Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Tourism) | Hansard source

I really appreciate your intervention there, Mr Acting Deputy President, because I know that Senator Smith, if he truly wanted to get through all the achievements that he says that the federal government have achieved, would have started with them. But of course he doesn't want to talk about the fact that Prime Minister Morrison was actually the architect of the cuts to aged care.

Monday was the anniversary of this government's announcement of a royal commission into aged care. The anniversary is marked by the tragic fact that every part of Australia's aged-care system is in crisis. On Friday, the Morrison government extended the reporting date of the royal commission to November 2020. But we cannot wait. Action needs to be taken. Action needs to be taken now to fix what we know is broken today. But the Liberal government, the coalition government, doesn't even rate aged care as a priority. How do we know this? We know this because the Liberal government is on its fourth aged-care minister in six years. It is such a low priority that the aged-care minister is not considered important enough to be in cabinet, even though there's a royal commission on aged care happening right now.

Meanwhile, we know the facts, as Senator Dean Smith likes to highlight, are that 129,000 Australians are waiting for approved home care packages and around 75,000 are waiting without any care at all. The waiting list has grown from 88,000 to 129,000 over the past 18 months alone. This is totally unacceptable. Equally unacceptable is the tragic fact that more than 16,000 people have died waiting for an approved package. The federal government, the coalition government, need to hang their heads in shame. Sixteen thousand people have died waiting. Fourteen thousand have had to enter residential aged care because they can no longer stay at home waiting for care packages, and many older Australians enter emergency departments or the hospital system due to their increasing care needs.

For the highest level of care, waiting times are now more than two years. Think about it. Think about your aged parents having to wait for the highest level of care for more than two years. That is what this government has presided over. Think about that. This government needs to be ashamed— (Time expired)