Bills Digest No. 111 2001-02
Veterans' Entitlements Amendment (Gold Card Extension) Bill
2002
WARNING:
This Digest was prepared for debate. It reflects the legislation as
introduced and does not canvass subsequent amendments. This Digest
does not have any official legal status. Other sources should be
consulted to determine the subsequent official status of the
Bill.
CONTENTS
Passage History
Purpose
Background
Main Provisions
Endnotes
Contact Officer & Copyright Details
Passage History
Veterans' Entitlements Amendment (Gold Card
Extension) Bill 2002
Date Introduced: 14 March 2002
House: House of Representatives
Portfolio: Veterans' Affairs
Commencement: 1 July 2002
Purpose
To extend full repatriation health care benefits
(the Gold Card) to Australian veterans with qualifying service who
are aged 70 or over.
During the last election campaign the Prime
Minister, Hon John Howard, announced three initiatives to extend
the entitlements available to Australian veterans and war
widows.(1) These initiatives were:
-
- extending the Gold Card for comprehensive free health care to
all Australian veterans over the age of 70 who have qualifying
service
-
- ending the freeze on the war widows Income Support Supplement
(ISS) rate and indexing the ISS to increases in the Consumer Price
Index or Male Total Average Weekly Earnings, whichever is greater,
and
-
- holding an independent review to consider anomalies with the
eligibility criteria for veterans entitlements, covering groups
including World War II veterans without qualifying service,
veterans of the British Commonwealth Occupational Force of Japan,
participants in British atomic tests in Australia, and servicemen
engaged in counter-terrorist and special recovery training.
The cost of extending the Gold Card over four
years was estimated to be $73.5 million, and of unfreezing the
Income Support Supplement, $70.3 million over four
years.(2)
The National President of the RSL, Major General
Peter Phillips said in response that the league had a wish list of
eight requests, and that the Coalition s announcement had delivered
on three of them.(3)
The Australian Democrats Veterans spokesperson,
Senator Andrew Bartlett, welcomed some aspects of the Coalition s
policy. He said that the decision to extend eligibility to the Gold
Card for health care is one which the Democrats have been calling
for for some time, as is the indexation of the war widows income
supplement .[T]he Coalition s pledge to "review anomalies in the
definition of qualifying service" is a cop-out. The Government
knows what these anomalies are what s needed is a commitment to
address them now .(4)
The Australian Labor Party also announced during
the last election campaign that, if elected, it would extend the
Gold Card to veterans over 70 with qualifying service regardless of
where and when they served.(5) It also promised to
undertake a study of the health of Australia s former elite SAS
soldiers and to review the Temporary and Permanent Incapacitated
and Extreme Disablement Adjustment pensions, and issues relating to
qualifying service for particular groups of
veterans.(6)
The purpose of this Bill is to enact the first
of the Prime Minister s promises to the ex-services community, to
extend eligibility to the Gold Card to Australian veterans aged 70
or more who meet the qualifying service provisions of the
Veterans Entitlements Act 1986.
The third promise, to hold an independent review
to consider anomalies with the eligibility criteria for veterans
entitlements has already been implemented. On 8 February 2002, the
Minister for Veterans Affairs, Hon Danna Vale announced that the
Government had appointed a committee of three to review veterans
entitlements.(7) The Minister said that the committee
will clarify and make recommendations to government on the concerns
raised by ex-servicemen and women that they are missing out on
veterans entitlements because of perceived anomalies in the
legislation. The committee called for submissions from interested
parties on 27 February 2002,(8) and is due to report to
the Minister in November.
The Gold Card
The Gold Card is the popular name for the
Repatriation Health Card For All Conditions which is issued by the
Department of Veterans Affairs. The card enables the holder to
access the full range of repatriation health care benefits. The
benefits include treatment as a private patient in a public or
private hospital, choice of doctor, pharmaceuticals at the
concessional rate, optical care, physiotherapy, dental care,
podiatry and chiropractic services. The benefits are for all
medical conditions, irrespective of whether the condition resulted
from war service. The Gold Card also entitles veterans to transport
to and from the nearest health care facilities where treatment is
being provided.
The Gold Card is not issued to all veterans. At
present the following groups are eligible:
-
- All veterans and nurses of World War I
-
- All prisoners of war
-
- All female World War II veterans
-
- All male World War II veterans over the age of 70 with eligible
war service
-
- All veterans receiving 100% or more disability pension
-
- All veterans receiving 50%+ disability pension and any amount
of service pension
-
- Veterans who receive a service pension and qualify for
treatment under the income and assets test, and
-
- War widows, war widowers and dependent children.
Costs
There are more than 285,000 Gold Card
holders.(9) Of these approximately 145,000 are World War
II veterans and other categories .(10) In answer to a
Question on Notice, the former Minister for Veterans Affairs, Hon
Bruce Scott, said on 6 August 2001 that the estimated average
health care cost to the Department of Veterans Affairs for each
Gold Card holder in 2000-2001 was $8,200.(11) The
Government estimates that it will cost $93 million over 4 years to
extend the Gold Card to Australian veterans who are aged 70 or over
and have qualifying service since World War II.(12)
Who will miss out?
-
- Veterans who are under the age of 70 on 1 July 2002 will not be
entitled to the Gold Card until their 70th
birthday.
-
- Veterans who do not meet the service criteria. Qualifying
service is defined in Section 7A of the Veterans Entitlements
Act 1986. The underlying test is that the veteran has rendered
war service that, it is accepted, could have placed him or her in
danger from hostile forces of the enemy. Veterans of World War II
who do not meet the criteria for qualifying service include
servicemen who enlisted to serve but were not sent overseas and
were not in an area of Australia that came under hostile enemy
action.(13)
-
- Allied and Commonwealth veterans who served with a Commonwealth
or Allied force are not eligible, unless they actually lived in
Australia before enlisting in Commonwealth or Allied forces.
According to the answer provided by the Department of Veterans
Affairs to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade
Legislation Committee on 5 June 2001, the total estimated number of
British, Commonwealth and Allied veterans with qualifying service
is 43,050.(14) It has been an accepted convention of
long-standing between governments that the responsibility for the
health and compensation needs of veterans rests with the country in
whose armed forces they served. The Gold Card which provides
universal health coverage is superior to the health cover provided
to veterans by most other allied countries. In most allied
countries, veterans' health cover only extends to illnesses and
injuries directly related to, or caused by war service. Allied
veterans in Australia have recently been granted access to a Health
Care Card which provides them with pharmaceutical
benefits.(15)
Philosophy behind providing repatriation
benefits to veterans
The basic principles which have governed
repatriation legislation in Australia were stated by Justice Toose
in his 1975 Report of the Independent Enquiry into the
Repatriation System.(16) They include:
-
- Australia is indebted to those who served it in time of war by
enlisting in the Armed Forces, thereby endangering their lives and
health and probably suffering economic loss
-
- As a consequence, the nation has a duty to ensure that those
who have served, together with their dependants, are properly cared
for
-
- Those who have served overseas or in a proclaimed theatre of
war, are likely to have encountered greater danger and/or more
arduous service than those who had home service and, accordingly,
they should have a more extensive cover, and
-
- Compensation and other benefits should be available as a matter
of right and not as a welfare hand-out, and in cases of doubt, the
doubt should be resolved in favour of those claiming to be
entitled.
Brief history of medical treatment cards
for returned service personnel
The Commonwealth s repatriation initiatives to
provide benefits and opportunities for service people and their
dependants began during World War I when it was recognised that
returned soldiers, and dependants of the dead and injured, would
require continued assistance in the form of pensions, medical care,
allowances for dependants and many other benefits.(17)
Through repatriation a uniquely Australian use of the word which
came to mean all the assistance given to ex-service people, the
nation was able to recognise the sacrifice of the dead through
assistance to their families, and to help the living achieve an
effective return to civilian life. The provision of health care and
benefits to older veterans may be seen as part of Australia s
ongoing obligation to honour and reward those who served.
Entitlement to free medical treatment was
initially confined to service-related disabilities. However, from
1924 onwards, Commonwealth governments have progressively expanded
entitlement to treatment for non-service related disabilities to
certain prescribed categories of veterans and their dependants, and
to some civilians.
-
- In 1973 (55 years after the end of World War I) all Boer War
and World War I veterans were granted free universal medical care
through the provision of a Personal Treatment Entitlement Card
(PTEC), a fore-runner to the Gold Card.
-
- In 1974 free medical treatment was extended to all Australian
ex-prisoners of war, and to all ex-service personnel suffering from
cancer, whether or not their disease was related to their war
service.
-
- From 1 January 1998 all World War II ex-servicewomen were
provided with full medical treatment entitlements. This was in
response to a government initiated inquiry that highlighted the
disadvantages suffered by female World War II veterans. In
particular the review indicated that women had been paid less than
men throughout their war service and had not been eligible for the
same level of repatriation assistance after the war.
-
- On 1 January 1999 (approximately 54 years after the end of
World War II) the Gold Card was extended to all male World War II
veterans over the age of 70 who have qualifying service.
Section 85 of the Veterans Entitlements Act
1986 deals with eligibility for the Gold Card. Item 1
of Schedule 1 adds a new subsection
85(4B) providing the criteria that will be used to
determine if a post-World War II veteran is eligible for full
repatriation health benefits. The criteria to be used are:
-
- the veteran is aged 70 or more, and
-
- the veteran meets the criterion of qualifying service as
defined in the applicable paragraphs of section 7A of the
Veterans Entitlements Act 1986. Section 7A contains the
post-World War II qualifying service provisions. Broadly, the
definition of qualifying service in section 7A covers a person who,
as a member of the Defence Force of Australia, rendered service
outside Australia in Korea (between 1950-1956), during the Malayan
Emergency (1950-1963), during Indonesian Confrontation (1962-1967)
or the Vietnam War (1962-1973).
New paragraph 85(4B)(c)
provides that a veteran is not eligible for treatment until he or
she has applied for the Gold Card or been notified by the
Department of Veterans Affairs of eligibility.
Item 2 provides that the
notification of eligibility may be given before this Schedule
commences on 1 July 2002. This is to ensure that veterans can be
eligible for treatment from the earliest possible date, that is
from 1 July 2002.
-
- Supporting those who served, Coalition Policy
Document, 13 October 2001.
- Coalition extends Veterans recognition, care and compensation ,
Prime Minister s Media Release, 13 October 2002.
- Lawson, Kirsten, PM s plan for Korean servicemen , Canberra
Times, 14 October 2001.
- Sen. Andrew Bartlett, Democrats welcome aspects of Coalition s
Veterans Policy, but still plenty of unfinished business ,
Media Release 01/622, 13 October 2001.
- Kim Beazley s Plan for Veterans, ALP Policy document,
29 October 2001 at
http://www.alp.org.au//policy/veterans/index.html
- The review of qualifying service was to cover some World War 2
veterans without qualifying service, veterans of the British
Occupational Force of Japan, participants of British atomic testing
in Australia and servicemen engaged in counter terrorist and
special recovery training. Labor s Plan for Australia s Veterans ,
ALP News Statements, 26 October 2001.
- Hon Danna Vale, Media Release VA5, 8 February 2002.
- Hon Danna Vale, Media Release VA11, 27 February 2002.
- Cards for Korea vets , Sydney Morning Herald, 27 July
2001.
- Hon Bruce Scott, Answer to Question on Notice No. 2639, House
of Representatives, Hansard, 6 August 2001, p. 29246.
- Answer to Question on Notice No. 2639, House of
Representatives, Hansard, 6 August 2001, p. 29246.
- Explanatory Memorandum, Veterans Entitlements
Amendment (Gold Card Extension) Bill 2002, p. ii.
- A press report in the Canberra Times on 6 July 2001
said that a Gold Card steering committee had been formed in 1999
and that its first priority was to ensure that all Australian
veterans aged 70 or over, received a Gold Card. To quote the press
report: "There are an estimated 78,000 ex-servicemen and women who
served but are not entitled to the Gold Card", the committee said.
"With WWII veterans dying at the rate of 44 or 45 per day 16,000
per year and the expected life span of these veterans being 74.6
years, many are now on borrowed time. Taking into consideration the
fact that many of us are already on White Cards or receiving
benefits under Medicare etc, the additional cost of a Gold Card
would be minimal", it said. Veterans still fighting for a fair deal
, by Danielle Cronin, Canberra Times, 6 July 2001.
- Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation
Committee, Answers to questions on notice, Department of Veterans
Affairs, Budget Estimates 2001-2002, 5 June 2001, Gold Card and
Allied Veterans , Hansard, p. 225.
- Veterans Affairs Legislation Amendment (2001 Budget
Measures) Act 2001.
- Independent Enquiry into the Repatriation System,
Report, AGPS, Canberra, June 1975, Volume 3 Summary of
report, p. 4 5.
- Australian Soldiers Repatriation Act 1917-1918.
Rosemary Bell
19 March 2002
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ISSN 1328-8091
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