Veterans Affairs committee  No.

Veterans Affairs committee  Essentially we have about 52,000 veterans with an accepted disability in the area of mental health, but because of our arrangements, people can access treatment for conditions that are war-caused or not, particularly those people who have a gold health care card. Through our databases, we can identify people who have received, for instance, medication for a mental health condition or have attended a psychologist or psychiatrist.

Veterans Affairs committee  The significant majority are World War II veterans. I can't give you a percentage, but outside of that, in terms of veterans themselves, the 423,000 include dependants and war widows and the like. So overall, I think it would be somewhere around the 200,000 mark, but I could get you a more definitive number on World War II veterans.

Veterans Affairs committee  Because I'm not from the defence force, I can't really answer that question in any level of detail, but the defence force certainly has a mental health strategy in place. Obviously a part of that is treatment and a part of it is prevention, but I really don't have the details on exactly what they're doing.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, that's right. They're primarily psychologists and counsellors and social workers, I believe, rather than psychiatrists, but they would access psychiatrists through various means as well. So they would have access to psychiatrists when they needed them.

Veterans Affairs committee  Part of it is that in the assessments under the veterans home care, the decision isn't necessarily yes or no. It is partly about changing needs. Someone can be assessed now; then, for instance, because their partner might have died or whatever, they might need a reassessment because their needs will have changed.

Veterans Affairs committee  No. One of the commitments of the government in the election was to establish a prime ministerial committee on veterans and ex-service matters. That won't be made up of parliamentarians, but it will be a committee reporting to the prime minister on veterans issues.

Veterans Affairs committee  It's primarily through private arrangements, but many of those people own private practices as well, so they can seek care from those people as well.

Veterans Affairs committee  No. We have those two main centres and a centre for military and veterans health in Queensland. The Department of Veterans' Affairs provides a million dollars a year to provide running costs, and since they are an academic organization, that will be for working in particular areas.

Veterans Affairs committee  The only other thing I'd say is that obviously the department puts a lot of money into making sure the site is ready for those people who attend, so we fund those aspects of it.

Veterans Affairs committee  In our hospital program within Australia we have public hospitals operated by the state governments and private hospitals run by private organizations. We have contracts in place with the state health departments that provide the equivalent of private hospital care to veterans. It will be things like a room by themselves whenever possible, the choice of a specialist, and those sorts of things.

Veterans Affairs committee  Certainly, I'm not aware of any specific requests for information on names and addresses. I'm not actually sure how we would stand from a privacy perspective in that regard. We certainly do produce reports by electorate, which give out the details of the numbers of veterans and a range of information, but we take care in providing that.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm not sure which are the most popular, but the four key types of services are: domestic assistance, which provides help with tasks such as household cleaning, dishwashing, clothes washing, ironing, shopping, and bill paying; personal care, which provides assistance with daily self-care tasks, such as eating, bathing, toileting, dressing, grooming, getting in and out of bed, and moving about the house; safety-related home and garden maintenance, which assists in keeping the home safe and habitable by minimizing environmental health and safety hazards; and respite care, which provides temporary relief to the eligible person's carer, or to the eligible person if he or she is the carer.

Veterans Affairs committee  No. I can run through the programs we do have in housing. But we don't run a program like that. There are a few different things we do in housing. We administer the defence service home loans—loans of up to $25,000. It has a capped interest rate, which is below the average market rate.

Veterans Affairs committee  I think our working relationship is probably closest with Canada. That's partly because of the exchange program that operates, but it's also because of the significant similarities between the Australian system and the Canadian system. We also have close links with New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S., but I think probably the closest is with Canada.