Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. We provide a funeral benefit, but it's not the full cost of the funeral; it is a contribution to the cost of the funeral. It is a capped amount and depends upon the act in which the compensation is paid. I might take that on notice and provide you with the levels of funeral

Veterans Affairs committee  The head of the Veterans' Review Board, called the principal veterans review board member, will determine the composition of any panel. The positions on the Veterans' Review Board are advertised, and there's a process of merit selection conducted by the principal member.

Veterans Affairs committee  The national legal aid system has a component for veterans' legal aid. It relates to particular types of service—if the veteran has war-like or non-war-like service—and it depends on the merits of the case, not on the question of financial means. It's not run by the department. W

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you. Probably about 2,000 cases go to the Veterans' Review Board each year. About 40% are determined in favour of the veteran. Most of the cases are not.... We allow the Veterans' Review Board to review a case de novo. In other words, they could look at new evidence. The

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll talk about the Veterans' Review Board, a veteran-specific review body that is the first step of external review of a primary decision. Essentially the expertise required is of a legal nature or an ability to understand complex case law in a compensation space. The board us

Veterans Affairs committee  That is a good question, and thank you. We've recently done a major review of our latest act, the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act. The government promised a review of that act, which commenced in 2009, and it took almost two years to do. Finally, the government agr

Veterans Affairs committee  We have front-line staff who are basically our information services in various locations around the country. They tend to provide information and direct veterans into our system, help them make claims by giving them the appropriate forms and information. But in our back-office pa

Veterans Affairs committee  There's no clawback of the benefits provided. You might be referring to the capacity payments, which I talked about earlier. Those payments do stop at age 65, and then a veteran would be able to move on to an income-tested pension if they had limited means. The income support pen

Veterans Affairs committee  I can answer that. Case management is something that we do use, but not for every veteran. A veteran has to make a claim for benefits from the department, and we then process that claim by working out the eligibility and payment of benefits. I presume your question is around

Veterans Affairs committee  They may involve a short vocational course in a college, like a further education arrangement. We might pay for the course. We would monitor the veteran's progress throughout, so it might be vocational or not. For example, it might be security work, or developing a particular tra

Veterans Affairs committee  I probably want to take on-notice your question about the expenditure on rehabilitation and provide you with that answer separately, but it is not a very big component of the $6 billion. Essentially, what we do is provide a program whereby we sit down with a veteran and look at h

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, there is. The maximum lump sum under the MRCA for permanent impairment is about $420,000. That's if you convert the pension to [Technical difficulty--Editor].

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. As I said before, we administer three pieces of legislation. The oldest piece of legislation we have is the Veterans' Entitlements Act, which provides lifelong disability pension pay as a fortnightly payment. It does not have any lump sums for disabil

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, we have an appeal system as well. In broad terms, after a decision is made, there is what we call the primary level, the first level within the department. A person who is unhappy with that decision can request a review of that decision. The first step is another internal DV

Veterans Affairs committee  I guess the 45 weeks gives some time for a veteran to go through some rehabilitation while they continue to receive the 100%. It probably has no real science behind it, but is something that we inherited from a workers' compensation scheme for Australian public servants, and it i