Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing and Mental Health) Share this | Hansard source

In the lead-up to this budget we heard a lot of rhetoric about how great it was going to be for older Australians and the ageing. One of the things this budget does is keep in some of the cuts that were made to the aged-care funding instrument, the ACFI, over previous years. In previous years we have seen billions of dollars cut from residential aged care through this government's cutting of the ACFI. Providers tell me that the cuts that were made will not be fully realised in residential facilities across the country till around Christmas this year. In this budget we saw some money for home care packages, but we know that that money came from residential aged care—indeed, I believe that $1.6 billion, on top of billions of dollars already cut, came from residential aged care. All of this, ironically, comes at a time when the government is trying to get a new quality framework through the parliament. I don't know how you can get a quality framework when you're cutting service delivery in residential aged care, because that's essentially what the cuts to ACFI and the cuts in this budget to residential aged care do. Those cuts mean fewer services for older Australians in residential aged care.

I wonder whether the minister agrees with the Prime Minister's comments in question time today, when he said that aged-care workers should 'aspire to get a better job'. It's an outrageous slur on workers in the aged-care sector, who are caring for more than a million people who are receiving aged-care services.

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