From 1 July 2027 the Government caps DVA-funded allied health at $5,000 per veteran per year. It breaks the Veterans’ Covenant and contradicts the Royal Commission. Stop it.

 In the 2026 to 2027 Federal Budget, the Government announced a $5,000 annual cap on Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) funded allied health services for Veteran Card holders, scheduled to commence 1 July 2027. The cap bundles physiotherapy, psychology, occupational therapy, exercise physiology, podiatry and dietetics into a single $5,000 envelope. It applies to all Veteran Card holders, including Gold Card holders, war widows and dependants, under MRCA, DRCA and VEA. At current DVA fee schedules, $5,000 is exhausted by about 20 psychology sessions, or about 50 physiotherapy sessions. That is far short of what veterans with multiple accepted conditions actually need. The cap forces a choice no veteran should ever have to make: treat your back, or treat your PTSD. Treat your knees, or treat your trauma. There is no version of that decision that is medically defensible. It breaks the Australian Defence Veterans’ Covenant, enacted by the Parliament in 2019, in which the country promised to "welcome, embrace and support all military veterans as respected and valued members of our community." A dollar limit on healing the wounds the State asked us to bear is the opposite of that promise. It contradicts the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. The Commission’s Final Report, delivered on 9 September 2024, identified financial and administrative barriers to care as drivers of poor outcomes. The Government accepted, or accepted in principle, 104 of 122 recommendations. The Government cannot, in the same Budget, claim to be implementing the Royal Commission and impose a measure that operationalises the very rationing the Commission warned against. It is foreseeable harm. AIHW data shows the suicide rate for ex-serving Australian males remains about 50 per cent above the national male rate. 86 per cent of ex-serving members who died by suicide had used health services in the year before their death. Allied health is the connective tissue holding at-risk veterans in care. Sever it with a $5,000 cap and people fall out. People who fall out die at higher rates. That is not a Treasury saving. That is a clinical decision with a body count. We ask the Senate and the House of Representatives to: (a) reject the $5,000 cap; (b) at minimum, exempt Gold Card holders, and legislate a statutory clinical-need override with published criteria, mandated decision timeframes and merits review by the Veterans’ Review Board; (c) defer commencement until those protections are operational; and (d) refer the measure to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee for inquiry. Sign this petition. Share it. Email your federal MP. The Covenant was a national promise. We are asking the Parliament to keep it.