Press conference — Coffs Harbour, New South Wales

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
PRESS CONFERENCE 
COFFS HARBOUR, NSW
29 JANUARY 2026

SUBJECTS: Coffs Coast Veterans Wellbeing Centre, veteran advocacy, veteran homelessness

MINISTER FOR VETERANS’ AFFAIRS AND DEFENCE PERSONNEL, MATT KEOGH: It’s wonderful to be here to open the Veteran Wellbeing Centre here on the Coffs Coast, which will be able to provide better coordinated support to our veterans and importantly, veteran families as well. We know we've got 11,000 veterans between Grafton and Taree. We've got something like 2,000 just in the Coffs immediate area, which is about 4,500 individuals between veterans and their families as well. So having coordinated care where they can come in, access different services directly, whether that's from RSL Advocates, Legacy or be referred to other service providers, is incredibly important in uplifting the way in which we can provide better service to our veterans.

JOURNALIST: This has taken a while to get here, to get to this point. Give us a timeline of sort of how it's come about.

KEOGH: Sure. So we created a funding program to create the sort of uplift that we've seen here, to improve the services available various run by various RSLs and other ex-service organisations around the country in 2023. We've seen that money roll out then over the last year or so to develop these facilities. And what's important about these facilities is it's been done in coordination with the community, in partnership with the veterans and other service providers. So getting that coordination right and developing the right facilities does take some time, but for anyone who drops in, they'll be able to see it's a warm, friendly environment, it is relaxing, it's not going to add to stress. It's going to de-stress. Veteran families know they'll be able to get access to support their veterans here as well.

JOURNALIST: Have we found things in previous ones that don't work that we need to tailor especially now this is a brand new one. We can start fresh?

KEOGH: Certainly having a purpose built facility to support veterans, which is a friendly, welcoming environment where they can relax, they can share their story with an advocate, share their story with someone who can connect them to the right services and support that is available in the region is incredibly important. We recognise you're never going to have absolutely everything all in one place, but being able to know that if you go there, they'll be able to connect you to the right service, or be able to link you. The facilities here with computers with the teleconferencing capabilities, means that if the service isn't immediately available in this region, those veterans and families can be connected to it as well. And that's one of the great things we're seeing with the partnership and cooperation across the veteran support ecosystem is that these centres then provide access to a whole wide variety of services in the broader region and beyond.

JOURNALIST: You just had a chat with a gentleman and a young woman from the young veterans they have concerns because of past experience and things like that. What did you say to them, and how do we address that?

KEOGH: Certainly, one of the things, one of the things we're really aware of is the need to continually uplift the service provided by advocates, to make sure that they're appropriately trained and they've got access to the right resources, and that's one of the things that we're working on at the moment, that we've just had a new Institute of Veteran Advocates established, which is a sector run initiative looking at how it can improve standards for veteran advocacy and also seeks to remove some of those more unscrupulous players that we've seen in other areas, where they might be inappropriately charging veterans to access advocacy services when we know that there are properly trained, registered advocates available for free to a veteran. So we're continuing to work on that to make sure that advocates are properly trained, that they're able to provide the right service to support our veterans, and that will involve a degree of additional regulation. We just had a parliamentary committee look into that, and we're looking at now implementing those recommendations.

JOURNALIST: Will you be having anyone have conversations with some of the veterans here in Coffs that might have concerns moving forward?

KEOGH: Certainly, I've had conversations with veterans about that here today and with veterans around the country about these sorts of concerns, and how can we best get about resolving those. I had some discussions in Brisbane just yesterday about those sorts of issues. We're going to be seeking feedback from the broader veteran community and advocates that are working in the space and others that support veterans to get their feedback as well, to make sure that we get the regulatory model right there too.

JOURNALIST: In terms of people slipping through the cracks. I mean, that was something that we were told just before. I mean, a woman ended up homeless and she was turned away, essentially. How do we stop that from happening?

KEOGH: Certainly, veterans slipping through the cracks has been a huge problem, and it's why setting up Wellbeing Centres and Hubs has been incredibly important, because veterans know they can go to that as a central resource and be referred to the appropriate services. But we also need to make sure that there are appropriate services. So we think about homelessness for veterans. We're looking at establishing a new homeless support service for veterans here now, because we've seen that as an actual gap across the mid north coast, and that's been a gap around Australia that we've been funding. We've put $30 million into veteran homelessness across the country to look at trying to resolve that issue. But we do understand that it is difficult for volunteer led organisations to try and close all of those gaps themselves, and that's something that the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide highlighted, and we hope to see the new wellbeing agency that we're establishing to support veterans and families, how to do more of that work and closing those gaps so veterans and families don't fall through gaps.

JOURNALIST: The sod turning that’s happening this afternoon, what’s happening over there?

KEOGH: What we're funding, is the development of a number of units to support veterans that are experiencing or at risk of homelessness. We know that veterans can experience a higher degree of homelessness in some instances across the general community, but we also know that when they get access to homeless services, we can then provide supports through DVA and through centres like the wellbeing centre here to get them back on their feet, and so making sure that we've got accommodation for veterans that are experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness, we see lots of veterans that are couch surfing, not necessarily accessing the services there to support them, means that if we can get them into that housing, it makes a huge difference for them. Thank you so much.

ENDS

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.