Advocates, Paid
Opposes the creation of a second tier of paid advocates as recommended by the Dunt Report
Aged Care
Secure and manage the provision of aged care facilities for veterans, providing assistance for veterans in meeting the cost of retirement village type accommodation.
Alternative Medicines
Examine the role of alternative medicines and therapies in the treatment of conditions suffered by veterans
Accept alternative medicines and therapies for eligible veterans
Bereavement Payments
Provide unpartnered veterans with the same bereavement payment benefits and partnered veterans
Provide disability bereavement payment equal to six fortnightly payments to the estate of unpartnered veterans
Funeral Benefits
Increase the funeral benefit in line with MCRA funeral benefit
Discontinue offsetting of funeral and bereavement benefits in the calculation of funeral benefits
Provide the same funeral benefit for partnered and unpartnered veterans
Introduce a mechanism whereby funeral benefits keep pace with increases in the cost of living
Establish parity between VEA and MRCA funeral benefits for entitled veterans
Building Excellence in Support and Training (BEST)>
Acknowledge the value provided by services funded through the BEST funding
Maintain BEST funding levels to ensure that medium-term commitments entered into by ESOs are maintained
Acknowledge that BEST funding and Grants In Aid are incompatible and revert to separate arrangements
Provide adequate funding and resources to respite for veterans carers
Compensation, General
Amend the term "pension" to read "compensation" within the relevant Acts
Declare obesity to be a medical condition in the same manner as other conditions resulting in overweight are treated
Declare stress to be a condition that is manifested within other diagnosed conditions such as IHD, hypertension and psychiatric conditions.
Define a specific level of vision loss as a test for "blindness"
Enable veterans to flag existing conditions as unchanged and remove them from reassessment when submitting new claims
DFRB/DFRDB
Cease the use of outdated 1962 actuarial tables for DFRB/DFRDB.
Cease recovery of commutation once repayment is complete
Provide taxation relief through recognition of the 5% of salary contribution of military members to DFRB/DFRDB
Disability Payment Indexation
Index all disability payments, whether fortnightly or lump sum, at least twice yearly against the greater of Consumer Price Index (CPI) or Male Total Average Weekly Earnings (MTAWE)
Disabled Descendants
Implement an assessment procedure to reinstate provision of medical treatment
from DVA resources to those descendants of deceased veterans who would
otherwise have been supported by their parents.
Provide an income support supplement, similar to that paid to war widows, for qualifying descendants
Establish criteria based upon the "reasonable hypothesis" standard, for medical conditions or deformity claimed by the descendant to be a result of the service of the parent.
Where such a link from parent to descendant is proven, provide for the descendant in the same manner as if the descendant were a veteran
Education Support
Extend education support eligibility to veterans in receipt of the General and Intermediate Rate of pension
General Rate of Pension
Index the General Rate of Pension in the same way as the Special Rate and Extreme Disablement Adjustment
Gold Card
Enable the extension of the Gold Card to the spouse/partner of an entitled individual
Historians
Veterans, their advocates or pension officers to have the earliest possible access to historian’s reports in order to seek clarification or correction
Intergenerational Health Study
Supports the conduct of the study
Legal Aid
Veterans to have access to legal aid in every State, regardless of the type of case
Medals and Awards
Conduct reviews into Imperial and foreign awards for those who served in Vietnam
Introduce processes and procedures to overcome long delays in the issue of medal entitlements to Service and ex-Service personnel
Extend award criteria for the Australia Active Service Medal to include certain logistic support and evacuation operations
Mental Health
Improve and simplify mental health assessment, treatment and compensation regimes, including psychiatric condition acceptance criteria
Provide adequate funding to ensure that veterans have timely and adequate access to mental health professionals. programs and facilities, including specialist hospital treatment
Names on Databases and Rolls of Honour
Record the names of all deployed Australian Service men and women who are
KIA, DOW or DOI as a result of their service on the Roll of Honour in the
Australian War Memorial and all biographical databases held by the Armed
Services and government agencies
Nurses, Civilian
Support civilian nurses who served in Vietnam in obtaining compensation through the means outlined in
their contracts, except where they came under direct Australian military command
Pharmaceutical Co-payments
DVA concession card holders to be deemed to have reached the Pharmaceutical Benefits Safety Net
threshold at the commencement of each calendar year
Where a RPBS item is priced above the lowest priced brand or product in a therapeutic group of medicines
the concession card holder may seek reimbursement from DVA where:
(i) the illness or injury is an accepted disability; and
(ii) the treating physician affirms in writing that the higher priced item is the only appropriate item for that treatment
Qualifying Service
Retain the definitions and application of warlike and non-warlike service
Retain the eligibility rules as they apply to membership of the ADF or a civilian under direct command of
the ADF; being allotted for full-time duty within a defined area of operations and maintenance of the port to port provisions
Preserve the link between warlike and qualifying service for the purposes of entitlement to Service Pension
Allocate eligibility in an equitable and consistent manner
Ensure that ADF operations are added to the schedules in a timely manner
Introduce a category of Hazardous Service to attract the beneficial standard of proof
Opposes the granting of qualifying service to those warned for deployment but not deployed due to illness, disease, injury or cessation of conflict
Special Rate of Pension
Recommends automatic indexation twice-yearly to maintain parity
Statements of Principle and Standards of Proof
Australian government to acknowledge historical changes in the standard of proof and address the diminution of the beneficial standard of proof for veterans
Acknowledge RMA's decision-making outside the application of the VEA veteran standard of proof
Correct the narrow interpretation of wording within SoPs
Address the practical difficulties associated with an objective test for the existence of a stressor for psychiatric disorder SoPs
Address the failure to recognise the validity of a single or less than mainstream medical opinion or limited medico/scientific research
Correct the situation where the opinion of a selected group of doctors is used to establish a legal standard, turning medical opinion into law
Superannuation (Commonwealth Employees)
Supports the indexation of DFRB, DFRDB, CSS and PSS superannuation by the greater of CPI or MATAWE as articulated by DFW
Terminology
Endorses the terms Killed in Action (KIA), Wounded in Action (WIA) and Died of Wounds (DOW) as the only terms to be used in relation to
the death or wounding of deployed Australian Service men and women in action
Endorses the terms Died of Illness and Died of Injury (DOI) to be used in relation to the death of deployed Australian Service men and women not in action
Veterans and Veterans' Families Counselling Service (VVCA)
Remove time restrictions on access to counselling services to divorced/separated spouses/partners
Veterans Childrens Education Scheme (VCES)
Expand to include the children of veterans whose disabilities are assessed at not less than 70% and who are in receipt of Service Pension or part Disability pension from CENTRELINK
Veterans’ Entitlement Act
Conduct a full review of s120 (Standard of Proof), including the use of historian's reports
Veterans Review Board (VRB)
Opposes the appointment of Mental Health professionals to the VRB which is under consideration as a result of the Dunt Report on the basis that medical specialists advise the VRB but are not members
Vocational Rehabilitation
Create a two tier structure for vocational rehabilitation Implement the VVAA provisions for tier one veterans between the ages of 19 and 50
Extend the provisions of the over-50 tier two veterans to include training related to community work
Voluntary Work
Acknowledge the value of veterans doing voluntary work and ensure that voluntary work continues to be
excluded from consideration for the purposes of compensation payments
War Widow(ers)
Adjust the War Widow(ers) pension to 75% of the Special Rate while retaining current entitlements and
benefits regardless of the rate received by the partner prior to death
Continue eligibility to the Income Support Supplement, thus giving the war widow(er)s a minimum annual
income of $14,079 which, with the Income Support Supplement is raised to $17,329.00 per annum
Provide all war widow(er)s with entitlement to the DVA Concession Card, whether or not they are in
receipt of the Income Support Supplement
War Graves
Maintain the graves of those who died in Vietnam as official war graves, whether or not the funeral was conducted privately
