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Labor has broken our sacred promise to vets

21 May 2026

For a paltry few thousand dollars, Labor’s broken promises Budget could have at least provided the father of fallen Victoria Cross hero Cameron Baird with travel money to enable him to visit RSLs, schools and talk to Veterans about his brave son.

Right now, Australia needs heroes.

In a volatile world, in a nation badly divided … we need to hear stories about those who have kept us safe, those khaki warriors who upheld the ANZAC values of courage, loyalty and mateship.

Corporal Cameron Baird’s story provides that necessary inspiration in troubled times.

Doug Baird is a straight talker who knows his brave boy’s tale – about Cameron’s most conspicuous acts of valour, extreme devotion to duty and ultimate self-sacrifice at a village in Uruzgan province in Afghanistan in 2013 – better than anyone. He tells it with passion, detail and devotion.

The fact the Federal Government refused to pay for Doug and his wife Kaye to go around the country, even to present the award to the Most Outstanding Soldier in each Platoon at the completion of Australian Army Basic Recruit Training, which takes place at the 1st Recruit Training Battalion – the Home of the Australian Soldier – Blamey Barracks at Kapooka, Wagga Wagga (an award Cameron himself won), is almost akin to treason.

Thankfully, stockbroker and philanthropist Angus Aitken has come to the rescue and will meet Doug and Kaye Baird’s future travel expenses. But it should not have come to this.

Then there is the $3 million the Government has stripped from the Invictus Games – something which gave wounded Veterans a sense of community, camaraderie and hope back home.

What a mean-spirited, cruel lot this Labor Government has shown itself to be.

Yet the Government managed to find $50.4 million to continue a witch-hunt against Afghanistan Veterans for things which may or may not have happened in a war zone into which this nation sent our men to fight.

Disgraceful.

There is a contract between this nation and the men and women who serve it. They give years of their lives in defence of Australia, and in return, we are supposed to look after them. In last week’s Budget, the Albanese Labor Government quietly broke that promise.

Buried beneath the headline Budget reforms to capital gains tax and negative gearing was a measure that will affect some of the most vulnerable Veterans in this country. From July 2027, Veterans’ access to allied health services through the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) will be capped at $5,000 a year. Allied health services include physiotherapy, psychology, occupational therapy, podiatry and exercise physiology. These independent services that treat several conditions will now fall under one cap. The measure will strip $748 million from Veterans’ healthcare over three years, and $340 million every year after that.

Let me put that in plain terms. A Veteran might currently receive physio once a week on an old injury, a monthly exercise physiology session, an occasional visit to the chiropractor for a bad back, and a pair of orthotics every couple of years. Under Labor’s new cap, they will have to choose.

I have heard from Veterans across my electorate and right around Australia this week who are trying to figure out how they will make this work. One Veteran wrote that $5,000 wouldn’t even cover his orthotics, new glasses, and regular physio for a single year, let alone the treatments that keep him mobile and stop him from self-medicating.

These people are not whingers. These are people who asked little of their country. In return they placed their bodies and lives on the line to defend it. Now, when they need us, Labor is telling them to manage on a budget.

What makes this worse is the Government is simultaneously patting itself on the back for implementing the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide recommendations. It has allocated $311.9 million over four years for that work. But with one hand it is funding mental health recommendations, and with the other capping the psychology sessions that keep Veterans alive. You cannot claim to take Veteran mental health seriously while restricting access to psychologists.

In net terms, this Budget reduces spending on Veterans by $293.5 million. DVA is also losing 111 staff. The Nationals and Liberals won’t let this pass without a fight. We will be demanding full transparency on how the annual cap will operate, what the extension criteria are, and whether mental health services will be quarantined from it entirely. We will be consulting with the RSL, with Veteran advocacy groups, and with the Veterans themselves. Something the Government appears not to have done before Budget night.

Australia’s Veterans served unconditionally. The least we can do is honour the obligation we made to them in return.

This Budget fails that test, and the Albanese Government should be ashamed.

  • Opinion piece first appeared in The Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun

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