Australia Pledged A Plan To Care For Its Military Women. They Hope It's Close.

Advocates who feel the Veterans' Affairs and Defence departments have taken too long to produce a strategy to help Australia’s military women — promised after a 2021 royal commission exposed "sad and disturbing failures" — are hopeful it’s imminent.

The Women Veterans Strategy was promised after the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide and is expected to tackle issues such as health care, financial security and housing support.

Veterans' Affairs Minister Matt Keogh has already been under fire from the opposition and 10 veterans groups for his handling of a $5,000 annual cap on government contributions to veteran allied health costs — diagnostic, therapeutic, and rehabilitative services — which aims to save $748 million over three years.

He told Parliament in August that Veterans’ Affairs and Defence were still working through the “complexity” of the strategy.

Women Veterans Network Australia President Melanie Annand says she is frustrated after expecting the strategy for public consultation in late 2025. Annand is among those campaigning against the allied health care cap.

Women Veterans Australia’s Llani Kennealy and the Defence Force Welfare Association’s Del Gaudry said they were aware of a delay but accepted the complexity of the work.

Kennealy said the policy gaps that affect women — from specific health care issues to child care — are a capability issue for Australia’s Defence Force, which struggles to attract and retain the personnel it needs.

“Making the workforce more inclusive doesn't make it more ‘woke,’ it makes it more sustainable, it makes it more attractive” she said.

She believes the government needs to publish the strategy to shift the conversation to practical measures that improve the experiences for women from the time they enlist.

“We're still talking about an organization that's been built on a male model,” she said.

Sen. Jacqui Lambie took the plight of female veterans to the Senate floor last month, tearfully telling the body she suffered from vaginal prolapse connected to back injuries sustained during her service in the Australian Defence Force.

The condition contributed to a five-month absence from Parliament and a $7,000 surgery in Canberra, away from her home in Tasmania where she would have waited months for a gynecology appointment.

Lambie, veterans and research point to pelvic health issues being common for female service members. They are caused by standard duties like carrying heavy packs and high-impact training.

“When the DVA ticks off on a claim, they must factor in at least one statement of principle — SOPs we call them,” the senator said.

“These are legislative instruments that set out factors which can connect injuries, disease or death from service. These are numbers for everything from tinnitus to erectile dysfunction, but guess what? There is no SOP for vaginal prolapse,” Lambie said.

Annand said lots of female veterans still pay out of pocket for pelvic floor issues because of gaps in the claims system.

“We don't expect the department to cover everything, but when there's major issues with our bodies [proved to be caused by service] then they just need to recognize it.”

The department funds treatment for endometriosis, assisted reproductive services and female sexual dysfunction and says it spent more than $1 million on roughly 3,000 gynaecological services in the past financial year.

Opposition’s veterans’ affairs spokesperson Michael McCormack has called for Keogh to be sacked over the health care costs cap and spent two weeks in August campaigning around the country for the cap to be dropped.

The Coalition had its own issues with veterans’ affairs when last in government. There was a backlog of 42,000 veterans' claims when Labor came to power in 2022 and Coalition Veterans’ Affairs Minister Andrew Gee had threatened to resign over the issue.

He later told the royal commission he was asked to find savings of $430 million within the department in the 2021 federal budget to offset additional funding needed to speed up claims.