Introduction

Veterans are people who have served in the Australian Defence Force (ADF) including permanent, reserve and ex-serving members. Serving ADF members make a pledge to serve and defend Australia. In addition to considerable opportunities and benefits, service in the ADF carries considerable personal risks and burdens, which families also share. To repay the commitments made by ADF personnel, the Department of Veterans' Affairs (DVA) was established to fulfil the nation’s duty to support all veterans, including current serving and ex-serving ADF members and their families.

DVA is a Commonwealth agency that provides support, funding and services for veterans and their eligible dependants (Overview of DVA benefits and services). Permanent, reserve and ex-serving ADF members are eligible to receive a range of entitlements depending on personal circumstances, such as compensation payments, means-tested pensions, and subsidised health treatments (Box 1).

Box 1: what are DVA services?

DVA support services include health care, rehabilitation, mental health, income support (benefits, payments, pensions, compensation), housing and other services. DVA health services include care in public and private hospitals, general practitioner and medical specialist services, allied health, treatment of any mental health care condition, subsidised pharmaceuticals, and other services. In many instances, these services may be accessed through the general health system with DVA funding the service (so veterans may not know they are engaging with DVA), however other support services require the veteran to more actively engage with DVA and some are services that are additional to those accessible to the broader Australian population.

The level of health care coverage is determined by the colour of the Veteran Card. There are three Veteran card colours:

  • Veteran White Card holders can access funding for accepted service-related injuries or conditions
  • Veteran Gold Card holders can access funding for services for all conditions
  • Orange Card holders can access concessions on prescription medicines, wound care items, and nutritional supplements.

Additionally, any ADF member who has served a single day of continuous full-time service (including training) is eligible for free mental health support (DVA 2025). All veterans (as well as family members) can access a range of mental health supports through Open Arms, including:

  • Individual, couple, and family counselling to improve resilience, mental health, and wellbeing.
  • Assistance with issues related to service life such as adjusting after deployment, grief and trauma counselling, substance issues, depression, anxiety, and PTSD.
  • Support for family and relationship issues to build strong, healthy relationships while serving.

As part of DVA’s role to support veterans and their families, DVA and AIHW have established a strategic partnership to build a comprehensive profile of the health and welfare of Australia’s veteran population. From this partnership, AIHW has produced a substantial body of research on the health and welfare of veterans (see Veterans Reports).

In some of the previous research, AIHW has analysed DVA clients as a subpopulation of veterans and ex-serving ADF members to provide insights to DVA on the characteristics and health and welfare of its clients to inform the support and services it offers.

Who are DVA clients?

DVA clients are veterans or their partners or dependants who have received one or more DVA support services. A DVA client can be a DVA card holder, a benefit or income recipient and/or a user of health or support services funded by DVA. DVA cardholders can access a range of benefits, including health care, pharmaceutical benefits and other concessions.

DVA support services include providing payments or benefits, health services delivered through DVA, accepted claims for health or disability conditions, or improved access to services through a DVA card including White, Orange or Gold Cards. For further details, refer to Overview of DVA benefits and services.

Who are non-DVA clients?

For the purposes of this report, non-DVA clients are individuals who are veterans who are not DVA clients as outlined above (this may be because they have not had reason to seek support from DVA for their services or they have not interacted with DVA for some other reason).

Some non-DVA clients may have engaged with DVA, for example if a veteran has initiated a request but this has been declined, or the veteran has rescinded the request (however if they had received other accepted support from DVA they would be considered a DVA client).

Importantly for the purposes of this report non-DVA clients (and DVA clients) are limited to individuals who had ADF service, therefore excluding family members of a veteran if they have not themselves served in the ADF.

What is included in this report?

This report describes demographic, health and welfare characteristics of non-DVA clients, as well as DVA clients who have not recently interacted with DVA where possible, by synthesising previous research, and presenting findings from new analyses. The report also identifies important data sources and outlines ideas for further research.

While AIHW has previously published research on veterans who are DVA clients, DVA and AIHW have identified a research gap on the health and welfare of those who have not engaged with DVA and those who do not currently engage with DVA. This gap was also noted by the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide in its Final Report released in September 2024 (Royal Commission 2024).

This report addresses this gap by providing information on the health and welfare of veterans who have not accessed DVA support or services (non-DVA clients), and veterans who are DVA clients but have not accessed DVA support or services recently – in the past 2 years (earlier DVA clients).

This research analyses earlier DVA clients in addition to non-DVA clients because in previous AIHW research, once a veteran has been defined as a DVA client, they are always classified as a DVA client. Therefore, the cohort of DVA clients also includes a group of veterans who may not have received any DVA services recently.

Box 2 explains the cohorts of veterans that were analysed in this report. These include non-DVA clients, DVA clients who have not engaged with DVA recently (earlier DVA clients) and other veterans who are not able to be identified as being a DVA or non-DVA client.

Box 2: which groups of veterans are considered in this report?

This report includes non-DVA clients and earlier DVA clients identified based on information from the DVA client and DVA National Treatment Account systems dating back to 1985. It does not capture veterans who accessed Open Arms services. Figure 7 in Technical notes outlines how veterans were grouped.

  • Non-DVA clients are veterans who have not received any DVA funded health or support services between 1985 and 2021 (the date from which data is available to the reference year of this report).
  • Earlier DVA clients, who are a sub-group of DVA clients, but have not received a DVA funded health or support service and/or regular DVA income or payments that would be considered a primary source of income within the 2 years prior to a reference date (generally 31 December 2021 in this report or the date of death unless otherwise specified).
  • Recent DVA clients are the subgroup of DVA clients who were not earlier DVA clients. These veterans have received a DVA funded health or support service and/or regular DVA income or payments that would be considered a primary source of income within the 2 years prior to a reference date or death.
  • Other veterans are a separate category of veterans who could not be identified as a DVA client or non-DVA client due to limited historical data. This cohort consisted of people who separated from the ADF prior to 1985 and therefore could not be linked to Defence personnel or DVA client records.

This report did not separately report on rejected DVA clients, who are a subgroup of non-DVA clients who only had claim(s) that had not been accepted by DVA. These were out of scope for this report as previous information is available on this cohort from Serving and ex-serving Australian Defence Force members who have served since 1985: suicide monitoring 1997 to 2021 and Characteristics of ex-serving Australian Defence Force members hospitalised for suicidality and intentional self-harm.

 

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