Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The stunning reality in this day and age is that there are 120,000 people waiting to get aged care in this country. They're on the waiting list. That 120,000 is a big number, and there will be a lot of families in this country who are wondering how their parents or their grandparents are going to be looked after as they get older and frailer. This government knows this is a big issue. It's why the royal commission was set up. We heard some incredible stories coming out of the royal commission. Just over a month since the interim report was brought down, we've had the government respond today, and they've provided a commitment to 10,000 places. Some people might think that's great, but, in the scheme of things, if there are 120,000 people waiting, the brutal reality is that that is nowhere near enough.

I was completely stunned in question time to hear the Prime Minister say that they didn't have capacity to do more—most Australians would expect a higher figure than that—because they needed to know if there were people in the system to provide that quality of care. The other brutal reality is: the first thing the coalition did when they came into office was they completely gutted workforce planning and capability to bring those people online. So we have more people waiting, we do not have enough places being put in and we're not training enough people to look after those people. This is a total mess, under the watch of the coalition. Senior Australians deserve better than this. (Time expired)