Veterans' Affairs Minister Matt Keogh says claims backlog still at 42,000 and growing

The Albanese government on Thursday released its plan to simplify the compensation claims system ahead of the release of findings from the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide expected in June.

The royal commission's interim report, released in August last year, urged the federal government to provide the Department of Veterans' Affairs with enough funding to clear the backlog by the end of March 2024 as part of its 13 recommendations

The government committed an additional 500 staff for the department to deal with the backlog.

But Mr Keogh revealed on Thursday the backlog remained at 42,641 six months after the interim report had been delivered.

The minister said the looming figure was starting "to turn a corner" but the training of staff and the holiday shutdowns had slowed progress.

"We've been undergoing this process now for some months, engaging new staff, getting them trained up, appointed as delegates, to be able to work through these claims faster," Mr Keogh said.

"We've also seen over those months that continued increase in the number of claims coming in faster, but we've had more clients coming in as well.

"We're starting to see that number reduce and reduce more quickly as more of those staff come online fully trained to do that work."

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Of the promised 500 new staff members for the Veterans' Affairs Department, 200 had been brought on with Mr Keogh adding more would be fully trained by the middle of the year.

The government remained confident it was still on track to deliver on the royal commission's recommendation despite the "slow-moving" speed, he said.

"There is a lag in the effectiveness of those staff because as they come on board, they have to be trained," Mr Keogh said.

"That's quite an extensive process because of the complexity of this legislation and the interplay between the three different sets of legislation, it takes time to get that traction.

"We also have to take train staff offline for processing to train these additional staff. So it's not surprising that it's slow moving and getting those claims reductions but we are seeing more and more claims being being processed."