Veteran lodges a compensation claim and receives a determination

A backlog of 42,000 claims was declared an urgent royal commission recommendation, driven to zero by February 2024, and stood at 32,925 unallocated claims by June 2026. The queue was cleared. It was not solved.

veteransA liability and permanent impairment claim under the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act draft compare across jurisdictions

487 days elapsed
longest dependent chain

9 discrete steps
across 3 bodies

25% waiting on availability
scheduling or queue, not assessment

0 days saved by concurrency
vs. 487 if run end-to-end

Where the time goes

Critical-path days only. Steps that run alongside others are real work but do not lengthen the process, so counting them here would overstate the prize.

third party	210d	Waiting on an external body outside the regulator's control.
assessment	150d	Someone is genuinely evaluating the merits.
queue	120d	Waiting behind unrelated work in a backlog.
applicant	7d	Waiting on the applicant to supply or fix something.

120 of 487 elapsed days are spent waiting for a person or a meeting rather than for a judgement to be formed. Removing that time changes no assessment standard and lowers no bar -- it is the cost of scheduling alone.

The process, step by step

Applies when: A current or former member of the Australian Defence Force claims compensation for a condition related to service.

#	Step	Who	Why it waits	Clock	Typical	Basis
1	Assemble service and medical evidence application Service records, medical records, and evidence connecting the condition to service.	—	third party	—	120 estimate	—
2	Lodge the claim application after Assemble service and medical evidence 360d slack	Department of Veterans' Affairs	applicant	—	7 estimate	Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004 (Cth)
3	Wait for the claim to be allocated to a delegate registration The claim sits unallocated until a delegate is available to take it. after Lodge the claim 240d slack	Department of Veterans' Affairs	queue	—	120 reported	—
4	Investigation and further evidence assessment The delegate obtains service records, medical opinions and any further material required. after Wait for the claim to be allocated to a delegate 150d slack	Department of Veterans' Affairs	third party	—	90 estimate	—
5	Liability determination against the Statements of Principles decision Whether the condition is connected to service, applying the binding Statement of Principles for that condition. after Investigation and further evidence 90d slack	Department of Veterans' Affairs	assessment	—	60 estimate	Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004 (Cth); Statements of Principles made by the Repatriation Medical Authority
6	Permanent impairment assessment and payment assessment Assessment of the degree of impairment and the resulting entitlement. after Liability determination against the Statements of Principles	Department of Veterans' Affairs	assessment	—	90 reported	—
7	Reconsideration by DVA appeal only if triggered Triggered when: The veteran disputes the determination. after Liability determination against the Statements of Principles	Department of Veterans' Affairs	queue	—	120 estimate	—
8	Review by the Veterans' Review Board appeal only if triggered Non-adversarial merits review, with DVA not represented. Triggered when: Reconsideration does not resolve the dispute. after Reconsideration by DVA	Veterans' Review Board	queue	—	300 estimate	Veterans' Entitlements Act 1986 (Cth), Part IX
9	Review by the Administrative Review Tribunal appeal only if triggered Triggered when: The veteran seeks review of the Board's decision. after Review by the Veterans' Review Board	Administrative Review Tribunal	queue	—	365 reported	Administrative Review Tribunal Act 2024 (Cth)

on the critical path scheduling/queue = delay not caused by the assessment itself

Machine-flagged questions

These are produced automatically from the dependency graph. They are questions for a practitioner, not findings. Each one needs a person who has run this process to say whether the constraint is real.

The same body asked more than once

dva (assessment) appears at Investigation and further evidence, Permanent impairment assessment and payment. Could these be a single sign-off?

Proposed changes

A backlog cleared is not a backlog solved digitise ~120d
A royal commission found 42,000 unallocated veterans' claims and set a deadline. DVA cleared them, early. Twenty-eight months later there were 32,925 unallocated claims again. The surge worked and the system did not change.
Stop making veterans carry records between two Commonwealth agencies remove ~90d
Service records and service medical records are held by Defence. The veteran obtains them and gives them to DVA. Two agencies of the same government, and the person with post-traumatic stress disorder is the courier.
Three veterans' compensation Acts collapsed into one merge ~60d
Until 1 July 2026 a veteran's entitlements depended on which of three Acts applied to when they served and when the condition arose. The VETS Act closed two of them to new claims. A royal commission's first recommendation, legislated.

Sources

Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, interim report 2022: 41,799 claims unallocated as at May 2022; urgent recommendation to eliminate the backlog by 31 March 2024
DVA, published claim processing times as at 30 June 2026: 103,074 claims on hand, 32,925 unallocated, 70,149 in processing; MRCA permanent impairment average time to process 364 days and median 317; recently received claims average 148 days and median 143
Veterans' Entitlements, Treatment and Support (Simplification and Harmonisation) Act 2025 (Cth), passed 13 February 2025, commencing 1 July 2026

Something wrong here?

This page is wrong in some way -- every page like it is. If you have run this process, the most useful thing you can do is tell us which step took longer than we say and why. Edit data/processes/au-dva-claim.toml and open a pull request, or send us the correction.