Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians) Share this | Hansard source

The Morrison government continues to take strong and immediate action to respond to the three priorities identified in the aged-care royal commission's interim report. In relation to home care packages, since the 2018-19 budget the government have now invested $2.7 billion in 44,000 new home care packages, and we have more than doubled the number of packages available since Labor left office. These additional 10,000 packages announced today will be focused on the royal commission's identified areas of need and are strongly weighted towards high levels of care.

Our better medication management and dementia training commitment builds on the action we've taken to deliver new restraint regulations. These regulations put explicit obligations on residential aged-care providers in respect of the use of restraints, and the royal commission identified an overreliance on chemical restraints in aged care. Therefore, from 1 January 2020 we will also establish stronger safeguards and restrictions when prescribing—