Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Vice-President of the Executive Council) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Smith for that question. I'm happy to say that funding for aged care is at record levels. In 2017-18, aged-care spending is estimated to reach $18.6 billion. That's of course appropriate, because governments should look after senior Australians where they're not able to look after themselves. Labor keeps spreading this lie that somehow there's been a cut to aged-care funding under the government, but nothing could be further from the truth. In Labor's last budget, aged-care funding in 2016-17 was forecast to be $10.1 billion. Of course, the actual expenditure by our government was nearly a billion dollars more—$10.9 billion—and that rose to $11.4 billion in the year that's just ended. As Bernard Keane, hardly an apologist for a Liberal-National government, quite rightly pointed out in Crikey:

The claim that the Coalition cut funding from aged care is a bald-faced lie, and one that points to the problems with a royal commission into the sector.

I table the article for the reference of Labor senators, who clearly don't know how to read the budget papers. (Time expired)