The opposition get up and use industry talking points time and time again about the implications of this measure, just as they did 13 years ago, when the industry said that 1.6 million people would leave private health insurance if it was means tested, and 850,000 additional people would present to hospitals if the rebate was means-tested. None of it happened. None of it happened, just as 880 pharmacies didn't close when we introduced 60-day dispensing. The opposition is addicted to parroting industry talking points instead of using its own brain and analysing measures on their merits.

What we also haven't heard from the opposition is an alternative fiscal management strategy. What I still haven't heard from the opposition is: are you proposing that we not introduce the additional beds and the additional packages, which are described by the Manager of Opposition Business as 'wasteful spending' in his motion? Or is the opposition proposing an alternative funding stream to find another $3 billion, or $11 billion over the medium term? If so, what is it? Over the months of this debate, the opposition has refused to confirm whether it intends to cut aged-care services back or to find some alternative funding mechanism.

Importantly, what this parliament needs to understand is that we should never listen to the opposition about aged care, because we all remember what that government did over nine years to aged-care services. We remember the cuts to aged care in 2015, 2016 and 2017—cuts that were returned to consolidated revenue and, unsurprisingly, pushed the aged-care sector into crisis. It was a crisis writ large in the Four Corners report that we all remember and then, over months and months of the royal commission, it was titled with one word: neglect. The stories we heard from that royal commission about the implications of that government's inability to manage aged-care services and its cruel cuts to the aged-care budget are I think exactly why the Manager of Opposition Business stands up and moves the motion that describes our additional investment in aged-care services as 'wasteful spending'. We're not going to take any lectures from the opposition about how to manage an aged-care sector that they drove into crisis through budget cuts and a total inability—