Jessica Collins (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. I do so in the interests of ensuring that our senior Australians receive the best care, which they deserve. Importantly, this means making the rollout of aged-care support as seamless and timely as possible. The coalition and I support the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, subject to our amendments. This bill is integral to delivering the Aged Care Act 2024 and, hence, essential to delivering the recommendations of the aged care royal commission instituted under the former coalition government.

To be clear, the Aged Care Act 2024 was Labor's package of reforms and was not co-designed alongside the coalition. This is why the government has introduced this bill to amend 325 items of their Aged Care Act. Had the government listened to the opposition and the aged-care sector in the first place, many of these items could have been rectified during the debate on the 2024 legislation.

The coalition was always realistic that the scale of reforms foreshadowed by the 2024 act could not be implemented in a matter of months. That is why, during the debate on that legislation, the coalition moved an amendment to ensure that the Home Care Packages Program could exist on a transitional basis without the need for further amendment to the Aged Care Act nor delaying its enactment. By creating these transitional provisions, our amendments sought to ensure that the Aged Care Act 2024 could come into effect on 1 July 2025. Our amendment also ensured that the new Support at Home program, with the promised additional 83,000 packages, could commence from 1 July 2025. I think we can all note that we are well past that date.

We moved the amendment so we could give our older Australians the care provisions they needed as soon as possible. But, shamefully, this government voted against it. As a result of their action, older Australians have been denied their rights and the care they have been assessed as needing. The government's introduction of this amendment bill, whilst welcome, proves that their previous actions to vote down all amendments moved by the coalition in relation to the transition timelines were nothing more than them playing politics. Their actions were petty, short sighted and foolish. Above all, the government short-changed our senior Australians by delaying the implementation of the act's provisions which would've given them the care supports they have been patiently waiting for.

At a Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee hearing, department officials confirmed that, without this amendment bill, elements of the Aged Care Act 2024 could in fact be enacted. The inquiry also heard evidence from the department that this government was aware of the need for legislative change as early as January of this year. Clearly, this government deceived the Australian people at the last election. They refuse to admit they were not ready to transition to the new aged-care framework that they had trumpeted so loudly. Now, the introduction of this amendment bill simply proves that the government has been forced to do an embarrassing backflip.

The introduction of this bill vindicates the coalition's position that the amendment they moved last year was necessary after all. If it had been supported by Labor in the first place, we would not be needing this amendment bill to bring the provisions of the 2024 act into effect. The Senate committee inquiry into the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 confirmed that existing legislation was not adequate to implement aged-care reforms and that it was the government who required more time to ready their systems for change, not the sector. The sector has indicated that it is ready to go.

We will not seek to delay the passage of this amendment bill, because, without the passage of this bill, the aged-care rules that allow the provisions of the 2024 act to be executed cannot be registered. And, as I will go on to illustrate, our senior Australians have waited long enough already to receive the support services they need. These are real people waiting for help. They have waited a long, long time for help, and the last thing they need is for us to stand in the way. As it is, the Albanese government's delay on its aged-care reforms has been unacceptable. Older Australians who need essential home-care services should not be subjected to a bureaucratic headache or fooled around by this government's politicking. They deserve much better.

One of the big problems here is the time from wanting to get assessed to getting assessed and then from being assessed to finally being approved for care. The whole process from being approved to getting hands-on care is years long, with months between steps. In my recent work on the community affairs committee, I came across some very distressing cases of people being let down by the aged-care sector—particularly on wait times. During the committee proceedings, some harrowing stories were shared about there being no home-care packages and about people waiting over 15 months to get home-care packages they were assessed as needing.

In some cases, elderly people waited years before getting their aged-care package, and we heard the saddest story of a woman whose husband had Parkinson's. He deteriorated a lot over the time he waited for his home-care package. During that time, he got two forms of cancer, and he died three days after his package came to fruition. He also worked all his life for Centrelink and believed in it. It let him down in the end, and it was a very tragic story to hear. It is very deeply moving when you see an older person who is brought to tears by the way the government has let them down, and I will never forget it.

The sad truth is that people are dying while they wait, and the providers don't know why there is such a wait or why the government is holding off. There is such a huge backlog. People are waiting for assessments. There is an unseen waitlist to actually get an assessment.

In addition to holding up ready access to aged care, the Albanese government has abandoned those older Australians who choose to stay independent in their own homes yet require the support to do so. For seniors who choose this option, home-care packages offer excellent outcomes. I give the example of my grandmother, who is 105 years old. She stayed in her home until she was 102—the very best of outcomes. She is very happy where she is, but it was the very best thing for her to be able to stay at home. It is really important that we are able to provide home-care packages to the people who need them.

This government promised to deliver an additional 83,000 packages from 1 July this year, but they have broken this promise, leaving more than 87,000 older Australians waiting for a home-care package without the care that they deserve. This delay is inexcusable. The coalition absolutely condemns the government for the skyrocketing waitlist they have overseen and for their refusal to provide the promised packages. Under Labor's watch, the waitlist for home-care packages has almost tripled in the past two years. Many vulnerable older Australians are waiting more than a year to access the care that they have been assessed as needing.

This is nothing but a national crisis. For a first-world country like Australia, it is an acute embarrassment and something that this government should be ashamed of. The aged care minister must urgently deliver the promised packages and address the skyrocketing waitlist as a matter of priority. Older Australians deserve access to the care they need to stay independent in their homes for longer, and home-care providers deserve certainty as to how many packages will be released over the coming months. This is necessary for them to plan for increases in their staffing and resources to cater for the added workload but also to prepare for the incoming rules of the aged care sector.

The Albanese government, as we have seen many times over the past months, is not being transparent. This time, it's with aged care providers about what they need to prepare for when the 1 November date comes around. Every client needs a personal service agreement, all of which will be rewritten under the new rules of 1 November. They don't know the guardrails. They don't know what to plan and prepare for in all these many service agreements with clients—with real people. They don't know how much the co-contribution payments will be or how they should focus the workforce of these organisations to prepare for the transition. They need to make sure that clients aren't unnecessarily disadvantaged, because the cost of transition will be high.

As I've said many times, these are real people waiting for real help. The hidden waitlist is massively longer for rural and regional people. The plight of aged care is significantly amplified for rural and regional people, where they have to go to metropolitan centres to get assessed. Remember that the waitlist to get an assessment is excruciatingly long, too. It can be cost inefficient to run services in rural and regional places, but this does not mean that they do not deserve the same quality of care that people get in metropolitan centres. They must stay in community with their families and friends. We're talking about towns where services are lacking, where banks are withdrawing or non-existent, where there are no ambulances or SES and where services are severely lacking. But still people live there because that is there home and that is their right. They have a right to better care as they age.

The Labor Party is always keen to tout itself as the party of health and aged care. They say they're better placed than anybody else to look after older Australians, yet this record that I've talked about today proves otherwise. All we hear from this government is that all the providers of aged-care and home-care packages are ready to provide that care tomorrow—if those rules get adjusted, those service providers can do this all tomorrow. They do not have to wait until 1 November to provide care to the hundreds of thousands of Australians waiting for it. But the government is still stalling until November and letting senior Australians down every single day. We don't know how these packages will be released, whether they will be released at once or over the coming months and who will be prioritised. Remember, after all these years, people have aged significantly and their health has deteriorated. Their assessment will be different. How do you prioritise how those home-care packages will be given out?

With both aged care and in-home support, the coalition will always be on the side of senior Australians. We will never stop fighting to ensure they are looked after and provided for.