Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

Prime Minister K Rudd. It is very clear that this government has now racked up a massive debt of $40.8 billion, the second biggest sum since World War II. The Prime Minister will have to borrow over $700 million a week to fund his reckless and wasteful spending. So what are the government going to do? They are going to go out and con the most frail and vulnerable people of this country. That is how they are going to mislead and that is where they are going to go and raid moneys from to pay for their reckless spending. In 2007, in their own document, Labor promised a new direction for older Australians, improving the transition between hospital and aged care. What is happening? It is the complete opposite—another con, a blatant broken promise. Mr Rudd is doing the opposite to what he promised in 2007. Surprise, surprise! The government are keeping people in hospitals because they are raiding the money for the nursing home beds. What is the Prime Minister going to tell our frail and aged Australians and their families, who are waiting for nursing home beds, now that the money that was put aside in special appropriations for the building of nursing home beds has been raided to prop up failed state and territory hospital systems and to buy them off so that they would support the Prime Minister’s grand health plan? In August 2007 Mr Rudd talked about:

… not providing enough aged care beds, and people are becoming bed blockers in acute hospital beds. That is part of the real problem nationwide.

So, in short, Mr Rudd’s bed blockers have now become the long-stay older patients, or LSOPs in Mr Ruddspeak. Surprisingly, the minister could not even get his facts right because he referred to the wrong program. But what is happening? They have taken the money that has been set aside for nursing home beds, and we are finding that providers in the aged care sector are calling out that the sector is in crisis. Forty per cent of providers are operating in the red with a very, very minimal return. Nursing home beds are not being built. As I said earlier, according to Aged and Community Services Australia, aged care is ‘in rags’. According to the ACC, Aged and Community Care Victoria, the budget fails frail aged again. According to Anglicare, Australians living at the margins are ‘largely forgotten yet again’. According to COTA, aged care is still in waiting. And according to Alzheimer’s Australia, one million Australians have been ‘forgotten in the federal budget’.

So that is the real story. They have overspent, so now they have to go out to rob one area of the budget to buy off the states, in this case, as far as aged care is concerned. So what are they doing? They are redirecting funds; therefore when older Australians and their families cannot get a nursing home bed in this country, the person they are going to blame is Kevin Rudd. In 2007 Labor said that the average cost of acute public hospital beds was around $967, whereas the average cost in an aged care home was about $100. We are now going to pay nine times more to keep people in hospitals instead of moving them to appropriate nursing home beds.

Debate interrupted.