that we're supporting across coroners around the country, which obviously are part of State Governments. But coroners are keen to engage on making sure we have a better coordinated approach to how we handle the statistical information as well. So at some degree, we are seeing a decline. But I have to say, Tim, I'm very nervous about saying that, that means their success, because you know it's only one other year, then something might go wrong the other way. And frankly, you know, no level is ever acceptable. And we've clearly got much more work to do, and we'll keep doing that through implementing those recommendations from the Royal Commission.

LESTER: Matt Keogh’s appearance on The Issue comes at a stormy time for the Albanese Government. After our chat on his portfolio, we got down to the Minister’s thoughts on a few of those storm clouds.

What you make of the rise of One Nation?

KEOGH: I think there's a lot of frustration in the community about things that are not working, not working for them. Whether that's cost of living, and we're certainly seeing how that's been impacted by things like conflict in Iran and affecting price of fuel. But also the way in which the housing market's been not working for people for a very long time. And I know this from, you know, door knocking my own community. There are parts of the community where people are very concerned about their inability to get into housing themselves. There's parts of the community who, you know, in comfortably in housing, but are very concerned about their kids' capacity to be able to access housing or to be able to buy their own home. And you know, what we are doing right now in trying to level that playing field through the changes that were announced in the budget a few weeks ago, is to ensure that we're addressing those very real concerns that people have. And when people are as frustrated as they are, understandably, by those things, it means you've got to make some significant change. And that's what we are doing in making what some will see as difficult decisions in levelling that playing field, dealing with cost of living pressure, making the settings around our housing system, whether that's around creating more supply or dealing with demand from investors, say, over those who are just trying to get into their first home of their own work better for people.

LESTER: So Matt, who do you expect to be the leading opposition party when you next go to an election?

KEOGH: Well, Tim, I'm watching the polls, but I'm also very clear that the next election is still some time away as well. But most importantly, we're in government. And I think what the Australian people expect, certainly what my electorate expects, and I think what the veterans of Australia would expect, is that we're focused on delivering for them. We're not worried about who's going to win what seats at what time two years out from an election. They want to see us making positive change, making the system work better, whether that's the veterans' entitlement and support system, whether that's the way the housing market works in Australia, or whether that's about making medical care and education and early childhood care, and so many other areas more affordable to try and help with the cost of living pressures that they're experiencing. That's what I think people want to see, that we as a government, me as a Minister, are focused on, and that's what I'm really putting my priority on.

LESTER: Matt, the budget. You've been a real part of the budget, you're spending a bit of the money inside it. The budget's taken paint off Labor, though, hasn't it? Off the Albanese Government?

KEOGH: I think what we're seeing broadly is actually that people are having to deal with the fact that costs of things have gone up, the cost of petrol obviously went up considerably. We've tried to ameliorate that somewhat with the halving of the fuel excise for a period of time. But really, what we're seeing is a reflection on what people are having to deal with and grapple with in their everyday lives.

LESTER: You enjoying the job?

KEOGH: I love the job. It is one where I get to deal with a diverse range of people every day. And when I look at not just the veteran community, but also our serving personnel, who I'm also responsible for, they are, you couldn't meet a group of people who are more committed to our nation and to seeing it succeed and to standing up and putting their lives on the line for it. We also should recognise that our veteran community is dynamic. That they go on to have great and successful careers after their time in Defence and we as a nation are very grateful for their service and what they go on to do afterwards as well.

LESTER: Matt Keogh, thank you for speaking with The Issue

KEOGH: Tim, it's been great to be with you. Thanks for having me.

Open Arms – Veterans & Families Counselling provides 24/7 free confidential crisis support for current and ex-serving ADF personnel and their families on 1800 011 046 or the Open Arms website. Safe Zone Support provides anonymous counselling on 1800 142 072. Defence All-Hours Support Line provides support for ADF personnel on 1800 628 036 or the Defence Health Portal. Defence Member and Family Helpline provides support for Defence families on 1800 624 608