Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing and Mental Health) Share this | Hansard source

It's great to be able to speak to this motion, because I've been talking in this place for some time about how the government has mishandled aged care in this country. We are seeing a crisis in aged care on this government's watch. To have the minister come in here this morning, after five years in government, three ministers and billions of dollars ripped out of aged care, trying to blame the Labor Party, when we haven't been in government for five years, is astounding.

There were 100,000 people waiting for home care as at the end of December. I am sure that there are many more, but the government hasn't released the figures to the end of March. Those figures are now well overdue. In estimates we heard that the department thinks they may be with the minister's office. When was estimates? It was at least three weeks ago. I wonder why these figures have been delayed and what they look like? We know that 20,000 people were added to that waiting list in the last six months of last year. The question for the government today is: what is the current figure? How many older Australians are today waiting for care in their own home? We don't know the answer, because several months on from December the government has yet to release the figures. Why hasn't the government released the figures? What is it hiding? How many people is it trying to move off that list? That's exactly what I think's going on here: the minister's office and the minister are sitting there trying to knock off the list people who have been waiting for care and who should be on the list.

We heard the government's own admission that it hadn't done enough in the last budget. We had the government try and pretend that it's got 20,000 new packages and then have to admit it's only 14,000, including the other 6,000 it made available late last year in October. We know that 14,000 over four years isn't going to make a dent. This government came in here on budget night and pretended that it had done something amazing in aged care, but we saw not one extra dollar over the forwards than was already in the budget. Not one extra dollar is being spent in aged care, when we have over 100,000 older Australians waiting for home care in this country.

It is a disgrace, and the government should be ashamed that it's out there trying to pull the wool over the eyes of older Australians, pretending that it's done something when it has not. It is not okay to try and pretend to older Australians and their families, who are very stressed, looking for support for their older parents. These families are ringing my office and other offices every day, saying, 'When can I get a home care package for my mum or my dad?' They are desperate. For the government to pretend that it is doing something is just appalling. It is appalling and it is a cruel hoax on older Australians, their families and their loved ones.

In the February estimates we saw that there are around 300 people on the waiting list who have been waiting for longer than two years—two years with no care, waiting for a home care package! We have people ringing up my office nearly every week who have been on that list for over a year. The government's own website says the current wait time for a level 3 or 4 package is over 12 months. We're not sure what 'over 12 months' means—how long over—but we know people who have been waiting considerable time frames. When you're getting people in their 90s contacting you to say, 'The government's put me on a waiting list, and I have to wait at least 12 months,' that is not good enough. We all know what's going to happen to those older people, particularly those in their 90s, who are at home, waiting for care.

What happens? You have family members who have to pick up that care. They have to come home from work early or not go to work. We've had older people turning up in emergency rooms well before they should because they could not get the care at home. It's having an effect on hospital wait times in emergency departments and it's having an effect on ambulance call-outs. These old people should be receiving the care in their home that they deserve and have been assessed and approved for, but this government will not fund their packages. Over 100,000 older Australians are today still waiting for their package, despite the budget and despite what this government says. It's about time this government did something about it.

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