Leah Blyth (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Stronger Families and Stronger Communities) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of all answers to all coalition questions today. It's very interesting to listen to those opposite talk about political pointscoring and an opposition that is more interested in playing political games. I would say that, on this side of the chamber, all we are focused on is elderly Australians. They deserve this government to fulfil the election promise it made of home-care packages being released. And I think it's important to say that, again, under this Labor government, nearly 90,000 older Australians are currently waiting on the national priority system for a home-care place that they have been assessed as needing. There are another 121,000 older Australians waiting to be assessed for a home-care place. That's more than 200,000 older Australians waiting for access to home-care support under Labor.

It's also important to note that Labor have released zero new home-care places this financial year, and they only released 41,215 home-care places over their entire first term in government. There was the announcement today, after two days of sustained questioning in parliament, that the coalition has forced the Albanese Labor government to release thousands of home-care packages to older Australians who have been left to wait far too long. For some of these Australians, they have been waiting longer than 15 months. In fact, it is heartbreaking to say that, tragically, 5,000 older Australians have died in the past year while waiting for care. So after our Senate committee inquiry last week, where the sector confirmed that it had capacity to provide the services associated with the care packages, today Labor have recanted and have finally agreed to release 20,000 home-care packages immediately.

This is a small dent in the list of some 200,000 Australians that are waiting for their care packages, but it is a good start. And it is a start that we've got to by the crossbench working with the coalition to push Labor to do the right thing here for older Australians. Labor promised 83,000 new packages from 1 July 2025. That was the promise that they took to the Australian people, and they claimed all sorts of excuses—that the sector wasn't quite ready and all sorts of different reasons why it couldn't happen. The priority waitlist has blown out, with a more than 400 per cent increase in just the last two years, while wait times for care packages have tripled under this government. So today, when the coalition supported the amendments to the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 for the immediate release of 20,000 home-care packages, the government voted against it here. Let that sink in for those older Australians that this government claims to care about. They weren't even going to fulfil their election promise for the 83,000 packages.

We welcome that the government has announced today that it will release a further 20,000 home-care packages by the end of the year and a further 43,000 by the end of the financial year. This takes them to the full 83,000 packages originally promised to be released from 1 July. The coalition was proud to stand up today for older Australians across the country who this Albanese Labor government has abandoned. This situation should never have happened. The money was in the budget, and the capacity was there; it was only this Labor government that stood in the way. This is a black mark on the government as they were withholding support from hundreds of thousands of older Australians who desperately needed it. And, as I mentioned, 5,000 older Australians have died waiting for the support that they had been assessed as needing. This is a crisis of the government's own making. We are proud to have forced the government into providing the additional 83,000 packages for this financial year. (Time expired)