My question is to the Prime Minister. Why is the Prime Minister privatising aged-care assessments?

The Minister for Health.

Is there any question you will take?

Members on my left!

We reject the proposition. We reject the proposition put forward by the member. That is inaccurate, it is untrue and it is false. I will make this point, though: what we are doing is following the advice of David Tune and the Tune report, which is to ensure that we are having a system which delivers better outcomes for patients who are seeking to enter residential aged care or have some form of aged-care assessment, and that's exactly what we're doing. In terms of the implementation, we'll work with the states, and I make this offer now, ahead of COAG at the end of the week: we are looking forward to working with the states in a flexible and a constructive fashion.

But I am very interested, because what the opposition is effectively saying is that they are going to abandon the practice that they had when they were in government of using non-government providers to assist with the assessment process—that's the change. Or are they not? So here is the question for the opposition to take away from this: are they now saying that they would abandon all of those current non-government providers—which were in place when they were in government and which they did not propose to change at the election—or is this a case of simply making it up as they go along? We know one thing: when they had the opportunity, only a few months ago—and the current shadow minister was the shadow minister going into the election—and a chance to invest in aged care, what did they provide for residential care?

Mr Brian Mitchell interjecting—

The member for Lyons.

Nothing. What did they provide for home care? Nothing. They know that, we know that and the Australian public knows that.