Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Aged Care and Seniors) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bean for his question. He does a fantastic job representing the people of Bean, including my old stomping ground of the Tuggeranong Valley. There's a critical feature of this Albanese Labor government: we listen and then we deliver. We listened to the royal commission, we listened to older Australians and their families, we listened to the workers and the providers who know this system inside and out, and then we got on with fixing it. The sector told us that older people needed rights, not just rules, and we delivered Australia's first ever statement of rights enshrined in the new Aged Care Act that came into effect on 1 November last year—the first wholly rebuilt act since 1997.

Older Australians told us they want to stay home for longer, with support that enables them to maintain independence and dignity, so we delivered Support at Home along with 83,000 additional home-care places. Advocates told us that aged-care places should be allocated to people, not providers, so we changed that too. Aged-care places are now allocated directly to the individual—more choice, more control, more dignity. Providers told us we need more beds and we need them in the places where demand is greatest, so this month we announced a further $115 million through the Aged Care Capital Assistance Program, targeted at hotspots in Adelaide, Illawarra, Perth and the Hunter, with an expression-of-interest process designed to get beds open within two years.

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