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

I rise to speak on the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 and the Aged Care (Accommodation Payment Security) Levy Amendment Bill 2025, which are integral in delivering the Aged Care Act 2024. Hence, they are absolutely essential to delivering the recommendations of the aged care royal commission, which was instituted under the former coalition government.

We will not be standing in the way of the passage of these bills, but—let me be very clear—the Aged Care Act 2024 was a package of reforms of the Labor Party's making. It was not an act co-designed alongside the coalition. That's why it is of no surprise that, in the first week of the 48th Parliament, this government has introduced this bill, in particular to amend 325 items of the Aged Care Act 2024 that they pushed through this parliament, refusing to pass any sensible amendments put forward by anybody in this chamber. Many of those could have been rectified during the debate on the Aged Care Act had the government listened to the sector and to the people in this chamber. The coalition always knew a reform of this size could not be implemented in just a matter of months. That's why, during the debate on the Aged Care Act, the coalition moved amendments to ensure that the Home Care Packages Program in particular could exist on a transitional basis without the need to amend the Aged Care Act or to delay its enactment.

This amendment mitigated the risk of department and sector readiness by creating transitional provisions to ensure the Aged Care Act 2024 could come into effect on 1 July 2025, as the government had been promising, and by ensuring that the new Support at Home program, with the promised additional 83,000 home-care packages, could commence on 1 July 2025. But those opposite voted against it, and now, as a result of their failure to actually listen to sensible reforms—to provide the flexibility to implement the reform—older Australians have been denied their rights for many more months. And they've been denied the care that they've been assessed as needing by this government. That's because of their failure to be prepared and put the transitional provision in place—

Debate interrupted.