Urgent reforms are needed to stop further traumatising defence veterans when they apply for disability pensions, an inquiry has been told.
Changes should start with the confounding "spaghetti junction" approach by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide was told on Tuesday.
Bernadette Boss, the former interim national commissioner for defence and veteran suicide, said the current system forced veterans to navigate the complexity of three separate pieces of legislation when applying for support.
It meant distressing delays for veterans, she added. In the past three years the time taken to process veteran disability claims had blown out from 100 days to 200.
The department's own rules for managing the claims were also "broken" and so unnecessarily fraught it should be changed immediately, Dr Boss said.
"I would like to see a complete reimagining of the system," she said.
"People who are not well find it incredibly difficult to deal with fairly straightforward administration ... let alone the complexity of having ... to get their heads around which act they are supposed to be dealing with and why.''
She said while it would take a significant amount of time to reform the current legislation, the department was operating on "rules which are their own creation".
"It's a very poor user interface ... it should be fundamentally changed and ... fixed quickly."
Dr Boss said veteran disability entitlements also failed to assist those who wanted to continue to work, when well enough, despite the fact that remaining in the workforce was a significant "protective factor" against suicide. Instead the focus was entirely on meeting the criteria for total and permanent impairment.
"Most people in my experience in defence ... want to contribute," she said.
"Having to achieve illness outcomes in order to get payments is a way of driving illness, it's not a way of driving people ... to get back on their feet and get well again."
Dr Boss, a former coroner who also served in three combat zones as a commander in the ADF, released her preliminary interim report into defence and veteran suicide in September.
She told the commission she found a raft of problems in identifying and supporting defence members and veterans at risk of suicide, starting with the Defence Department's failure to track and monitor "red flags", including bullying in the workplace.
Workplace bullying was a well-known risk factor for suicide, she said, but it was especially perilous in defence services where complaints against the chain of command could be effectively blocked.
"If you've got a bully in the wrong place and somebody has nowhere to go, you start getting that sense of helplessness and hopelessness," Dr Boss said.
"To a young person, two years is an eternity ... you are talking about people who are feeling trapped they are feeling helpless they can't bear the situation they are in ... you start getting all those conditions that make suicide seem to an otherwise perfectly rational human being a viable option."
Veterans' Affairs Minister Andrew Gee on Monday told federal parliament more needed to be done to destigmatise mental health issues and stop bullying, abuse and sexual assault in the ADF.
"I am determined to address the high rates of suicide amongst the ADF and veteran community," he said.
Dr Boss said the Defence Department needed to create a map which could identify any suicide clusters, flagging locations and times where people were "leaving a trail of suicides behind them".
The public hearing continues in Brisbane until December 10.
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