From 1 July 2027, DVA will cap all allied health services — including psychology — at $5,000 per year. For veterans with PTSD, this cap will run out before mid-year. The consequences are foreseeable, preventable, and potentially fatal.
The cap takes effect 1 July 2027. Parliament must act before then. Every signature matters. Every share reaches someone who needs to know.
The 2026–27 Federal Budget consolidated all DVA allied health services — physiotherapy, psychology, occupational therapy, podiatry — into a single $5,000 annual envelope. At the same time, it raised the per-session fee by 60%, and cut DVA staffing by over 100 positions. The arithmetic is not complicated.
At the new DVA rate of approximately $260 per session — a 58% increase the Government is simultaneously introducing — the cap is exhausted faster than ever.
At $260/session, weekly psychology runs out before the end of October. Any evidence-based PTSD protocol requires at least 12–16 sessions — and active-phase treatment typically requires 20–40.
The Government raised the hourly rate by 58% to attract more practitioners — then held the annual envelope constant. The result: fewer sessions, not more. The fiscal savings tell the real story.
Physio, OT, podiatry, and psychology share the same $5,000. A veteran using the cap on psychological treatment has nothing left for physical rehabilitation. They must choose.
DVA has cited no study, audit, or dataset demonstrating veterans are being overserviced in mental health. Critically, DVA does not approve or gatekeep individual psychological treatment decisions — it never has. It has no data on which to base the claim.
Every mental health pathway in Australia is governed by a GP. The override mechanism replaces that clinician-led model with a DVA employee — without clinical qualifications, without a therapeutic relationship, and without published protocols or timeframes.
Veterans' documented distrust of Open Arms — due to its structural proximity to DVA — means many will refuse to engage with it regardless of clinical need. For these veterans, the policy removes every accessible pathway. Decompensation follows.
To approve further treatment, DVA will need clinical information. The Government has not said what it will demand — session notes? risk assessments? treatment content? For veterans already fearful of government disclosure, this chilling effect will end treatment silently.
Private psychologists face a $5,000 cap. The Government's own provider — Open Arms — faces none. This structural asymmetry raises serious competitive neutrality questions and warrants formal examination by the ACCC.
Recommendations 31, 33, 35, and 66 of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide directed the Commonwealth to remove barriers to veteran mental health care. This policy introduces the largest such barrier in a generation.
"DVA cannot demonstrate overservicing is occurring because DVA has never been positioned in the system to observe individual treatment decisions. The Government is using an assertion it cannot evidence to justify a financial constraint it cannot safely administer." — Dr David G. Broadbent MAPS, Registered Psychologist & Safety Psychologist
For a significant cohort of veterans, the policy closes every acceptable treatment pathway simultaneously.
Capped at $5,000. Exhausted in 19 sessions at the new DVA rate. No funded treatment for the remainder of the financial year without an override — which takes weeks veterans in crisis do not have.
Exempt from the cap — but a significant, well-documented proportion of veterans will not use it. The perceived proximity to DVA is disqualifying for veterans with compensation claims, adverse DVA histories, or sensitive service backgrounds.
Requires disclosure of sensitive clinical information to DVA — the organisation many veterans do not trust. No published timeframes, no clinical decision-maker, no information governance framework. For many, the cost of applying is too high.
When all three pathways are blocked — financially, structurally, or by confidentiality risk — veterans do not find a fourth option. They disengage from treatment. They decompensate. They deteriorate. And DVA's administrative data will record none of it.
Mental health services operate under fundamentally different clinical logic to physical rehabilitation — more frequent, longer duration, more severe consequences of interruption. They should not share a financial envelope.
Any override mechanism must be governed by registered medical practitioners — not DVA employees. The GP-led referral model exists for clinical reasons. It must not be replaced by administrative determination.
What will DVA demand to approve an override? Who will see it? How long will it be retained? Can it be shared with other agencies? These questions must be answered in a legally binding framework before 1 July 2027.
Before the cap takes effect, the Government must commission — and publicly release — an independent clinical impact assessment and a suicide risk impact assessment, conducted by clinicians independent of DVA and Treasury.
A government-owned provider exempt from a cap imposed on all its private competitors is a structural market asymmetry. The ACCC should examine whether this is consistent with Australia's competitive neutrality framework.
This campaign is initiated by Dr David G. Broadbent MAPS, a registered psychologist and Safety Psychologist with direct clinical experience providing psychological services to military personnel and veterans through D.G. Broadbent & Associates.
Dr Broadbent is the author of Beyond Compliance: Transforming Safety Through Leadership, Culture, and Belief, and the founder of Transformational Safety®, applying TSL leadership frameworks in military and industrial safety contexts across Australia.
The clinical analysis underlying this campaign is detailed in a formal white paper — A Broken Promise: The $5,000 Allied Health Cap, Veteran Mental Health, and the Shadow of Preventable Suicide — prepared for submission to the Minister for Veterans' Affairs, the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, and the Royal Commission Implementation Taskforce.
Two petitions. One public. One parliamentary. Both targeted at the same outcome: removing the cap before it costs lives.