Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to an issue that many constituents have been contacting my electorate office about. I suspect many others around Australia have been contacting their MPs about it too—that is, the waiting time for home care packages for our elderly Australians who want to remain at home but need care to do so. I have heard stories in my electorate office from constituents who have been waiting up to two years, two whole years, for a package for home care.

What's happening is that these people are applying for packages and are then waiting for months on end to get them approved. But in many instances, once they're approved, people have been waiting for 18 months, a year, two years, before they're actually put in place. What does this mean? It means that those elderly Australians who've worked all their lives, who've paid their taxes and who now need a bit of help from the government are becoming frailer, sicker and ending up in nursing homes, costing the government many, many more dollars. This is a disgrace; it's not on. We should be looking after our elderly, giving them the dignity they require in their final years and we should be doing everything to provide these packages for these people. There is a list. We know the list is about 127,000 people across Australia and that list is blowing out every three months by 25,000. This is wrong. It is another example of this government not doing the right thing.