Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for Sport) Share this | Hansard source

As time is reasonably short I might try to answer the member for Mayo's questions quickly. The detailed questions she has asked about, regarding My Aged Care and the Commonwealth Home Support Program, we can take on notice and provide her with the statistics she has asked for.

It is, indeed, the case that when you call My Aged Care you are referred to a regional assessment service, and that service makes a follow-up call or visit, depending on your circumstances, to assess you for the need. When My Aged Care began there were issues—and I am certainly not going to walk away from that—but now, I understand, the wait times are shorter, the referral pathways are quicker and so on. In fact, we added about $102 million in the budget in order to improve My Aged Care. So I am very happy to give the member for Mayo a briefing, particularly to pick up the detailed questions that she has asked.

In terms of headspace, as I noted in my previous answer, we have undertaken to provide 10 more headspace centres as part of our election commitments and my intention is that they go in the areas that need them. Meanwhile—and until such an application might be made, and I cannot forecast whether it will be successful—it is important that your existing service be able to provide the outreach that it seems to be able to do. So I am very happy to have a further conversation with you about how we can support the access for your young people.

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