Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Acting Deputy President Hodgins-May, for the opportunity to support the suspension motion. It is important to support this suspension motion. I also think it's very important that we remind people of the real facts when it comes to aged care. For the previous speaker to get up and try and paint this pretty picture of what those opposite did for the nine years that they were in government—they were so good when it came to aged care; they had five ministers and all of them failed! The Liberal government were so bad—and they didn't care about aged care because no-one really wanted to be the minister—that they had to call a royal commission into their own failure. Why? Because they neglected older Australians. Older Australians were neglected by that government because they didn't care. They didn't fund aged care. They used aged care as an ATM and ripped money out. That's the reality.

This government, having spent the time in opposition seeing the results of the lack of interest of their government, injected more money into aged care. We have adopted the recommendations of the royal commission—which is why we need to suspend standing orders to have a real debate about the opposition's failures when they were in government. It's very unusual for a government to call a royal commission into their own failings. I would be ashamed if I'd been a minister for aged care during those years. To stand up and try and rewrite history, to come in here with crocodile tears saying that they care about older Australians—you had the opportunity, decade after decade, when you were in government—