By Renee Wilson, CEO, Families of Veterans Guild
This blog post first appeared in The Canberra Times’ opinion column on 2 March. Read it on the Canberra Times’ website.
Global tensions are escalating and Australia is ramping up its defence spending to record levels, the associated rhetoric from the Albanese Government is clear: people are our most important asset. And on paper, the commitment to the entire defence community appears to be there. Just last week, the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs announced a $739.2 million investment to improve veteran and veteran family wellbeing through proactive treatment and rehabilitation: “The Albanese Government is prioritising the health and wellbeing of our veteran community, with a commitment to providing more effective and efficient support to veterans and families of veterans.”
Rhetoric vs. reality
My initial thought when this news broke was, finally! Finally veteran families, whose support and engagement within the veteran system has been limited – and largely unchanged since the end of WWII – have some real support to look forward to.
I read on and the excitement disappeared. Despite the inclusive headline statement, there is no new wellbeing support, services or funding in this package for veteran families. The funding will provide, “…provision of the treatment and rehabilitation for veterans to reduce the impact of injury on them and improve their lifetime wellbeing…” and “…support for medical practitioners.”
This is great news for veterans, and after working on veteran policy for many years in the DVA, I am pleased to see new and emerging treatments being embraced. However, as the CEO of an organisation representing veteran families in Australia, and a veteran spouse myself, I’m devastated. Once again, veteran families are seen just as extensions of the veteran in policy, rather than real people whose health, wellbeing and livelihood is heavily impacted as they support their loved ones who serves. They are expected to absorb career setbacks, ill mental health, children heavily affected by the instability and trauma of military life, and costly access to treatment, all while being a lifeline for their veteran.
1950s policy for families in 2026
So, why are veteran families invisible to the system? Unfortunately, the reality is our veteran support system is an archaic framework built on traditional patriarchal style values, meaning it’s built and run largely by male veterans with limited diversity in its establishment or design, as a result it views the system through a narrow, veteran-first policy lens.
War widows were first enshrined in policy in the 1950s, but only as ‘dependent caregivers’. Benefits were strictly tied to a widow’s age or her status as a mother, cementing the idea that a partner’s only value was her service to the veteran and his children. When the Veterans’ Entitlements Act was passed in 1986, it was a golden opportunity for reform. Instead, it froze the family support model in time. While veterans’ clinical needs were updated, this legislation largely preserved the old repatriation mindset: families only exist in the eyes of the government if the veteran is either 100% incapacitated or deceased. Even the new Veterans’ Entitlements, Treatment and Support (VETS) Act, which comes into effect in 2026, fails to break this cycle. While it aims to simplify a complex system, it effectively perpetuates the status quo for families.
There has been no substantive policy update for veteran families since 1986. It’s 2026. For the 700,000+ veteran families living today, the system is operating on a seventy-year-old assumption that families benefit from veteran entitlements, a very passive approach to policy design and one that results in thousands being left behind and disadvantaged because their loved one serves Australia.
The system hasn’t kept pace with the changing impacts of war, military service and public policy changes. It hasn’t kept pace with changing needs, demographics and around four generations of families. The result? If you are the family member of a living veteran, your support pathways in the Australian system are limited, and your experiences largely unseen.
The unseen cost of service on families
Our 2025 Veteran Families Survey revealed that veteran families have significant, independent wellbeing needs that cannot be met simply by treating the veteran. Veteran family members are twice as likely as the general public to face mental health challenges, and three times more likely to experience under- and un-employment. Despite these findings, the government is yet to respond or offer a plan to support these needs and offset the costs, and sacrifices, of defending Australia borne by families.
The 2021 Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide was also explicit in its findings: families are central to the veteran system and are under supported. Lieutenant General Natasha Fox, Chief of Personnel, acknowledged that families enable military service, “…you recruit the soldier, but you retain the family”, yet it is not reflected in how we spend our money, or how we care for our veteran communities.
You can see why my hopes were high when I started to read that media release: maybe it was time, maybe after all these years families would finally be seen. They weren’t.
Talk to any veteran and they will tell you how much they rely on their family. They are acutely aware of the sacrifices their families have made for them. They want their families supported, not as a byproduct of their own treatment, but as a priority in their own right. That’s why we’ve been advocating for change and building services in response to these unmet needs for the last 5 years.
We want to take our support further; we want families to know they have a place, and a voice in the veteran system. We want them to know there is an organisation standing up for them. In this way we can help the Government put some meaning behind their headline, “…more effective and efficient support to veterans and families of veterans.” We can help Australia take care of families, and in doing so support the whole family unit, not just part of it.
It’s time to invest in veteran families
The Families of Veterans Guild has put forward a pre-Budget submission for $5.17 million over four years to support families. In the context of a $739 million announcement for medical practitioners, our ask is small. For $1.29 million a year, we can provide specialist social work, career upskilling, and crisis support for over 5,000 family members annually. That is just $223 per family member to keep the unit from reaching a breaking point. By empowering community-led organisations rather than expanding government bureaucracy, we can deliver impact at the speed families actually need.
It is time to put some meaning behind the headlines. It’s time we saw and supported the wellbeing needs of the families of veterans, not as a bi-product of improving support and treatment pathways to veterans, but open the pathways to them as well. Because defending Australia has real impacts, beyond the veteran.
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