Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on behalf of Mr Bolster from my electorate. He's 97 years old. He's lived in Dandenong for 50 years in an independent living unit—feeling well at home for the last 20 years—yet, shamefully, he's still waiting for the Liberal government to approve funding for his home care package. It was first approved at level 2 in June 2017, and he got some funding at level 2 nine months later, in March this year. He was then admitted to hospital with renal failure—very serious—but he's recovered and is back at home. But he needs some extra help now with cleaning, shopping, gardening—nothing too much, you'd expect.

In June 2018 he was approved for level 3, yet five months later there's no funding. He's 97 years old. The government should show some care and some respect. His family are now ringing my office desperate for help. They're telling me how much he needs this help and how they're worried he's now deteriorating further, needing some extra help with cooking and other things because he's struggling trying to do things which are now impossible for him to do. He's mentally sharp, he's clear-headed; he just needs a little bit of help from his community, from his nation, to live with some dignity in his last years at home.

That sounds bad. You'd think that's bad enough, but Mr Bolster is now one of 121,000 older Australians still waiting for care: 95,000 of these older Australians are waiting for care with high needs; 70,000 have no care at all. None. Not even a package. As we've said before, the minister's response is, 'Just take what you can get.' So apparently Mr Bolster should consider himself lucky to have any care. This is an unfolding crisis in the country.

The Prime Minister's response, when he was Treasurer, was to allocate 14,000 new packages over four years—14,000 over four years—and yet the waiting list has risen by 13,000 just in the last three to six months! The response from the minister is, 'Call the 1800 number and see how you're going.' Over three months there were 10,000 calls to that 1800 number that were not answered. It's no exaggeration, at this point in someone's life, to say he could literally die while waiting on hold to get through on the 1800 number or waiting for just a little bit of care so that he can stay at home.

I think the government need to update their website, because they've run out of categories. If you google the waiting times on the government's website—they used to have zero to three months, three to six months, six to nine months and 12-plus months—you'll see the expected waiting times for the packages now are 12-plus months, 12-plus months, 12-plus months, 12-plus months. The government should act.