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

I have received a letter from the honourable Leader of the Nationals in the House of Representatives, the member for Gippsland, proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The Government's failure to govern for older Australians.

I call upon those honourable members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) | Link to this | Hansard source

The Albanese government has declared war on older Australians because the majority of them don't vote Labor. It's as simple as that. The Albanese government has declared war on older Australians because the majority of them don't vote Labor. Now, through deliberate measures in a budget of broken promises and higher taxes and through rationing the services that our seniors need, the Labor Party has sent a clear message that it simply does not respect older Australians. The message we are receiving back in return is equally simple. Australians want their country back. After four years of this government, Australians are worse off and our country is heading the wrong direction. It's older Australians who are copping it the most. Budgets are about choices, and this government simply doesn't choose to support our older Australians.

Now, for a prime minister who promised to govern for all Australians, this is yet another broken promise because our aged-care system is in crisis. There are now 230,000 Australians on waiting lists, and what those Australians don't need is the fake empathy we saw in question time from this minister. They need action. The aged-care system has 230,000 people on waiting lists, and now what we're seeing on top of that, in terms of impacts on older Australians, is this government coming out and deciding to cut private health insurance rebates. We've seen this government come along and change the arrangements for capital gains tax, change the arrangements for negative gearing and change the arrangements of trust and self-managed super funds, all after the Prime Minister said not once, not twice, but 50 times he was making no such changes. The Australian people weren't even given a chance to vote on those changes at an election.

I'm going to focus my comments today more on aged care for a very good reason. This is literally a matter of life and death for a lot of older people in our community. I have spoken on this issue in the past, in this chamber and in the Federation Chamber as well, and I make this contribution with a heavy heart because it should never have come to this. We have written repeatedly to this minister on behalf of constituents. In fact, my office is now tracking 18 outstanding representations to the minister since the start of the year. This minister can take three to four months to bother responding to correspondence on behalf of my constituents. I'm not trying to score a political point in saying this, but we are trying to instil a sense of urgency in this minister and his department about the real-life consequences of their failure to fix the aged-care system.

Now, the minister has told the House previously:

Aged care is a fundamental promise this country makes to older Australians that … they will be safe, they will be seen and they will be cared for with dignity.

But, given that Senate estimates has been told that 4,800 older Australians died in just 12 months waiting for their Support at Home package, isn't this just another broken promise to the people of Australia? We simply don't know what the current figure is. The minister was invited today to give us a figure from 2022 to now. He failed to do that. There could be up to 100 Australians dying each week as they wait for the support they are entitled to receive.These people have been assessed and have been deemed eligible for support, and they are dying on the waiting list. These are not abstract numbers on a page. These are real people who have worked hard, contributed their taxes and helped to build our nation, and they find themselves needing a little bit of help to stay in their homes. They've been assessed for care, and they're not receiving the care they're entitled to.

I'm going to give you one tragic example. I've spoken about this in the past and in local media. I have the permission of the family to do so. I was contacted by a family member who was concerned about his 99-year-old parents, Frank and Velma, who were both 99 and both living at home. They wanted to stay at home—and we all know that older people in our community do better if they have that opportunity to stay in their own, familiar surroundings. After some recent falls, Frank and Velma were reassessed as being eligible for a modest assistance package under the Support at Home program. Did they get the help, as the minister tries to pretend in this place? No. Frank and Velma were told their package would be delivered in 11- to 12-months time. They were 99 years old! We warned the government that they could very well die before they received that package. We asked in Senate estimates if there was any way we could fast track this package for Frank and Velma. I wrote to the minister. We waited 74 days for a response from the government, and poor Frank died seven days before that letter arrived in my office. Frank died on the waiting list. We received no additional action, and the letter itself contained no commitment to try and fast track support for this 99-year-old couple. I urge the minister and I urge the department to take some responsibility for these long delays and show some urgency on behalf of older Australians who are now waiting up to 12 months to receive Support at Home packages that they've been deemed eligible to receive.

Sadly it's not an isolated case. I've got one other case here in a letter from Marie, who wrote to me a couple of weeks ago, I think, about her 100-year-old mother. She says, 'My mother is 100 years old. She has already waited many months after being approved for funding and now faces further delays before any practical assistance can be provided. The government promotes programs that support older people to remain in their own homes, but the reality is that the system seems unable to deliver supports within a timeframe that reflects the urgency of their needs. Perhaps those responsible for designing these changes should ask themselves a simple question: if this were their own mother or father, would they be satisfied with this outcome?'

I appeal to the minister, and I appeal to the department: if this were your mother or father, who was 100 years old and waiting month after month for support in their own home, would you be satisfied? I ask the department, and I ask the minister to do better. Just do better. The minister can't claim that he hasn't been told. As I said, I've written to him on many occasions and so have my colleagues. In March this year the minister said:

I think the Integrated Assessment Tool is doing a good job.

Then, on 3 June, he announced a so-called rapid review of the same system that apparently eight weeks earlier was doing a very good job.

Surely the minister now understands that the system is not responding well to people whose conditions are deteriorating quickly and that they have been left on these waiting lists without receiving any support in their own homes. The algorithm simply isn't working. I've listened to the minister give media interviews. The algorithm isn't working, human assessors in our communities are incredibly frustrated and the prioritisation of cases has resulted in warped outcomes. Various advocacy groups have written to the minister and have spoken publicly about their concerns. What did the government do in response? Well, the government tried to bury the wait times report by releasing it in budget week because that wait time report showed older Australians were waiting more than a year to receive their Support at Home packages.

The Older Persons Advocacy Network Director, Samantha Edmonds, in relation to aged-care waiting figures being confronting, said:

It's so detrimental to the health and wellbeing of older people to have those wait times, to watch their health and wellbeing decline.

We have the New South Wales health minister saying that older Australians are now blocking beds in hospitals—up to 800 per night—because there's no support for them in their own homes. What happens when people are left on this waiting list is that their health deteriorates. They have falls. They then need more help. They end up calling ambulances, and they wind up in hospital rather than in more appropriate settings. Ryan Park, the New South Wales health minister, said:

The reality is the lack of aged-care places and the wait times for those places mean 800 people remain stranded in New South Wales hospitals … This is not good for patients—it decreases mobility. It increases their risk of further complications. They and their families deserve better.

That is the bottom line. They and their families deserve better than this.

This government's war on older Australians is hurting their health. This government's war on older Australians is hurting their finances and their retirement incomes. It's hurting the people they love, who are seeing their family members suffer. Families are being traumatised by a government that is failing in its fundamental duty to all Australians: just keep Australians safe. Worse than that, we now know that the government is trying to hide the facts from the nation with sneaky political tactics which are unworthy of a minister in the Parliament of Australia.

Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Aged Care and Seniors) | Link to this | Hansard source

Listening to the member for Gippsland, it strikes me just how far this parliament has drifted from where it used to be. There was a time, and it wasn't so long ago, when aged care and looking after seniors across our community wasn't a contest in this chamber. We were working on this together.

The royal commission into aged care was established by a coalition government. It was backed right across this parliament, by both sides of this House, and, as it reported its findings, nobody in this place stood up to defend the system as it was. The new Aged Care Act was passed with bipartisan support. It was a commitment that we would work together, knowing the urgency and the importance of this task—to deliver better outcomes for the people who have built our communities. We agreed, all of us collectively, that we had let older Australians down. We agreed it could never be allowed to happen again.

But, if those opposite want to talk about failing older Australians, let's talk about what that same royal commission found on their record. There were three volumes in its interim report. The commissioners needed only one word for the cover: Neglect. It was a system that, in their words, diminished Australia as a nation. Older Australians were left in pain, left alone and left waiting for care that never came. Commissioner Lynelle Briggs put the cause of it beyond doubt. She said that the coalition government's main consideration was 'the minimum commitment it could get away with, rather than what should be done to sustain the aged-care system'. The minimum they could get away with—that's an independent royal commission's verdict on those opposite being in office for a decade. It's the reason that the mountain we have to climb to deliver better outcomes for older people is so very steep.

I note that the member for Gippsland was a minister in that government—

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) | Link to this | Hansard source

Why don't you answer your letters?

Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Aged Care and Seniors) | Link to this | Hansard source

It was within his power every single day to stand up for older Australians across all of our communities and demand that his government did better—

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) | Link to this | Hansard source

Why won't you respond to a letter? Come on, show bag!

Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Aged Care and Seniors) | Link to this | Hansard source

before we got to a point where a royal commission accused him and his colleagues of systematic neglect.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Gippsland, everyone showed you respect during your 10 minutes. I want you to apply the same level of respect back. The cross-table interjections are very unhelpful. You have all got an opportunity to contribute to this debate and express your opinions during that. The minister has the floor, and I'd like to hear him uninterrupted, please.

Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Aged Care and Seniors) | Link to this | Hansard source

Since the royal commission, the member for Gippsland has been party to the bipartisanship of these generational reforms that we're seeking to implement, but now, wracked with the desperation of facing their own political senescence, they are crab-walking away from this bipartisan reform program.

I'm thankful for small things, and at least at least the member for Gippsland has recently—but very recently—found some sort of part-time moral courage when he comes to this chamber on these important matters. But I stress how recent it is and how very part time it is.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Gippsland! I will not repeat what you are just uttering across the chamber, but I don't want to hear it again. I think you know very well what I'm talking about, and if I hear it again, you'll be leaving the chamber. The minister has the call.

Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Aged Care and Seniors) | Link to this | Hansard source

Forgive me, Deputy Speaker, if I find today's MPI and the member for Gippsland's carry on a little hard to swallow, because here is what those opposite have chosen to do: they've walked away from the bipartisanship we built around older Australians. And this week, as this parliament prepares to take the next steps in rebuilding the very system that they hollowed out, they've decided that older Australians are worth a cheap political stunt rather than showing up to work together to work hard on supporting older Australians to rebuild the system that they rely upon. We don't accept that—we never have. Where they choose division, we choose delivery, and we've got the record to prove it. Rebuilding a system that a royal commission called a national shame doesn't happen overnight; you do it brick by brick.

So let me lay out the building blocks of the new system—everything that we've achieved in four years after that miserable decade of neglect: a new Aged Care Act, the first full rebuild of the Act since 1997 that, as of 1 November last year, wrote the rights of older Australians into law for the first time in this nation's history; stronger standards; a regulator with teeth. The very first bill that we passed in the 47th parliament was an aged-care bill. We launched Support at Home alongside the new act to replace the old Home Care Packages program, a way to make aged care a government service that will be around when the member for Gippsland needs it, when I need it, and when all of our children need it. Already, in just eight months, tens of thousands more older Australians are getting care where they actually want to be—in their own homes. Wait times are coming down in the order of months. There are an extra 83,000 packages that, as of today, have now been fully rolled out to get people care where they need it, sooner.

Once that system started in November, we did what Labor governments always do; we listened to older people's experiences, we refined, in this year's budget we invested so that no older Australian will pay a cent out of pocket for clinical care under our Support at Home program. We've delivered a package of consumer protections so people get a fair go on prices and a clear statement of exactly what they're paying for. We've digitised the hardship process so the people doing it toughest aren't drowning in paperwork to prove it. The workers—we inherited a workforce that had been told for years that it simply wasn't worth more. Carers said, 'I could get paid more working on the checkout at Aldi.' We didn't think that was acceptable, so in four years we've invested nearly $18 billion to fund the largest pay rises in the history of aged care. The average registered nurse on the award is now $28,000 better off every year, and that goes up again tomorrow. We put registered nurses back in nursing homes around the clock. We lifted care minutes. There are now millions of hours of extra care being delivered to older Australians that simply weren't there before. We know that when we value our workers, when we pay them what they're worth and when we support them to have long careers in the sector, older Australians get better aged care.

We've invested in the buildings. This is where years of underinvestment has a particularly long tail. It takes anywhere from five to seven years from inception to delivery of a new aged-care home, so to say we're still playing catch up would be an understatement. But we're ambitious about moving towards delivering the 10,000 new aged-care beds this country needs every year to keep pace with our growing population, so we've invested more than $1 billion through the Aged Care Capital Assistance program—more aged-care infrastructure investment than any government in our nation's history. That means new homes, new beds in the communities that need them most. We're making aged care work for every Australian. This week, the government will move to establish Australia's first permanent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander aged-care commissioner—a dedicated, independent voice for First Nations elders built into the architecture of the system to ensure that they are central to the care that they receive.

We're not finished. Next year, this Labor government will invest $47 billion in aged care, the single largest aged-care investment this country has ever made, and it will keep going up every year after that. Those opposite are stopping at nothing to frighten older Australians about how that gets paid for. Every dollar we ask for through the changes to the private health insurance arrangements for older Australians goes straight back into the aged-care system—every single cent—so that, when an older Australian needs aged care, it's there for them. That's the deal we've made. We're reinvesting in the care people will genuinely need rather than leaving them to find it in the system the royal commission called 'neglect'.

Let me put it as plainly as I can. They had the road map, and they did the minimum. We got the report, and we got to work. They bring a motion. We bring a record. This side of the House does not treat older Australians as a political football. We don't do division; we do delivery. And we'll keep doing it brick by brick for as long as it takes to get the right care for every older Australian.

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) | Link to this | Hansard source

If confidence delivered outcomes, I'm sure that the Labor Party would do a fabulous job, but the fact of the matter is it doesn't. Nobody held back, nobody left behind—that was the promise of this prime minister. Older Australians remember it. They were told this prime minister understood aged care, the cost of living and dignity. Now they actually see the truth.

Labor has broken faith with the people who built this country—those who worked hard, paid taxes, raised families, volunteered, served their towns and did the right thing all their lives. Many went without so they could keep private health insurance not for luxury but for security. They wanted to know that—if they needed a hip replacement, a knee replacement, surgery or specialist care—they would not be left waiting in pain in that incredibly long queue. What has Labor done? It has targeted them. Labor wants Australians over 65 to pay more for private health cover. More than three million older Australians will be hit. Many will pay hundreds more a year. Some couples could be forced to find well over $1,000 extra. For pensioners and self-funded retirees on fixed incomes, that is not loose change. It is the groceries. It's the fuel. It's the medicine. It's the power bill.

This is not fairness; it is a blatant Labor tax grab on older Australians. There is nothing fair about punishing people for ageing, nothing fair about telling someone in their 70s after decades of premiums that they're now the budget problem, and nothing fair about pushing people out of private health and pretending public hospitals can absorb the pressure. In regional Australia, we know what happens when the system is stretched. People wait longer. They travel further. They sit on lists. Families take time off work to drive mum or dad hundreds of kilometres for care. When Labor makes private health more expensive, it does not just hurt household budgets; it piles pressure onto already stretched hospitals across the nation.

Aged care is no better. Older Australians were promised dignity and better care. Instead, too many are waiting a year or more for the support they need to stay safe at home. They deteriorate while they wait, as the member for Gippsland aptly described—many of the constituents in my electorate. Families are left exhausted. Some end up in hospital beds because help did not arrive on time. Home support is not a luxury. Help with showering is not a luxury. Meals, transport, cleaning, nursing and personal care are not extras. They allow an older person to stay in their own home in their own town close to the people they love. Yet, under Labor, older Australians are told to wait, pay more and accept less. They are pushed through phone assessments and computer systems when what they need is a person who will listen. I hear from older people who are proud and independent. They do not ask for much. They want to pay their bills, see a doctor, stay safe at home, keep the private cover they worked hard to maintain. They want respect, not lectures. Labor has no credible plan for the future of the Commonwealth Home Support Program beyond 1 July 2027. That matters. These basic services keep people out of hospital and out of residential care for longer.

This is the Labor pattern. Promise compassion, then bill Australians for it promised reform, then deliver delay. Promise fairness, then make older Australians pay. Older Australians are not the problem. They are the backbone of this country. They built the roads, staffed the hospitals, ran farms, opened businesses, built homes, cared for children, paid taxes and held communities together through drought, flood, fire and hardship. Older Australians are not savings measures—better than a health policy that forces a choice between insurance and food, better than an aged-care system that makes people wait until their health collapses. Labor's attacks on older Australians must stop. This parliament should stand with older Australians. They kept their end of the bargain. It's time this government kept theirs too.

Gordon Reid (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose this MPI on so many fronts. I want to call it out for what it is: a shabby, cynical little stunt from a Liberal Party trying to crawl out from under the wreckage that they created. For those opposite to come into this chamber and lecture Labor on older Australians is not just hypocrisy; it is gall on stilts. They had years in government yet ignored all the warnings, letting families fight through a broken system and leaving older Australians waiting, worrying and often, heartbreakingly, begging for the dignity that they deserve. And what did those opposite do? They sat on their hands while aged-care services buckled, and that was even with access to the departments, access to the budget and access to the cabinet table. There were the warnings and the royal commission. They had the power and every opportunity to act. But now, in opposition, this Liberal Party slithers back into this chamber, draped in concern, pretending that they are the champions for older Australians. Please just spare us the performance.

This MPI is not about older Australians. It is about the Liberal Party trying to torch the evidence before anyone reads the file. They want the country to forget who was in charge when they were in government. They want aged-care workers to forget who undervalued them. They want families to forget who let the system decay. They want older Australians to forget who looked the other way. But Australians aren't fools. The Liberals come in here with clean speeches and dirty fingerprints. They did not just discover compassion here today. No, what they discovered was opposition. And now, apparently, after years of neglect, they found a conscience—conveniently located somewhere between a press release and a media opportunity.

As a doctor, I know a bad handover when I see it, and I'm seeing one right now. The Liberal Party handed over an aged-care system in distress—understaffed, underpaid, neglected and unstable. And now they want to blame the treating team for starting the resuscitation. That is not leadership or concern; that is political cowardice dressed up in a cheap suit.

Under this prime minister and under this minister for aged care, this Labor government is doing the work that those opposite were too weak, too lazy and too divided to do, and we are delivering a rights based aged care act, putting dignity, safety and respect at the centre of aged care. We are delivering support at home so older Australians can stay independent, supported and connected in their own homes, and we are backing aged care workers with real wage increases, because you cannot fix aged care while treating the people who provide it like an afterthought. We are strengthening Medicare, making urgent care centres permanent and making medications cheaper, and we're also investing in hospitals, all of which our older Australians access. This is what governing looks like.

What the coalition and One Nation are offering is heckling from the wreckage. They had the power and wasted it. They had the responsibility and they ran from it. They had the time and they squandered it. Older Australians on the Central Coast and right across this country deserved better. What they don't deserve is to be dragged into what we've all witnessed here today, this grubby, little memory-loss exercise of the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation. This MPI should be rejected for exactly what it is. It is a cynical stunt from a Liberal opposition with, from what I can see, no plan, no shame and—what's more—no moral authority.

Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing and Sovereign Capability) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak for a proud generation of Australians who have shamelessly been targeted by this hapless Albanese Labor government. They are our seniors, our retirees and our pensioners. These are the people who built our nation, worked hard, paid their taxes and sacrificed for decades so they could enjoy a secure retirement. They were promised certainty in their twilight years, but instead they've been handed a brutal betrayal of a budget. This Albanese Labor government has looked at the hard-earned savings of older Australians and treated them like a cash cow to fund its reckless spending. When Labor run out of money, they come after yours.

Hidden in the budget papers is the widow's tax, the title transfer trap. Under the new rules, the simple administrative act of updating a property deed due to the death of a lifelong partner strips away the grandfathered protections. This is a financial penalty on grief. The moment an asset changes to a surviving spouse's name alone, their capital gains tax discounts vanish, triggering a massive unplanned tax bill during a period of deep personal trauma.

To add insult to injury, the private health insurance rebate has been slashed. The budget systematically reduces the private health insurance rebate for anyone over the age of 65, breaking a decades-old promise to look after seniors on fixed incomes. This will exacerbate the hospital crisis, forcing seniors off private cover through artificial premium spikes. This will drive vulnerable patients back into the public system, placing immense pressure on struggling regional hospitals. And we certainly know that regional hospitals are already at breaking point.

The cruellest blow of all is the allied health cap for our veterans. The government has slapped a rigid $5,000 annual cap on allied health services for veterans, including physiotherapy, podiatry and occupational therapy. That's an insult to their service. Our aged veterans did not put a cap on their service when they stood up for Australia. This government has no right to put a cap on their medical care.

In this budget, those opposite have abolished the 50 per cent CGT, capital gains tax, discount. Completely removing the longstanding capital gains discount heavily penalises regional small-business owners and retired farmers who have spent a lifetime building an asset to fund their own retirement. A lot of these people haven't had the resources to put money into super. Their farm was their super. By destroying the nest egg, decades of physical labour and early morning work has been treated like a sudden windfall, with the tax office taking a massive bite out of independent savings that were meant to create wealth in these people's twilight years.

The changes to trust income attack self-funded retirees. Changes to discretionary and family trusts directly harm self-funded retirees who utilise these legal structures to manage steady retirement income. Restricting financial independence, these changes penalise older Australians who've worked hard to maintain self-sufficient, independent funding for their aged care.

The hidden trap is the inflation. We're living in a Labor created cost-of-living crisis. With inflation, everything has gone up. Groceries have gone up, insurance has gone up, and mortgages have gone up. Every single thing that those opposite do is creating a bigger cost for people, and the most affected are our elderly. This budget strikes a cruel blow to anyone over the age of 65. It's a calculated assault on financial independence, and it's happened during the worst time this country has ever seen. You do not build a fair country by making our seniors poorer, and you certainly do not build a strong economy by penalising the people who have worked hard to achieve self-reliance. This budget tells older Australians that their lifetime of effort does not matter.

Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to rise on this matter of public importance. I, like others on our side, do find it very bizarre that the opposition have put this forward because we all remember when the Liberals and Nationals were in government. We all remember the extent of all their cuts—

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, that's exactly right. Whether it was aged care or health, no matter what it was, right across the board—there were cuts to pensions. But I'll detail that a bit later on. What I want to talk about is what we on the Labor side think about our older Australians and why we're very proud to deliver for them. Let's always remember that these are the people who built our nation. They worked hard, paid their taxes and raised their kids, and that's at the heart of everything we do to deliver for them. Of course, our funding increases and assistance to older Australians are quite extensive, whether it's lowering cost-of-living pressures, or expanding healthcare access or aged-care access, they're all major areas we've invested in.

Let's look at health care first. We strengthened bulk-billing right across the board by increasing—tripling—the bulk-billing incentive. So many older people can actually access a bulk-billing doctor now, and they couldn't do that before. Cheaper scripts have made such a huge difference to all the general population by capping it at $25, and we've also frozen it at $7.70 for pensioners and concession card holders. Urgent care clinics are amazing. I know so many older people in my electorate. It has made a huge difference for the health care that they need. We know, obviously, that older people do need to access health care more. We continue to deliver for them. We've also got workforce incentives and other cost-of-living relief measures. Commonwealth rent assistance is 40 per cent higher than when we first came into government. That assists so many older Australians. Our deeming rate adjustments, our energy bill rebates and, of course, all of our reforms to aged care which have made such a huge difference, as well as our indexing of the pension. As we know, we are really getting on with the job of delivering once-in-a-generation reforms to deliver high-quality aged-care services to older Australians.

Let's look at the record of the Liberals and Nationals. They did establish the royal commission into aged care, and the interim report, tabled October 2019 just needed one word for the cover. What was that word? Neglect. That really summarised their time in government when it came to aged care. In the commission's own words: 'The coalition left behind an underpaid, undervalued and insufficiently trained workforce.' That's what we inherited as a government. We're investing $47 billion in aged care, the largest investment in our nation's history, and those investments are right across the board for residential care, for Support at Home and for the workforce, with nearly $18 billion to fund the largest pay increase in the history of aged care. All we saw were cuts from them.

Let's turn back the clock and go over some of the cuts they had. We all remember before the 2013 election. They were then crowing that, if they got into government, there'd be no cuts to education, no cuts to health and no changes to pensions. What's the first thing they did? It was to cut all of it. These cuts were horrific. In 2014, they tried to introduce a GP tax. I know many older Australians in my area remember that. They cut $57 billion from hospitals, they tried to cut pension indexation, and they tried to increase the pension age to 70. Always remember that the Liberals and Nationals teamed up with the Greens and cut the pension for over 370,000 pensioners. I can tell you, every one of those people in my electorate remembers what they did with them. We know how devastating that was.

We also know what the Liberals and Nationals want to do. They talked about it a bit. They want to bring back the cashless debit card. What an impact that'll have on pensioners! That still worries people in my electorate. They know that they want to bring it back, and we know what that means. It means 80 per cent of their pension payment would be put on a privatised cashless card. They had it in government before. They wanted to expand it to pensioners. We got in, and we got rid of it. I know that pensioners were very worried when they talked about doing that.

Of course, it's not just the Liberals and Nationals that people in my electorate are concerned about; they're equally concerned about the other conservative party, One Nation. We know now that they're just a sort of conglomeration of three parties all trying to outdo one another. We know when we look at One Nation's policies that they want to have cuts to the PBS. How devastating would that be for our older Australians? We also know One Nation MPs have voted 15 times to cut or freeze the aged pension. They've also voted many times to make GP and specialist visits more expensive.

All we can say when we look across there at the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation is: what are they going to do? They're going to make cuts to health, aged care and pensions. The Greens helped them to do that as well, so you can't trust them on that. But this is a fact. Conservative governments and conservative parties make cuts that hurt older Australians. We've seen it time and time again. It's only Labor that continues to deliver for our older Australians, whether it's health, aged care or pensions, because we will always stand with our older Australians. (Time expired)

Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) | Link to this | Hansard source

I know the topic today is Labor's failure to govern for older Australians, but, given the snowball effect of announcements over the last six months, it seems more appropriate to say that Labor seems intent on punishing our older Australians. Under the changes in the FY27 budget announcement, older Australians will now be forced to pay up to $1,600 more for their private health insurance per year, which is going to put significant pressure on their household budgets, particularly those of retirees on limited or fixed incomes.

Since the day of that disastrous policy announcement, my office has been literally inundated with pleas from directly affected constituents asking for my help. In my electorate of Cowper, over 26,000 residents will be negatively impacted. In many cases, these people are already sacrificing other essentials in order to afford the health cover they vitally need. They are choosing between eating three meals a day or having their cover. While we live in a region rich with natural beauty, that wealth does not extend to the average weekly household income, with a significant number in my electorate relying on pensions.

Regional Australians are acutely aware of the shortcomings and extended waitlists seen in our public hospitals, so these considered, older Australians have taken the necessary steps not only to safeguard their own health and wellbeing but responsibly take the pressure off the public health system. Labor's reward for that careful planning is another bill to their ever-increasing cost-of-living pressures. This is the age group in our community that can least generate additional income. It's not like they can go to Coles and stack shelves at night-time to make ends meet. Moving the goalposts in these circumstances, at their stage of life, is cruel and unusual punishment.

This Labor government needs to listen to the real issues facing older Australians, and not just those in metropolitan areas. I suppose this lack of acknowledgement and practical care was foreshadowed months ago when the ill-considered unconsulted changes were introduced to the aged-care home-care packages in November. Those flick-of-a-pen changes have now been in effect for over six months, with the snowball now a full-blown avalanche. To date, we've seen a few press releases touting new processes or a small number of packages being released, but, cruelly, every announcement and adaptation being made has ultimately left older Australians increasingly vulnerable.

The number of requests for urgent assistance through my office has increased 10-fold in recent months. The issues range from inhumane wait times for a home-care package assessment and newly implemented algorithms arbitrarily stripping some recipients of basic essential supports without warning to a significant escalation of service costs. They are some of the common issues. The compounding effects of every new hurdle are leaving many elderly Cowper constituents in significant distress and providers at their wits' end. To hear from local providers that they had clients in palliative care who were forced to go on a waitlist and subsequently passed away before receiving any level of support isn't just heartbreaking; it's indefensible. And it is demoralising for the providers who are genuinely there to do the best they can for their clients. As Ben Kleeman from UPA Aged Care Solutions in Port Macquarie, in my electorate, told me last month, 'We want to help. We have capacity. We have been through reforms before, but right now we are disempowered from providing care.'

In the last few months, I've reached out to advocates asking for their input, and the picture they paint is one of negligence through government ignorance. I'm asking for their input, and I want to share that input on a bipartisan nature. I will give it to those opposite, and we will see what happens.

Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

While we listen to those opposite try to throw blame around and cynically, desperately, try to claw back some votes, we should turn to an independent arbiter as to why the aged-care system is where it is right now. The independent aged-care royal commission called it when they released their interim report entitled Neglect in 2019, under those opposite. It's a condemnation of those opposite. They left a mess. They left a disaster. But now, shamelessly, they play politics and spread misinformation rather than help us fix the problem.

The Albanese Labor government is the government for older Australians. We are for older Australians living in dignity and security. We are for older Australians being able to access the care they need when they need it. This government recognises the magnitude of the task before us. The demographics are not in our favour. Next year, 90,000 additional Australians will turn 80; 15 years ago that number was 15,000. This has an impact on the service offerings we need to provide, specifically in aged care and health. It means that we need to build an aged-care home every three days for the next 20 years in order to accommodate a rapidly growing older population and deal with the backlog of no beds built over the last decade.

But the Albanese Labor government has a plan that will tackle the issues head on and provide older Australians with the quality of care that they need and they deserve, and that will be sustainable for generations to come. That's why we're putting $47 billion in the coming year into expanding and improving the provision of aged-care services in Australia. This means 5,000 more beds year on year. It will mean being able to build and maintain quality residential accommodation. It will mean making Support at Home fairer and more affordable and making assessments faster and wait times shorter. In the last two quarters we processed 260,000 assessments. More recently, we announced that we will strengthen consumer protections for those on Support at Home by empowering the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to be able to order refunds for overcharged services and to be able to report publicly on investigations and enforcement actions; by producing each quarter a national summary of Support at Home prices in order that participants and their families can compare prices across providers; by monitoring prices of personal care as they transition into the clinical care category, on top of the free showering, dressing, continence support and clinical services already provided; by limiting increases to no more than twice per year; by working with the Older Persons Advocacy Network, Council of the Ageing, Ageing Australia and the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to establish clear and enforceable definitional guidelines around what constitutes 'reasonable' pricing.

The government's plan to expand and improve aged-care services in Australia will also mean an expansion of end-of-life pathway, providing dignified care to older Australians in their final months. It will mean 20 additional specialist dementia care program units and the expansion of the Hospital to Aged Care Dementia Support Program, providing crucial transition support for older Australians going from hospital into residential care. The Albanese Labor government's plan means more aged-care beds, more packages and better care.

The Albanese Labor government is for older Australians. The growth of our older population is rapidly outpacing our capacity to provide crucial supports and services, and, unfortunately, we inherited a service system in crisis. The system risks collapsing under its own weight. We are confronted with this reality and we are confronting the reality with a plan—a plan that will ensure that every older Australian can get affordable and timely access to the quality care they need and deserve, and a plan that will improve and expand the system to make it fit for purpose and sustainable well into the foreseeable future. Labor have always stood for older Australians, and we will continue to stand for older Australians. When you think about the Liberal-National party commitment to older people, just remember that one word: neglect.

Leon Rebello (McPherson, Liberal National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend my friend and colleague the member for Gippsland for moving this motion in relation to the government's failure to govern for older Australians. I am livid. I am livid on behalf of the thousands of older Australians not only in my seat but around this country, because some of the changes that the government has proposed and that the government is making are going to affect them in such an unconscionable and a serious way. And I say to those opposite, the ones who have contributed to this debate and those who are sitting in the chamber today or watching, you should really look at yourself and look at the content of what we're saying, because this is about your parents, it's about your grandparents and it's about people that you represent, or are supposed to represent, in this place, and what you're doing to older Australians is not something worthy of representatives.

I ran a campaign in my electorate after the changes for those aged 65-plus were announced that mean that older Australians are going to be paying more for their private health insurance. We received over 2,000 responses to those surveys, and most of the responses focused on the fact that these are older Australians who have worked for this country, who have done the right thing for so many years, and now they're finding themselves in a really difficult spot as a result of this government's characterisation of them. It was said by the member for Gippsland—and I absolutely echo his comments—that we need to call this out for what it is. It is a Labor government that is punishing Australians who don't vote for them, and that is fundamentally disgusting and it's dishonest.

I'm going to read out some of the comments—I know there are some opposite laughing, but this is a serious matter. I'm going to read out some of the comments that ordinary Australians in the 65-plus category have sent to me and give them a voice in this place, because those on the opposite side of this parliament are prepared to go against them. I quote one person: 'That's a joke, Leon. We currently struggle to maintain existing low cover. Any further change will force us to the public system.' Another person said:

It's a money grab by Labor who've wasted money, now targeting aged people who've been prudent with their money throughout their tax paying years.

Someone said:

I'm 79 years old on pension and still working because of rental costs. I think this is excessively unfair. Please consider excepting pensioners from these continual rises. I have tried to stay independent not to be a burden in the govt. But it's becoming really frightening when there is nowhere else to go if i can no longer afford rent and health care too.

Another person said:

As a still working, self funded semi retiree (73years) old, I feel disillusioned and disgusted by our current govt, who seem to be hell bent on removing any incentive to be a self sufficient, hard working person. This is in complete contrast to what I was taught growing up! (Work hard, take responsibility for self and family! We see aged care and NDIS funding being misappropriated in the Millions of $, while inept ministers seek to take funds from the disabled and elderly victims!

There are many of these comments:

When we joined a health insurance the government advised the rebate would be for life. We trusted that promise.

Another person said:

To do this to older retirees is criminal. A lot of them are hanging on by the skin of their teeth financially, when they need their insurance the most and after paying premiums for years with minimal claims. Labour will pay the price if they mess with older Australians …

Another person said:

So this is over $1200 for the two of us. If more people drop out of private health, not only will it affect the elderly, hospitals are struggling now, how will they cope with the extra patients. Waiting list will lengthen even more. The younger population will also be impacted with increased premiums due to the large number of contributors dropping out.

I have so many. I asked my staff to print out the first 50 that came through out of 2,000 people. These are some of those comments.

I say to those opposite: you can dismiss this topic in here—you can come into this place and act as though you're gods and you're not doing anything against older Australians—but older Australians see through your mess. They see through your lies. They see through your incompetence. What we're—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for McPherson, you'll need to withdraw the unparliamentary reference.

Leon Rebello (McPherson, Liberal National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw. But, those opposite who are calling out things from across the chamber, you should sit and look at yourselves, because you're doing this to older Australians who have done nothing but the right thing. They've worked hard their whole life, and you're coming into this place and ripping out their future from under them.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm just going to remind all members in the House, when making contributions to the debate, to direct your comments through me as the chair. That way we avoid the personal attacks. I'm giving the call to the member for Deakin.

Matt Gregg (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

This is an incredibly serious topic. After all, the way we judge a society is by how we care for its most vulnerable. We know that the aged-care system was correctly categorised as a reflection of neglect in that initial report in 2019. There have been years of ignoring the statistical fact that we are an ageing population and that more and more of us are getting older and will need support. And what was done? Not enough.

Now we're at the stage where we would need about 10,000 extra aged-care beds a year for a whole number of years even to keep up. As the member for Boothby quite rightly noted, that would be about three extra facilities a week for the next 20 years. That is a mammoth task, and it's not going to be easy. It's going to take a very long time to make up for a very long period of ignoring the obvious and predictable outcome of becoming an ageing population.

Older Australians have deserved a steadfast resolve to improve the system. Up until this government, they haven't had it. The legislation was changed, and it is already making a difference. Tens of thousands more Australians are now receiving care in their own homes. Does that mean we're content with the system as it is? Of course not. We're not asking people to be pleased about the status quo. In fact, we are doing everything we can to drive it forward to make sure more older people can live their remaining years and complete their final seasons with dignity and with as much health as possible. But this is a mammoth task. It was something that we committed to do together, across party lines, not that long ago, but in a desperate attempt to find partisan issues and reasons for grievance, we now see these debates devolve into personal attacks—personal attacks relating to the implementation of legislation they voted for, no less.

These are incredibly serious matters, and I take them seriously and, I have to say, so does the minister. In Ringwood North in my electorate of Deakin we had an aged-care facility, Della Dale, that simply hadn't been meeting standards over a long period of time. The aged-care quality and service regulator had made that clear and had given them every opportunity to make a difference. The difficult decision was made to close that facility down. I have to thank the minister for all his assistance in helping to ensure that all of the residents in that facility were relocated to ensure that they received the care that they needed going forward. The reality is that we cannot let standards slip.

We know from the royal commission that, because of neglect, too many older Australians were left malnourished and effectively abandoned during the day, and some were subjected to all sorts of torrid abuse too graphic to describe in this chamber. It was a system failure, and it was allowed to happen for years. It was a case of out of sight, out of mind. Well, no more. It's time that, as a whole, this parliament stands up for older Australians. We must make sure that we insist upon a proper quality standard across the industry, and we're working to do just that.

Not only are we investing in more facilities; we have got a clear focus on ensuring that they meet appropriate standards and that the rights of older people are taken into consideration in the design and delivery of aged-care services across the board. Are we there yet? Of course we're not, but we need to make sure that the standards that we uphold are what we would want for our own families, because I think all of us have got a story of an elderly loved one who has been subjected to care that we would find simply unacceptable. These are the most vulnerable people in our community, and we do have to stand up for them. They've referred to a change to the subsidy for private health insurance, and, as the minister said, that is going straight into aged care to ensure that people receive the supports they need at home, because we know that, the longer they can stay at home, the higher their quality of life is.

This isn't just a game about people living longer. We have to make sure that older Australians who have contributed their entire lives to our society get to complete their final innings with dignity, to make sure that families aren't left tearing their hair out worried about their loved ones not receiving the support they desire—people with family members with dementia worrying that there are going to be chemical restraints in facilities just because they're understaffed or because there's no nurse in the nursing home. This government has taken clear action—the remarkable idea that a nursing home should have a nurse in it. Finally, a government came in and made that the standard, and we are seeing it in the vast majority of aged-care facilities now. These issues could not be more serious.

In addition to that, in other areas of policy—the MPI goes to governing for older Australians—across portfolios, we're seeing more work being done in superannuation to ensure that older people receive advice before they retire to improve their retirement outcomes. In areas of communication, we're ensuring that the antiscams frameworks are preventing criminals from taking advantage of older Australians. Across the board, we are taking into account the legitimate rights and interests of older people because we know that older Australians need a government that has their back, and they can rely on the Labor government to do everything we can to improve their lives and conditions.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

This discussion has concluded.