Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to cover an email one of my constituents sent to me about our healthcare system and about aged care. Martin is 90 years old. Martin is not a statistic. He's not a case number. He's a member of my community, someone who has lived a full life, contributed and now, in his later years, is asking for something very simple—to remain in his own home. But over the past two years, Martin has presented to hospital at least 20 times—not because he wants to be there, but because the system is not built around him and it's not working the way it should be.

Like many older Australians, Martin has been waiting—waiting for the support he needs to live safely at home; waiting for a home-care package; waiting for a system that is backed up, delayed and struggling to transition into the new Support at Home program. In the meantime, Martin has been allowed to fall through the cracks. His family has had to step in. His granddaughter Chantel is the one who is advocating for him. Social workers have tried to help navigate My Aged Care, but they struggle to get traction. This cycle continue when Martin returns home without the support he needs, deteriorates and then ends up back in hospital. Martin's worse off, our hospital system is worse off, it's costing us more money and, sadly, I worry that it's costing us lives again and again.

This is not just hard on Martin; it's hard on his family as well. But there's something deeper. Martin wants dignity, to live in his own home with dignity. He doesn't want to be a burden on his granddaughter and on his family. He wants the chance to live out his remaining years in a place he knows well, in his home, and he just wants what was promised to him under the My Aged Care system. He wants what we promised to deliver to him; he doesn't want the delays. The backlog doesn't care. It's beyond time we fixed it. Now this isn't an unreasonable request. It's what our aged-care system is meant to do.

We talk a lot about reform in parliament, about funding, about programs and about people like Martin. It's about whether the system works for the people it was designed to support. When it doesn't, and it's not right now, the consequences are real. They're measured in hospital admissions, they're measured in stress on families, they're measured in older Australians denied the ability to live the final chapter at home and on their terms. And, unfortunately, I worry they are going to be measured in deaths.

Today I am asking that this government does better. We need to ensure that people like Martin in my electorate access the support they need when they need it and when we promised it. We need to reduce delays; we need to make the system navigable; we need to restore what matters most—choice, control and dignity. Martin has given 90 years to his community and to his family. For many of those years he was paying taxes. Surely, we can give him some dignity, like we promised, for the last few years of his life.

I'd also like to make some comments about the cost-of-living problems we're facing in my electorate. Recently I visited a local cafe in Woolooware, the Playground cafe. The owner, Mr Vasili, has spent two decades in hospitality, and he told us plainly that he has never seen it this tough. Costs are rising across the board. Electricity, ingredients, wages—everything is going up and going up more frequently. Small businesses are being forced to track every dollar just to stay afloat.

At the same time, he notes customer behaviours changing. People are coming in but spending less. Once it was a meal and coffee; now it's just coffee. Some businesses are operating on tight margins, where costs rise and revenues fall and the pressure becomes unsustainable, but we're now seeing business owners question whether it's worth continuing at all.

The worst thing is that this isn't isolated. It's happening all across hospitality, retail and local services. Small businesses are the backbone of our local economy and when they struggle, communities feel it. Do you know what else affects these small businesses? It is this budget, because, now, when they want to sell their small business, they will be taxed almost double what they were. The 50 per cent CGT discount is gone. If they've been distributing money through a trust, that's now gone too. These small businesses suffering will now have a much higher tax burden and will suffer so much more as a result of this budget.

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