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

Thanks for the question, Senator Keneally. As I said in the previous answer, Minister Hunt and I announced $563 million this morning to extend existing measures that were supporting the aged-care sector. The suggestion that we've waited until now, quite frankly, doesn't make sense given that these measures were put in place to support the sector. Today we extended existing measures to continue the support that we already had in place for an additional six months in most of those cases.

Early in the pandemic, we made some decisions, we resourced those decisions and we announced the funding to support those decisions. Today we extended those provisions given the fact that we remain in a COVID-19 pandemic. We have particular circumstances with respect to Victoria that require additional support, and the sector remains under pressure nationally. So we announced an extension to existing programs so that the support required for the sector throughout the pandemic—the support required as part of our plan—could be continued for a further period of time so that the sector did have the support required and continues to have the support required as the pandemic continues.