DVA is the most important entry in this database, because it is the one where the consequence of delay is documented in a royal commission rather than inferred from holding costs.

The Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide found an unacceptable backlog of almost 42,000 claims as at May 2022 and stated plainly that long waits for entitlements damage veterans' mental health and in some cases contribute to suicide and suicidality. Clearing it was made an urgent recommendation with a 31 March 2024 deadline.

DVA met it. The last of the unallocated backlog was cleared at the end of February 2024, ahead of the deadline.

And then this. As at 30 June 2026, DVA had 103,074 claims on hand: 70,149 being processed and 32,925 unallocated. Average time to process an MRCA permanent impairment claim across all claims on hand was 364 days, up from 315 the previous year, with a median of 317. For recently received claims the average was 148 days.

A backlog that was driven to zero in February 2024 and stood at nearly 33,000 unallocated claims by June 2026 was not solved. It was cleared, which is a different thing, and the distinction is the single most useful lesson in this database. Clearing a queue by surging staff onto it, without changing what generates the queue, buys a headline and a few years. The arrival rate is structural. The clearance surge was not.

See A backlog cleared is not a backlog solved. And note what the trend in the average time to process says: it is going up, not down, two years after the backlog was announced as beaten.