The Australian government used to run what we called the Repatriation General Hospitals. We had one in each major province or state of Australia. In the early 1990s the government made the decision to sell them off.
In answer to your question, there is no such thing as a veteran hospital in Australia. Our health system is different from yours in that we have a combination of a public health system and a private health system; the Department of Veterans' Affairs has contracts with each of the states that allow veterans to access public hospitals, which are run by the state or provincial governments. We also just ran a national tender, actually, with the private hospital operators; we have commercial contracts with the private hospital operators that allow veterans to access private hospitals. In terms of percentages, I think 60% of veterans go to public hospitals and 40% to private hospitals.
The issue of selling the hospitals off occurred because they were in each capital city. Australia is a large country like yours, and veterans might live 300 or 400 kilometres away from the hospital and were quite often elderly. They wanted to go to hospitals within their own communities and not have to travel to the provincial city. It was better to contract with hospitals closer to where the veterans lived to get them service as close to their homes as we could.