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

Listening to the member for Gippsland, it strikes me just how far this parliament has drifted from where it used to be. There was a time, and it wasn't so long ago, when aged care and looking after seniors across our community wasn't a contest in this chamber. We were working on this together.

The royal commission into aged care was established by a coalition government. It was backed right across this parliament, by both sides of this House, and, as it reported its findings, nobody in this place stood up to defend the system as it was. The new Aged Care Act was passed with bipartisan support. It was a commitment that we would work together, knowing the urgency and the importance of this task—to deliver better outcomes for the people who have built our communities. We agreed, all of us collectively, that we had let older Australians down. We agreed it could never be allowed to happen again.

But, if those opposite want to talk about failing older Australians, let's talk about what that same royal commission found on their record. There were three volumes in its interim report. The commissioners needed only one word for the cover: Neglect. It was a system that, in their words, diminished Australia as a nation. Older Australians were left in pain, left alone and left waiting for care that never came. Commissioner Lynelle Briggs put the cause of it beyond doubt. She said that the coalition government's main consideration was 'the minimum commitment it could get away with, rather than what should be done to sustain the aged-care system'. The minimum they could get away with—that's an independent royal commission's verdict on those opposite being in office for a decade. It's the reason that the mountain we have to climb to deliver better outcomes for older people is so very steep.

I note that the member for Gippsland was a minister in that government—

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