Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is still under the same rule of law. Another area that has changed radically in the past 11 years is the number of aged-care community places. If you look back, you will find that there were virtually no community care places 10 years ago. We now have the situation where the government will spend $1.9 billion on aged care community places over this financial year. That is a growth of more than three times what it was 11 years ago. We have got 42,000 places, as of June 2007, that were available so that people could stay in the community. More and more people are telling us that they do not want to be in institutions any more than necessary—this relates back to the sorts of comments that Senator Ellison was making: let’s change that balance from people being in residences to people being in their own homes with our support.

We have also increased the spending through the National Respite for Carers program from $19 million in 1996-97 to $185.4 million over 2007-08—again providing a chance to support people to do exactly what they want, which is stay in their own homes.

The other area that I think we should mention is the spot check area. This has been strengthened and developed and improved radically. It is now a requirement that every home will receive at least one unannounced visit every year—the current average is 1.75 unannounced visits every year. There will be more than 5½ thousand unannounced visits to homes over the next 12 months. This has to begin to give us some security in this area. The other point is that unannounced visits had to be legally provided for. (Time expired)