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

Thank you, Minister. I suppose my concern around this stems from what we saw happen on 1 July. We had an absolutely categorical commitment from the then minister—not you—that everything would be in place in order for the Aged Care Act to come into effect on 1 July, and that commitment was given to us in November, despite I think some quite serious and genuine concerns being raised by the opposition where a transition program and timeframe and framework would assist in making sure that that was possible. The government refused to accept our recommendation, and we found that the government wasn't ready to enable the act to start on 1 July. We found out, during the committee hearing, that the government was aware, or certainly the department was aware, of this as early as January this year.

So, my concern stems from the fact that we are here today, on 3 September, and if you assume that we take 10 days, we're talking about 13 September, which is six weeks before the government is intending for this act to come into effect. So, I'm quite interested to understand, first of all: is the draft of the rules that have been provided to the sector sufficient for the sector to commence the legal requirements to transition?