Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Right now, people are dying while they wait for aged care. At the Community Affairs References Committee inquiry on Friday, we learned four things. One thing was that the waitlist for people who are waiting for home-care packages is not 87,000 people; it's well over 200,000. That is 200,000 older Australians in this country who cannot get the care that they need at the time that they need it. The second thing we heard was that, categorically, providers are ready, willing and able to roll out more home-care packages now—not in four months, but now.

The third thing was that we were told by the department that there is no technical reason or impediment to the government rolling out home-care packages as of 1 July rather than delaying it by four months to 1 November. In the department's words, 'The only reason they're not being rolled out is a decision of the minister.' And the fourth thing that we learned was that the 2,700 packages that the minister said are being released each week are not new packages. They are packages that get re-allocated when somebody who has one dies or goes into residential aged care. Not one single home-care package has been released since 1 July.

The minister has said, 'Four months isn't too long to wait.' Well, we heard at the inquiry that four months for an older person who requires care at home is catastrophic. It means earlier hospital admissions. It means rapid decline. And it means being pushed into residential aged-care facilities sooner, unless you are one of the people dying while waiting for care. Shame on this government. There's no reason not to release home-care packages now, yet you are asking older Australians in this country to wait. Families are being told that the fastest route to get care is to admit their older parent or their grandparent to hospital. Again, shame on this government. The only thing standing between older people and the care that they need is the minister and this Labor government.