Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing and Seniors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health. Can the minister confirm that as at 31 December 2019 more than 1,130 older Australians were waiting for the approved home-care package in the region that covers Eden-Monaro?

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll obviously check the record on the specific area in question. I can confirm that across Australia since 2012 until now we have seen an increase from 60,000 to a projected 158,000 home-care packages. That is a more than doubling, from 60,000 to 158,000.

In the last year, what we have seen is an increase of almost 40,000 packages. This has all occurred at a time where we've had over $2 billion of additional funding on the watch of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer go into home-care packages. So, just to repeat, we have gone from 60,000 to a projected 158,000 over the course of the current forward estimates. But there is a very interesting point here in making this comparison. Whilst we on this side have contributed over $2 billion for additional home-care packages, there was an opportunity for the alternative government to set out how much they would put in at the last budget and, despite over $380 billion of taxes, they had zero in their budget for home-care packages. So as an exemplar of crocodile tears this is hard to beat. We put in over $2 billion. They claim there's an issue and they put in nothing.