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

The Prime Minister promised to deliver 83,000 new home-care packages from 1 July 2025, yet not a single package has been released in this financial year by the government. That's because the government backflipped on its promise immediately following the election.

What's most concerning is the government is refusing to admit the real reason it has delayed the release of these essential packages. The minister keeps saying the sector weren't ready. However, peak bodies, providers and advocacy groups unanimously told the Senate Community Affairs References Committee inquiry last Friday that the sector is absolutely ready to stand by to provide that new care now. The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing and Services Australia both confirmed that there are no barriers to packages being released now except for the decision by the minister not to do so. So the department is ready and the sector is ready, but this government continues to withhold critical aged-care packages and places without any reasonable excuse at all. Why will the government not admit that the only thing standing in the way of older Australians accessing the care that they have been assessed by this government as needing is themselves? They are actively withholding this critical support from Australians who desperately need it, and the government must be condemned for this action. They must be held to account for the waitlist crisis that is before us.

Today we heard from the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors, who blamed everybody but himself and the government for the crisis that has befallen our aged-care sector—a crisis that has worsened over the last two years, particularly with over 200,000 people that we know of in limbo waiting for care. He blamed the sector. He blamed his own department. He blamed the coalition. He even blamed his own reforms as the reason he hadn't released these packages. This is tantamount to the states and territories doing a hospital reform process and not admitting any new patients into the hospital until the reforms are in place, or emergency departments around the country being closed down for a few weeks while they do a refurbishment. This is completely and utterly ridiculous. The only reason Australians are being denied the care they need to stay in their own homes is the minister has made an active decision not to release home-care packages.

The other thing that is really concerning as we stand here today is that for some months now I, Senator Allman-Payne, Senator Pocock and a number of other senators have been trying to get information about what the waiting list currently is. The last piece of information we were given was that 87,000-plus people were on the priority list waiting for homecare packages that they had been assessed as needing—as I said, on 31 March. In previous practice, the government has always provided that information immediately in the following month. So, the information for July should be available by now. We haven't had any information for April, none for May, none for June and none for July. We want to know why the government is withholding this information. We asked for it on Friday. They said they'd give it to us yesterday. They did not provide that information.

The cynic would suggest that the government is not providing that information because they simply do not want to admit to Australia that the waitlist crisis—not just the number of people on the waitlist but the length of time they are waiting—has blown out to the extent that it is likely to be the worst waitlist and the worst wait times in the history of aged care in this country.