Mr. Kitchen, it's a great question; it's wonderful. I'd like to catch up with your father. Of course, the Royal Canadian Dragoons are a remarkable regiment and well known around the world.
In terms of ranking veterans, I think the fact that we have a Department of Veterans' Affairs is probably the key aspect. We have a remarkable universal health system in Australia called Medicare. We have a wonderful country that looks after all of our citizens and delivers services to them, health and welfare, and a range of departments that do that. But we have a separate, single-standing Department of Veterans' Affairs, and its role is to acknowledge that special place our veterans have in our society, those men and women who put their lives on the line on behalf of the rest of our community. Notwithstanding the great work that first responders do—our police, our emergency services—these are the men and women who go to fight our country's wars, or do things that are dangerous and hazardous that no one else can do.
So we have a Department of Veterans' Affairs, which, when initially established, delivered services through through repatriation hospitals and through in-house, if you like, models of service delivery to our veterans. But we've moved now to a model where most of our service is delivered by other agencies—the state and public health systems, private doctors, specialists, all those sorts of things. We work with other departments to deliver some of our income-support payments in an increasingly shared service model.
That said, fact that we have a standing department for veterans' issues is the recognition you speak about. We work very hard to determine and establish the role of the department, and what it may be in the future, to ensure that veterans have a voice, that their specific concerns are recognized, and that on behalf of our nation, we respect their service and deliver services to them.