Independent senator Jacqui Lambie claims she was forced to spend $30,000 to keep her private medical records from being splashed across News Corp newspapers.
The former soldier told parliament a journalist from The Australian went on a fishing expedition to get access to her medical records following her long battle against Veterans' Affairs a decade ago for compensation.
She spent $30,000 fighting it and managed to redact details from the records after the Administrative Appeals Tribunal granted the journalist access.
But the legal battle didn't cost the journalist a cent.
She alleged the tribunal's then deputy president Major General Gregory Melick, now Tasmania's Chief Integrity Commissioner, may have granted access in retaliation for her speaking out about corruption in army ranks.
"You can imagine what fun Mr Murdoch would've had at my expense if my legal team had not been able to redact a large portion of my personal medical records.
"I suppose the balance of power in the Australian Senate is a matter of high stakes and all is fair in love and war to some people."
The Senate on Thursday debated Senator Lambie's private bill that aims to ensure all soldiers, federal police and peacekeepers who serve in war or war-like operations are eligible for medical treatment.
The bill would save the lives of veterans who are committing suicide during protracted battles with the "corrupt" Department of Veterans' Affairs, and would protect veterans from having to fight to keep their medical records from being made public like she had to.
She thanked the "incompetent" department, insisting its "callous, unfair, unjust" treatment gave her the courage to run for a Senate seat.
In the past 15 years, 49 Australians have died in combat overseas.
In the same period of time, 241 former diggers have committed suicide, she said.
"If I was granted one wish, and I was given a choice of having one bill passed by this parliament ... this would be the bill.
"The Australian Defence Force is damaging its members, discharging them, wiping their hands of them."
It took a special kind of "sadistic, callous and ungrateful bastard" to put a veteran through hell just so they could access proper medical care.
"Within the walls of this building, there seems to be an unending supply of those kinds of people."
Liberal senator Linda Reynolds said the bill was poorly conceived and was not costed.
It would cost at least $1.5 billion over four years, and $11 billion over 20 years.
Even veterans groups had doubts about whether entitlements should be so widely available, she said.
"Those who need this assistance most would end up losing out, there's no question about that."
