Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I will withdraw. The fact is that these promises have been made to Australians, and I can assure the people of South Australia that, as your representative in this place, I will be holding the government to account to make sure that it delivers on the promises that it has made to you. If it does not deliver on those promises, I will make sure that you are well aware of the fact that you were misled in the lead-up to this election, because you deserve, as every other Australian deserves, easy and quick access to affordable health care in Australia. It is a fundamental right of all Australians.

But this is not the only promise that was broken. In the 2022 election, the then opposition, as it sought to become the government, made a number of promises to the Australian public. During the previous term of this parliament, it failed to deliver most of them. The reality is that the challenges that we were facing in the last term haven't gone away. Australians are still struggling with the cost of living. It doesn't matter how many times the government tell everybody how fabulously they're doing and about all the wonderful things they're doing, Australians know because they can feel it in their hip pocket. They can feel it in their family budgets. They feel it every time they go to the supermarket or go to pay their mortgage.

There's another promise that this government made that it's failed to keep. We know that we're in the midst of a housing crisis in this country. The Housing Australia Future Fund promised so much to Australians, yet in this place we have failed to get the government to even tell us how many houses have been built by this Housing Australia Future Fund. I fear that it's probably a very low number. My understanding is that it's probably only 17. Half a billion dollars in the last 12 months was allocated from the Housing Australia Future Fund to build houses for Australians, yet we understand that probably fewer than 20 have been constructed already.

When it comes to aged care, in 2022, this government came in on a platform of saying it was going to put the 'care' back into aged care. I cannot possibly see how denying 87,000 Australians, as we stand here today, the care that they have been assessed as needing achieves that when this government refuses to release the home-care packages that are needed to get rid of the waitlist that has absolutely blown out under this government. That is a waitlist that's more than doubled in the last three years, and the wait is three times longer than it was three years ago. How on earth can this government think that is putting the 'care' back in to aged care?

The government went to the election promising 83,000 new home-care packages to try and deal with the waitlist that has blown out under its time in government, and what do we see? The government's first action following the election was the withdrawal of those 83,000 packages for the Australians who are currently waiting on the priority waiting list. They've withdrawn them, so these people are once again left without the care that they have been professionally assessed as needing.

The other thing the government needs to come to terms with is the fact it cannot review its way through this next term of government. The last term of government was absolutely littered with review after review after review. The time for review is over. It is time for action. We need to actually do some of the things that Australians were promised in 2022. Most of the promises that were made in 2022 that were not able to be kept have been re-promised in 2025. I say to the government: if you are serious about delivering the agenda that the Governor-General set out and laid out in her speech to this place, then you need to stop reviewing and you need to start doing.

I hope the government deliver in this next term of government, because the Australian public deserve nothing less from their government. I fear that they won't, but all of us on the coalition side, for the sake of Australians, hope they actually do something this time.