House debates Questions without Notice

Aged Care

Wednesday, 17 June 2020 House of Representatives

Julie Collins

Julie Collins Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing and Seniors

3:10 pm

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

Greg Hunt Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health

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.