Courtesy of The Australian
13.06.2025
The shameful exploitation of a half-billion-dollar government scheme to compensate veterans is another reminder that good intentions are no guard against the extremes of human nature. Governments have a responsibility to properly care for veterans and have not always been up to the mark, as was exposed in the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide.
It is equally true that a pool of government money will always be a honey pot for the less scrupulous among us. It is therefore no surprise that a $477m scheme to cut waiting times for veterans who have made compensation claims has spawned a parasitic industry of dodgy advocates who are ripping off both veterans and the government. The activities were documented in a submission by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs to a Senate inquiry. The DVA said there had been an influx of dubious claims as well as how-to guides on social media designed to manipulate diagnoses and test results to maximise financial outcomes. Of most concern is the fact that commission rates as high as 29 per cent of statutory compensation payments are being charged to veterans. The number of claims has risen by 35.8 per cent, and the average complexity had increased from 2.6 conditions per claim to nearly five.
It is a familiar story of what happens when government sets up schemes to shovel public money out of the door. Other examples include the Rudd-era pink batts insulation scheme and Building the Education Revolution fiasco, where unscrupulous operators charged the government over the odds for projects that were initiated only because they were being built with other people’s money – the taxpayers. The best contemporary example is the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which, left unchecked, will eventually swallow the entire federal budget.
The bottom line is the government has a duty to veterans but it also has a duty to taxpayers to make sure their funds are being properly spent and not wasted on opportunistic operators who offer a new layer of exploitation for those most in need.
