Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. In March 2022 there were almost 60,000 Australians on the Home Care Packages waiting list. The now health minister said that waiting list was 'a national disgrace'. But, Prime Minister, under Labor, the Home Care Packages waiting list has skyrocketed, with more than 87,000 Australians now waiting. If a waiting list of 60,000 was a national disgrace, what words describe Labor's crisis of more than 87,000 today?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll ask the minister to supplement but I'll say this: we introduced and passed through this parliament on a bipartisan basis the most significant reforms to aged care this century. We did that just last year, and we did that after a royal commission described aged care in one word in its interim report, and that one word was 'neglect'. When we went to the 2022 election saying that we would put the nurses back into 'nursing home', we were mocked by those opposite. Today, 99 per cent of the time, there is a nurse in an aged-care facility. That is a good thing.

We have been working through all of these issues, including the reform to both residential and home aged care. We have been working through that and making an enormous difference, and it has been positive. With the ageing of the population, we have put in additional investment after what was a period of a decade of neglect by the former government.

Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for her question. Over the last five years, we have, as a country, pretty much doubled the number of home-care packages in the system, from about 150,000 to a little more than 300,000, and we will need to continue increasing those home-care package numbers vary significantly for, really, as long as any of us are in this parliament, because the oldest of the baby boomers, we know, are now pretty much hitting the average age of entry to the Home Care Packages system and in a few years time will hit to the average age of entry into the residential aged-care system. That is why, particularly under the leadership of former minister Wells in this area, we had to compress pretty much a decade of reform into just three years—not helped of course by the budget cuts that the opposition leader initiated as the minister for aged care through the 2016 MYEFO that actually took money out of aged care and didn't redeploy it to reform but actually just returned it to general revenue, obviously contributing to the situation that led to the royal commission in the first place. So it doesn't really sound very nice in the opposition leader's mouth to complain about the situation in aged care that we have had to fix over the last three years after a decade not just of neglect but of actual cuts initiated again by the now opposition leader when she had responsibility for this portfolio.

Hon. Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When the House comes to order, we'll hear from the honourable member for Griffith.