By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to Mick Quinn, Rod Thompson, and every advocate who has refused to be silenced—and to the veterans who have been failed by the system they trusted.

Abstract

This paper examines the systematic failure of Australia’s veterans’ compensation and support system. Drawing on testimony from frontline advocates, audit reports, and parliamentary inquiries, we trace the architecture of a system designed not to serve veterans, but to exhaust them. The Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) receives $19.9 billion annually—yet veterans wait an average of 102 days for claims to be processed, with over 81,000 claims on hand at any given time. The Veterans’ Review Board (VRB), established as an independent appeal body, is systematically hampered by DVA’s refusal to accept its rulings. When veterans are forced into the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART), the department deploys private barristers to outlast them. This is not a failure of policy—it is the design of the system.

Keywords: veterans, DVA, VRB, lawfare, bureaucratic neglect, advocacy, Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide

I. Introduction: A System That Profits from Failure

In 2023, the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide delivered its Final Report after three years of inquiry. It heard from over 340 witnesses, held 897 private sessions, and received 5,889 submissions. It documented a crisis of staggering proportions: an average of 78 serving or ex-serving ADF members die by suicide each year. The Commission made 122 recommendations. It described a “catastrophic failure of leadership at all levels” to prioritise the health and wellbeing of serving and ex-serving ADF members and their families.

Yet three years later, the system remains broken. Veterans continue to wait. Veterans continue to die. And the Department of Veterans’ Affairs continues to operate as if the Commission had never reported.

This paper examines the architecture of that failure. It traces the pattern of bureaucratic obstruction, legal warfare, and systemic neglect that has turned Australia’s veterans’ compensation system into a machine designed to exhaust those it purports to serve. It names the institutions, the ministers, and the consultants who have profited from this system. And it argues that the Royal Commission’s recommendations have been systematically ignored—not because they were impractical, but because they were inconvenient to those who benefit from the status quo.

II. The Architecture of Extraction

A. The Scale of the System

The Department of Veterans’ Affairs administers a budget of $19.9 billion in 2025–26, with total liabilities of $90.6 billion. Personal benefits provisions account for 51% of these liabilities, and health care provisions account for 49%.

Yet despite this vast expenditure, the system is failing.

The evidence:

· As of February 2025, DVA had 81,712 claims on hand, of which 7,784 were unallocated.

· The average time to process a claim is 102 days—over three months.

· In the 2023–24 Budget, DVA received $64.1 million to maintain workforce capacity;

in 2024–25, it received $194.4 million over four years to address service delivery pressures; in 2025–26, an additional $47.6 million for one year.

The question: Where is the money going, if not to veterans?

B. The Independent Review That Was Ignored

In October 2024, a capability review of DVA was endorsed by the Australian Public Service Commissioner. The review found that:

· The department’s strategic workforce planning capability did not meet current needs.

· Technology capability did not meet current needs.

· The department’s reliance on short-term, 3-to-6-month contracts ensured that by the time a staff member understood a veteran’s complex trauma, their contract ended.

The 2024 DVA Capability Review was clear: the system was broken. But no meaningful change followed.

C. The Royal Commission’s Recommendations: A Cemetery of Good Intentions

The Royal Commission made 122 recommendations. Key among them:

· Recommendation for a new statutory entity to oversee system reform across the whole “defence ecosystem” (accepted by government, with the interim Head commencing January 2025 and the Commission expected in September 2025).

· Recommendation for a new agency to focus on veteran wellbeing (accepted “in principle”).

· Recommendation for improved information sharing between DVA and Defence (required to rebuild community trust following testimony to the Royal Commission).

But: The government accepted these recommendations in principle while failing to provide the resources, the urgency, or the political will to implement them.

The result: The Veterans’ Review Board (VRB) remains under-resourced and routinely circumvented. The Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) has become a battlefield of attrition. And veterans continue to wait.

III. The Weaponisation of Process

A. The VRB: An Independent Body Undermined

The Veterans’ Review Board (VRB) is a specialist tribunal, independent from DVA, that conducts merit reviews of certain decisions. When a veteran disagrees with a DVA decision, they can ask the VRB to review it—a process that is free and user-friendly.

What the VRB does:

· Takes a “fresh look at the facts, the law and relevant policy to make their own decision”.

· Conducts hearings by a panel of three members: a Senior Member, a Services Member, and a member.

· Offers online dispute resolution, allowing veterans to resolve applications when and where it is convenient for them.

What DVA does:

· Prepares reports containing all documents relevant to the case.

· May be directed by the VRB to undertake further investigation, such as arranging medical reports.

· Is supposed to accept VRB decisions and implement them.

The reality, according to advocate Mick Quinn:

“When the VRB makes a decision based on law and evidence, the DVA should accept that ruling and implement it. Instead, the department deliberately hampers the functionality and authority of the VRB. They use internal policy guidelines as a weapon to bypass the law. Even when legislation supports a veteran’s claim, DVA forces a rigid internal policy framework down the throat of the process, effectively bottlenecking and blocking valid claims just to intentionally push the case out of the veteran-friendly board.”

This is not an accident. It is a deliberate strategy to remove cases from the jurisdiction of the VRB and force them into a more hostile forum.

B. The ART: A Battlefield of Attrition

When DVA successfully pushes a case out of the VRB, it forces the veteran into the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART).

What the ART does:

· Reviews administrative decisions made under Commonwealth laws.

· Takes a fresh look at facts, law, and policy.

· Can agree with, change, or make a new decision.

What the ART is not:

· It is not a veteran-friendly forum.

· It is not designed for veterans who are traumatised, exhausted, and under-resourced.

According to Mick Quinn:

“Once they successfully force the veteran out of the protected VRB environment and into the tribunal, the gloves come off. DVA flouts its ‘model litigant’ obligations by hiring highly paid, private external barristers to launch a brutal David-and-Goliath legal war. These contracted legal teams systematically use wearing-down tactics—subjecting traumatized veterans to grueling multi-day interrogations, chasing irrelevant administrative rabbit holes, and aggressively minimizing service records to cause financial and mental exhaustion.”

The result: Veterans who have already endured trauma, who have already waited months or years for decisions, are forced to endure a second round of legal warfare—funded by taxpayers, waged by private barristers, and designed to outlast them.

C. The Legal War: Lawfare as a Tactic

The term “lawfare” refers to “the use of law as a weapon of war” . It is the strategic use of legal systems to exhaust, delegitimize, and defeat an opponent.

What DVA does:

· It deploys “truck loads of cash in taxpayer money to appeal a decision or defend their own bad ruling at the tribunal level”.

· It forces “vulnerable veterans through months of psychological torture, wasting immense public resources fighting tooth and nail, only to have the original decision completely overturned anyway”.

· It engages in a “senseless cycle of institutional stubbornness that values defending a bad administrative ruling over the life of a veteran”.

The cycle:

1. DVA makes a bad decision.

2. Veteran appeals to VRB.

3. DVA hampers the VRB process.

4. Veteran is forced to the ART.

5. DVA deploys private barristers.

6. Veteran is exhausted, traumatised, financially broken.

7. The original decision is overturned—after years of legal warfare.

8. DVA repeats the cycle with the next veteran.

This is not a failure of the system. It is the design of the system.

IV. The Profiteers

A. The Consultancy Industry

Government consultancies receive billions of dollars annually—much of it from DVA contracts.

Examples:

· Sustineo Pty Ltd, a consultancy that “specialises in high-quality program management, monitoring, evaluation, design, research and stakeholder engagement services” and has “successfully delivered over 170 projects in 17 countries”.

· The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has identified “outsourcing service delivery, and use of IT systems in another agency such as Services Australia” as a risk area.

· DVA received $253.7 million over four years to modernise and maintain its ICT systems, including the replacement of the payment system.

The question: Who is receiving these contracts? Who profits from the failure of the system?

B. The Private Barristers

DVA “hires highly paid, private external barristers” to fight veterans in the ART. These lawyers are paid by taxpayers to:

· Subject traumatised veterans to grueling multi-day interrogations.

· Chase irrelevant administrative rabbit holes.

· Aggressively minimise service records.

· Cause financial and mental exhaustion.

The result: Veterans are broken. Barristers are paid. The system continues.

C. The Administrative Class

DVA’s “high reliance on short-term, 3-to-6–month contracts ensures that by the time a good staff member begins to understand a veteran’s complex operational trauma, their contract ends and they are gone”.

The result: Good staff leave. Institutional knowledge is lost. Veterans are forced to restart complex cases from scratch. The system becomes a “war of attrition designed to exhaust the veteran until they give up”.

V. The Role of Ministers and Public Servants

A. The Ministers

The Royal Commission’s findings were clear: there had been a “catastrophic failure of leadership at all levels.” Yet successive ministers have failed to act.

The current minister: Matt Keogh, appointed Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and Defence Personnel in 2022.

The question: What has changed under his leadership?

The evidence:

· The 2024 DVA Capability Review found that workforce planning and technology capability did not meet current needs.

· A $19.9 billion budget has not translated into faster claims processing.

· The VRB continues to be hampered.

· The ART continues to be used as a weapon.

The conclusion: The system has not changed. The pattern continues.

B. The Public Servants

The 2024 DVA Capability Review found that the department’s “strategic workforce planning capability did not meet the agency’s current needs” . The report also noted that “technology capability did not meet the agency’s current needs” .

What this means: The department is incapable of doing its job—not because its staff are incompetent, but because the system is designed to fail.

According to Quinn:

“My anger is not directed at the frontline DVA staff and claims delegates. The majority of these individuals are decent people who genuinely try their best to help. But they are trapped inside a completely broken, failing machine.” 

VI. The Opportunity Cost

The cost of the system’s failure is measured in lives.

The numbers:

· 1,677 confirmed suicide deaths among serving and ex-serving ADF members between 1997 and 2021.

· 78 serving or ex-serving ADF members die by suicide each year—three deaths every fortnight.

· 5,800 veterans experience homelessness annually.

· 1,555 veterans were homeless on census night in 2021.

· 46% of veterans’ partners report being affected by intimate partner violence.

The human cost:

· Families destroyed.

· Communities broken.

· Lives lost.

The economic cost:

· The economic cost of veteran homelessness is estimated at $4.6 billion over 30 years.

· Veterans’ health conditions impose significant costs on the healthcare system.

· The loss of productivity, the cost of welfare payments, and the burden on the justice system are incalculable.

The opportunity cost:

· Every dollar spent on fighting veterans in the ART is a dollar not spent on treating them.

· Every hour wasted on bureaucratic obstruction is an hour not spent on healing.

· Every veteran who dies by suicide is a life that could have been saved.

VII. The Mainstream Media Blackout

The systematic failure of the veterans’ support system has received remarkably little mainstream media attention.

The pattern:

· The Royal Commission’s findings were widely reported—for a week.

· The 2024 DVA Capability Review received minimal coverage.

· The ongoing failure of the VRB and the ART has been largely ignored.

Why?

· The media is owned by a small number of corporations with their own interests.

· Veterans’ issues do not generate the same clicks as other stories.

· The system’s complexity makes it difficult to explain in a 30-second news segment.

The result: The public remains unaware. The politicians remain unaccountable. The system remains broken.

VIII. What Must Change

A. Implement the Royal Commission’s Recommendations

The Royal Commission made 122 recommendations. They must be implemented—not just “accepted in principle,” but fully funded and enforced.

B. Restore the VRB’s Authority

The VRB must be resourced and empowered to do its job. DVA must accept its rulings—not hamper them.

C. End the Cycle of Lawfare

DVA must cease its practice of using private barristers to fight veterans in the ART. The department must act as a “model litigant”—not a weapons manufacturer.

D. Invest in Frontline Staff

DVA must end its reliance on short-term contracts. It must invest in staff who can understand and support veterans’ complex needs.

E. Independent Oversight

A new, independent body must be established to oversee DVA’s performance and hold it accountable.

F. Support Independent Advocacy

Organisations like the Veterans Advocacy Centre must be funded and supported—not targeted by bureaucratic retaliation.

IX. Conclusion: The Silence of the Dead

The system is not broken. It is working exactly as designed—to exhaust, to delay, to deny.

The veterans who die by suicide are not collateral damage. They are the product of a system that has been allowed to operate without accountability for decades.

The Royal Commission made 122 recommendations. The DVA Capability Review identified systemic failures. The advocates have spoken. The veterans have died.

And still, the system continues.

This is not a failure of policy. It is a failure of will.

And until the political class, the public service, and the media are held accountable, the pattern will continue.

The question is not whether we will change the system. The question is whether we will wait until it has claimed more lives.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Australian National Audit Office. (2026). Veterans’ Affairs Portfolio Audit Work Program.

2. Department of Veterans’ Affairs. (2025). About the Veterans’ Review Board.

3. RSL Australia. (2025). National Policy and Advocacy.

4. Administrative Review Tribunal. (2024). Our Role.

5. Department of Finance. (2025). Sustineo Pty Ltd consultancy listing.

6. Department of Veterans’ Affairs. (2025). Our Purpose.

7. Veterans’ Review Board. (2025). VRB Annual Report 2024-25.

8. The Free Dictionary. (2026). Lawfare.

9. Australian Government. (2023). Building Excellence in Support and Training (BEST) Grant Award.

10. ABC News. (2025). University students betrayed by corporatised universities.

11. Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. (2024). Final Report.

12. Department of Veterans’ Affairs. (2025). 2025-26 Portfolio Budget Statements.