Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I take great pleasure in introducing this MPI today, which highlights the failure and the broken promise of the government, particularly in relation to the provision of home-care packages that we are currently seeing in this country. This self-generated crisis in home care is purely and simply a function of this government's failure. Why do I say that? I say that because I've had a look at the numbers.

Obviously, in the previous coalition government, I had a bit to do with this area of the portfolio, and I'm quite proud of the effect that the investment the coalition made into home-care packages had on waiting times and the waiting list for senior Australians who were seeking a home-care package. Over the three years from 2019 to the 2022 election, the coalition inserted an additional 40,000 home-care packages each and every year into the home-care system. In response to the royal commission report that was handed down in March 2021, the coalition invested $17.1 billion, and over $7 billion went into those additional home-care packages.

The result of that investment was that the waiting time for a home-care package at any level in this country was reduced, from a very unacceptable level of over a year to 30 to 90 days. If the individual had been assessed as requiring a package at high need, before we got to the 2022 election we had achieved delivery of that home-care package in less than 30 days. There's the benchmark. The investment of the coalition had reduced the waiting time for a home-care package in this country to 30 to 90 days by 2022-23. And we reduced the waiting list—the number of people on the national priority list—from close to 129,000 people to less than 29,000 people. We took 100,000 people off the national priority list.

The scandal, the outrage and the complete disgrace that is the situation today is that, under this government, that achievement has been completely and utterly squandered. The waiting list now is at least 87,597, and we don't know the full extent of it because the government won't release the numbers. That's the waiting list as of March this year. And the waiting time is up to 15 months. So, from 30-90 days, the waiting time has blown out to up to 15 months for someone seeking a home-care package. That is not acceptable. It wasn't acceptable when it was that high under us. We worked hard, we invested, we made the changes and we put additional home-care packages into the system to reduce the waiting list down to less than 29,000 and the waiting time down to 30 to 90 days for a package at any level. It's just outrageous that this government has allowed it to blow out. It hasn't released new packages; it's recycling packages. It hasn't listed a new package since 1 July this year. The talking points for government senators will say that they're putting 2,100-odd packages into the system every week, but that's just somebody who's either dying or going into an aged-care facility and relinquishing their package for it to become available for someone else.

The government needs to make sure that there is enough capacity in the system to bring the waiting list down. We did that. The government needs to do that. It needs to be honest with the Australian people about the crisis that it has created itself, and it needs to keep its promise to put the care back into aged care, not just— (Time expired)