Santo Santoro (Queensland, Liberal Party, Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I very much appreciate this round of questioning, and I would invite honourable senators to continue to make up for the abysmal lack of questioning and interest in aged care that they have been displaying during the past two or three weeks. In terms of the very specific information that both Senator Moore and Senator McLucas have asked for on Queensland, as is usually my case, I will undertake to provide very specific information to them on the Queensland situation but I do wish to address those points that relate generally to the Australian scene in order to suggest to Senator Moore that in fact she is not accurate when she belittles the performance of the Australian government and the allocation of licences and beds.

I can inform Senator Moore and the Senate that the Australian government will meet its 2001 election commitment of having almost 200,000 operational places by June 2006. It is important to remind Senator Moore, Senator McLucas and everybody else that that was a commitment that we made in 2006—endorsed by the people of Australia—which we will meet. As at 31 December 2005, there were 197,203 operational places—