Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Here we go again talking about an issue that should have been fixed months and months ago. We have had five years of this government with lots and lots of reports trying to implement a whole range of things through the Living Longer Living Better reforms of the past five years. And what do we see? Absolutely zero. What we've seen is a government scrambling for a royal commission—and I have to say that we do support the royal commission—to see what they can do, when the reality is that they should have done something by now. They've had five years in government. This is an issue that affects all of us in our electorates and in our constituencies. Constituents come to visit us to talk about being on aged-care packages and being on waiting lists or wanting to get into a facility to be looked after. We get these queries regularly, weekly, continually. I'm sure members on the government side get the same inquiries. The reality is that you can't just cut $2 billion out of the aged-care sector and not expect that to have an impact on our elderly Australians, and that's exactly what's happening and what it's doing. They can deny it and they can dress it up in any way they like, but the reality is there in the budget papers of 2016, which say a $1.2 billion reduction. On top of that, there have been other cuts. As we heard the member for Franklin say earlier, that equates to each resident receiving about 11.5 per cent per less care than they were a few years ago. That cut has had an impact on the care of our elderly Australians. It has had an impact on the way that we look after them. It has had an impact on their health. It has had an impact on their families. It has had an impact on their carers. And what do the government do? They throw up their hands and say: 'We're tackling it. We're looking at it.'

I heard the minister earlier in question time when he was asked about this particular issue. He mentioned that I've been working with him on a whole range of queries that we've been sending to his office. Yes, we have, and he has responded, but, unfortunately, the responses are all form letters written by some bureaucrat that absolutely doesn't understand the issue that's sitting in a corner in the department. We have people on waiting lists. Over 100,000 Australians are waiting for care packages—people that should be having the care that they require—and another 54,000-odd have no care package at all. Some of them get care packages, but not the high-level ones that are required. Have a guess what? Those people deteriorate, their carers deteriorate and they end up in hospitals, costing the government much, must have more than it would have if we provided the proper care. How can you say that you're treating older Australians with dignity when more than 100,000 of them are waiting for care—and that list is growing, from memory, at approximately 26,000 per quarter. While you're plugging a hole here, a great big gush is opening up on the other end, and we're still not dealing with it. We're still not looking after these people. As I've said so many times here, our older Australians built this nation; built the foundations on which we enjoy this wonderful country today.

We've had three different aged-care ministers across the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government, who have had carriage of the Living Longer Living Better reforms for five whole years but have absolutely failed to make little, if any, real reform whatsoever across the Ageing portfolio. We've had more than a dozen reviews, we've had reports and we've had inquiries—some of them are still sitting in the minister's desk collecting dust without being actioned—yet we were told two weeks ago that we don't require a royal commission, that it wouldn't do anything and that we should not look in that direction. Then, two weeks later, they've changed their mind and they're telling us that we now require a royal commission. Tell us what's in the report that has made you want a royal commission. Tell us what's in there. Be honest with the Australian public. Be honest with our older Australians, who have done so much for this nation and deserve dignity in their twilight years.

Unfortunately, like many other things in this place with this current government, the focus is on the rich end of town, where we're giving billions of dollars of tax cuts and billions and billions to multinationals. But what we're doing in our aged-care sector is taking money away. Earlier, someone on the other side said that they've increased the funding, but that is not correct. (Time expired)

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