Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak today regarding an issue that is something that I've had quite a deal of connection to and that concerns me enormously with respect to where we are today. In 2019, the number of people on the national waiting list for a home-care package was somewhere in the order of 128,000 people. It was way too high. Worse, the waiting time was over 12 months—in some cases, more than two years. Again, that was not acceptable, and the royal commission into aged care told us unequivocally that it had to be fixed. The investment of the coalition government in response to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety was significant. Over that period just after the royal commission, we put an extra 118,000 home-care packages into the system. That investment reduced the waiting list from 128,000 to a bit over 28,000 people and reduced the waiting time for a home-care package at any level to 30 to 90 days. If it was a high-needs home-care package, it would be available inside 30 days.

The absolute tragedy and disgrace that we see today is that the numbers now are worse than they were in 2019. There are over 130,000 people on the national waiting list. There are another 100,000 people waiting to be assessed. That is over 230,000 people waiting for home care. The waiting time at a national average is 14 months. In 2024-25, double the number of people who died from COVID died waiting for a package. It is not good enough.