Ken Wyatt (Hasluck, Liberal Party, Minister for Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Grayndler for seconding the motion. Every year, the coalition government's aged-care funding is up. Home care packages are up and residential places are up. Under Labor's Living Longer Living Better reforms, the ratios set for the release of home care packages were inadequate and severely underestimated the real demand. It's always interesting, when you look at a population pyramid, to look at where the pressure points are within that pyramid. Certainly if Labor had done their work once the Living Longer Living Better legislation had been brought in then we wouldn't have the mess that they've left.

It is not a system of dysfunction, as those on the other side continually claim. Our reforms uncovered the extent of the problem left by the former Labor government, which the Turnbull government is working to fix. We inherited a home care system with ratios that were absolutely inadequate and a supply of packages that was vastly insufficient for real demand. Instead of investing in care for our older Australians, Labor ripped money out of aged care to prop up their budget bottom line. In 2010-11, a Labor government ripped $9 million from residential aged care and failed to reinvest every dollar—a $9 million cut, and the source is the budget papers. In 2011-12, Labor ripped over $200 million out of residential aged care, and, in 2012-13, there was another cut of $135 million. But what's not reflected is the amount that was handed back to consolidated revenue because the packages weren't taken up.

Unlike Labor, this government is making record investments in aged cared, delivering around $5 billion in funding boosts in the forward years. When I look back on the establishment of the Living Longer Living Better legislation, there was bipartisan support but insufficient planning for the level of resourcing needed to meet the needs of older Australians. In delivering better access to care, home care packages will rise from 87,000 to 151,000 with the rollout of an additional 14,000 high-level packages—real packages, real money. There will be $40 million to support aged-care providers in regional, rural and remote Australia for building and maintenance works—real money. There will be $105 million to improve access to culturally safe aged-care services in remote Indigenous communities. There will be 14,000 residential beds and short-term restorative care places made available, and that process is rolling out. Plus, there will be a $60 million capital investment to improve the facilities and provide the infrastructure required. And there will be investment in an additional viability supplement for regional and remote providers.

The second tranche is delivering better quality of care. There will be a new Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. There will be $32.6 million for intensified risk profiling and compliance management to reduce the impact on senior Australians within aged care. There will be $50 million for residential aged-care providers to transition to the new quality standards. With Better Ageing, we're providing over $100 million to enhance mental health services for older Australians. There will be $22.9 million in grant programs to encourage increased physical activity in older Australians to enable their bodies to be mobile and resilient, have good muscle tone and also have musculoskeletal support.

When people talk about the list, they forget that it is a range of packages. Previously, people applying for a place within residential care would list their names with a number of providers. That has been the history in the provision of packages and places. Often, people didn't hear back. What we provide is an increase in the number of places that senior Australians will access, but they're supported by the Commonwealth Home Support Program—1.3 million Australians. On that list of 104,000, 51 per cent are in receipt of a range of services that wrap around and meet their needs. What we're not going to do is sit and wait and listen to the criticisms that come from the other side. The $5.5 billion allocated over the forward years is real money for programs that are designed to keep Australians healthy in the first instance and to provide the packages of choice so that people can either live within their home or in a residential aged-care facility—or some have moved into retirement villages, where they live out their years enjoying both the support of the packages and the services that are needed.

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