Veterans Affairs committee  Would someone like to speak to that?

Veterans Affairs committee  In a lot of cases, they haven't felt the need to connect with the Department of Veterans' Affairs. We learn of the veteran, as Lisa Foreman was mentioning, when we issue them with a gold card because of their operational service, or because they've turned 70 and are eligible then

Veterans Affairs committee  That's correct.

Veterans Affairs committee  At the moment in our community of veteran clients, we are supporting about 170,000 veterans. As I mentioned, we know about one in three from the Vietnam conflict. We're getting to know more of them as they age because they're actually needing our services and connecting with us.

Veterans Affairs committee  I would add, Mr. Kitchen, that we have a couple of programs as well to help staff who perhaps haven't had direct military experience to understand what military experience is like. One is the It's Why We're Here program that we run within the department. We also have an arrange

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll lead in responding to that question. Certainly, as I mentioned earlier, we only know one in five of our younger veterans, those who have served from 1999 onwards. Yes, we only know one in five. So we rely on our ex-service organization community, veterans' service organiza

Veterans Affairs committee  Perhaps I can add one final thing to that. In the budget this year we received funding to extend treatment services to anybody who has served in the Australian Defence Force for one day, for all mental health conditions, so that they don't need to put in a claim. They can just se

Veterans Affairs committee  The most common factor for me would be their getting into employment. They don't recognize the skills that they have. They're unable to translate their experiences to their CV for civilian employment. We have programs to help them do that and to get back into employment so they d

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you. I'll start. I'd like to then invite Kate Pope to talk about the transition work she's doing and Lisa Foreman to talk about our Prime Minister's employment program, which is supporting our transition. Certainly those numbers do resonate with us. We have about 5,500 w

Veterans Affairs committee  Okay. Kate.

Veterans Affairs committee  One of the key things for us was that information sharing with Defence, so 12 months ago we initiated a program so that we would know everyone who enlists in the Australian Defence Force now. We have visibility of everyone who enlists and we also have visibility of any injury sus

Veterans Affairs committee  Carolyn.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Liz Cosson. I'm the deputy secretary and chief operating officer. I have a team here that is very happy to take questions from the committee. By way of a brief introduction, as a department, we are approximately 2,000 people who are spread acros