What Is the GARP? The Document That Decides Your Permanent Impairment Payment

If you have ever wondered how DVA arrived at a number for your permanent impairment — why your back came out at 5 points rather than 15, why three accepted conditions did not simply add up, why someone with what sounds like the same injury got a different result — the answer is in a single document.

It is called the Guide to Determining Impairment and Compensation. Everyone calls it the GARP.

This is the first article in a series working through it. This one covers what the GARP is, where its authority comes from, and how the machinery fits together. The next article maps all 26 chapters, and after that we work through them one at a time.

The short version

The GARP is a legislative instrument made by the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Commission under subsection 67(1) of the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004. It sets out the criteria for deciding the degree of impairment resulting from a service injury or disease, and the method for converting that impairment into compensation.

It is not guidance. It is not policy. Its provisions are expressly binding on the Repatriation Commission, the Veterans' Review Board and the Administrative Review Tribunal. A delegate cannot decide to be generous, and an appeal body cannot decide the GARP produced an unfair number and substitute its own. Everyone in the system is applying the same tables to the same facts.

Which is the important insight for a veteran: the only thing anyone can argue about is the clinical facts fed into the tables. That is where a claim is won or lost.

The current edition: GARP M 2026

The edition in force is the Guide to Determining Impairment and Compensation 2026, short title GARP M 2026. It was made on 4 May 2026, registered on 25 May 2026 as F2026L00595, and commenced on 1 July 2026. It repeals the 2016 Guide.

The transitional rule is about when the decision is made, not when you lodged. GARP M 2026 applies to a claim for compensation under Part 2 of Chapter 4 of the MRCA where, on or after 1 July 2026, any of the following happens:

an original or reviewable determination is made on the claim;
the Commission initiates a reconsideration under section 347;
an application is made to the Veterans' Review Board under section 352A; or
an application is made to the Tribunal under subsection 354(1).

So a claim lodged in 2025 and decided in late 2026 is assessed under the 2026 Guide. If you are appealing a decision, the appeal is decided under the Guide current at the time of the review — not the one used originally.

Note also that GARP M is the MRCA guide. Claims under the VEA use GARP V, and DRCA claims use the approved DRCA Guide with its own whole person impairment methodology. The 2026 edition has a chapter dealing with people who hold conditions across more than one of those schemes.

The two elements: impairment and lifestyle

A permanent impairment payment is built from two separate assessments.

Medical impairment is dealt with in Chapters 1 to 21. It produces a number of impairment points.

Lifestyle effects are dealt with separately in Chapter 22, and produce a lifestyle rating.

Those two numbers are then read together in Chapter 23 to arrive at a weekly amount, which can be converted to a lump sum under Chapter 24.

People routinely assume the lifestyle questionnaire is a formality. It is not — up to 80 impairment points it changes the money. (Above that it stops mattering, for reasons we come to below.)

Impairment points and the whole person

Medical impairment is expressed in impairment points out of a maximum of 100. Zero means no impairment, or negligible impairment, from accepted conditions. One hundred corresponds to death. The points are effectively percentages of impairment of the whole person.

The Guide defines medical impairment as having two components: the physical loss of, or disturbance to, a body part or system, and the resultant functional loss. That distinction runs through the whole document.

Chapters 1 to 16 therefore contain two principal kinds of table. Physical loss is rated against "Other Impairment" tables. Functional loss is rated against "Functional Loss" tables. Where a condition can be rated under both, the higher of the two ratings is the one that applies.

This is worth dwelling on, because it is where good and bad assessments diverge. The Guide gives greater emphasis to functional loss. A report that records a diagnosis and a range of movement, but says nothing about what you can and cannot actually do, has only given the delegate half the material — and it is usually the half that produces the lower number.

The thresholds

Not every impairment attracts a payment. Under the Guide, loss of hearing, loss of taste, loss of smell, loss of a finger or loss of a toe as a single condition can only be compensated if it reaches a threshold of 5 impairment points. Any combination of loss from conditions delivering a combined impairment of 10 or more will attract compensation.

The Guide's own example: loss of taste rated at 5 points and mild reflux rated at 2 points. The loss of taste is payable because it meets the 5-point threshold on its own. The reflux is not, because 5 plus 2 is 7, which does not reach 10.

The practical consequence is the one veterans most often miss. Small conditions matter, because they combine. A veteran sitting just under a threshold with two conditions documented is in a completely different position from the same veteran with five conditions documented — even though nothing about their health has changed. This is precisely why a thorough chart review before lodging is worth more than it costs.

Why your conditions do not add up

Once every accepted condition has a rating, those ratings are combined into a single figure using the Combined Values Chart in Chapter 18. Combining is expressly not done by addition.

The Guide's worked example makes the logic clear. Suppose a person has three accepted conditions. The first attracts 60 points — the whole person is 60% impaired, leaving 40% still available. The second attracts 30 points. The total is not 60 + 30 = 90. It is 60 + 12 = 72, because the 12 is 30% of the 40 that remained.

Two things follow. First, your largest condition does most of the work. Second, and less obviously, later conditions are not worthless — they are just worth progressively less. A 10-point condition added to an existing 60 still moves you four points up, and four points can be the difference between two compensation bands.

Sequelae have to be claimed separately

This is one of the strictest rules in the Guide, and one of the most expensive to get wrong.

Only the clinical features of an accepted condition may be taken into account when assessing it. If your accepted condition has caused some other distinct and diagnosable condition — a sequela — the symptoms of that sequela cannot be counted towards the original condition. Sequelae can only be assessed once they have separately been determined to be accepted conditions.

In plain terms: if your accepted lumbar condition has produced sciatica, or your accepted knee has produced osteoarthritis on the other side, or your accepted tinnitus has produced a sleep disorder, none of that counts until each is claimed and accepted in its own right. Veterans lose real money here every year by assuming a downstream problem is simply "part of" the condition already on the file. It is not.

If you want to see which conditions open which pathways, our secondary conditions index maps every condition that lists another as a Statement of Principles factor.

Warlike, non-warlike and peacetime service

The MRCA requires the Commission to specify different methods for injuries relating to warlike or non-warlike service as against other service. Chapter 23 does that with two tables: Table 1 for warlike and non-warlike service, Table 2 for peacetime service. The warlike and non-warlike factors carry a premium.

That premium is not constant. The Guide states that the differential lessens as impairment rises above 50 points, and that impairment of 80 or more points attracts the same level of compensation regardless of the nature of the service that caused it.

Eighty points is also the ceiling in another sense: once 80 impairment points is reached, no lifestyle rating needs to be calculated at all, because that rating already pays the maximum weekly amount under the Act for every type of service.

What this means for your claim

Four things follow from all of the above, and they are the reason this practice works the way it does.

Every condition needs to be on the file. Because ratings combine rather than compete, an undocumented condition is not a small loss — it is a permanent one, and it depresses every future assessment as well.

Function is what gets measured. The Guide is explicit that greater emphasis is given to functional loss. An assessment that captures what you can no longer do, in the terms the tables actually use, will produce a defensible number. One that records only a diagnosis will not.

Sequelae must be claimed, not assumed. Every downstream condition is a separate claim, and until it is accepted it is invisible to the Guide.

It has to be your treating doctor, in person. A permanent impairment assessment is a clinical exercise requiring someone who knows your history and can examine you. That is a standing DVA expectation, not a preference.

Frequently asked questions

What does GARP stand for?

Historically, the Guide to the Assessment of Rates of Veterans' Pensions. The current MRCA instrument is formally titled the Guide to Determining Impairment and Compensation 2026, with the short title GARP M 2026, but the abbreviation has stuck.

Is the GARP publicly available?

Yes. It is a registered legislative instrument (F2026L00595) and is published in full on the Federal Register of Legislation.

Which version applies to my claim?

The one in force when the determination, reconsideration or review decision is made — not when you lodged. Decisions made on or after 1 July 2026 use GARP M 2026.

Can DVA depart from the GARP if my case is unusual?

No. Its provisions bind the Repatriation Commission, the Veterans' Review Board and the Administrative Review Tribunal. What can be argued is the clinical evidence the tables are applied to.

Does the GARP apply to VEA or DRCA claims?

No. GARP M applies to MRCA permanent impairment claims. VEA claims use GARP V, and DRCA claims use the approved DRCA Guide and its whole person impairment methodology. GARP M 2026 contains a chapter dealing with people who hold conditions under more than one scheme.

How many impairment points do I need to be paid?

Generally a combined impairment of 10 points or more. A 5-point threshold applies to certain single conditions — loss of hearing, taste, smell, a finger or a toe.

Next in this series

What's inside the GARP: a chapter-by-chapter map — all 26 chapters, what each one covers, and which one your conditions will be assessed under. Chapter-by-chapter deep dives follow.

Talk to us

If you are facing a permanent impairment assessment and want it done by a doctor who works with this document every week, call 0429 146 039 or email reception@vhc.org.au.