Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

We have a plan in place to reinstate the Commonwealth dental plan, and if the Liberal and National parties passed that then many hundreds of thousands of pensioners would be able to actually get their teeth fixed. It is shameful that that has not happened. You are stopping those people getting their teeth fixed.

I will also raise a couple of issues in relation to aged care. I am proud to be the Minister for Ageing and proud of the fact that this government is putting in $40 billion over the next four years. Interestingly, the member for McPherson hardly ever raises aged care and issues surrounding it, but we are very proud of our commitment. We have certainly increased funding right across the board. Aged care is one of the growing pressures for many pensioners, but we have a major commitment to it. We have had 12 years of neglect when it comes to aged care. I talked about a number of other issues before, such as pensions and health care, but in aged care as well we are fixing the neglect of 12 years. We are investing more money to have more beds available. Indeed, we have also increased the number of spot checks, and the accreditation agency now has a greater role to make people—

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