Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

In addition to that, in relation to the fifth recommendation, the government has accepted that, as with others, in full. Funding of $245 million is being paid to providers through October 2020—already underway; already being delivered—and that will mandate that aged-care providers have trained infection-control officers, as detailed in the recommendation, on top of all of the other elements. Then there's the final recommendation: accepted, in full. And the government has been working with state and territory governments to implement a decision of national cabinet of 21 August to put in place additional face-to-face infection-control training and establish joint approaches—already underway. That's very important. So I thank the commissioners for their work today and I look forward to their further work.

Let me look more generally at two things: further actions taken by the government with regard to aged care and further actions taken in relation to COVID preparation. In relation to aged care, I think it is important to set out the facts here. We have come from $13 billion in 2012-13, under the previous government, to, in this budget, $24 billion, $25 billion, $26 billion, $27 billion. Those figures matter. In particular, as part of that, what we've seen is a dramatic increase in home-care places. Home-care places have gone from 60,000 places in the last year, under the previous government, and $1.15 billion, to 185,000 places—a tripling of places, this year, under the current government.

I've heard them, on occasion, say, 'Oh, they're just going up in relation to population.' In fact, we've had a 28 per cent increase in over-70s since the previous government was in government; we've had a 200 per cent increase in home-care places, or a tripling, and a 300 per cent increase in home-care funding, or a quadrupling. So funding has grown at 10 times the rate of population of over-70s in that time. So that's against their benchmark of their year. If funding had grown in line with population, it would have grown at 28 per cent; instead, funding has grown at 300 per cent, or 10 times, and therefore it has grown at a dramatically faster rate, and we have seen a dramatically higher increase in services per capita than was the case under the previous government. I think that's important.

It should also be noted that, on two occasions in the last year, the alternative government has had the opportunity to make some contribution. They went into the election and they had zero dollars—

Ms Collins interjecting—

See this speech in context