Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Petrie for his question and his passionate concern about the welfare of senior Australians in his community in the electorate of Petrie and all around the country. Our government is standing together with senior Australians to protect their choices for a longer life and how they can support themselves in a longer life and have the availability of the services they need to ensure the quality of their life in their senior years. Our government is standing with senior Australians to protect them, to protect their safety—their personal safety—and the care that is being provided to them and to remain engaged in our community, whether it's through the continued increased support for in-home aged-care places or our support for other services within residential aged care.

The decision that Australians make about loved ones going into residential aged care is one of the hardest decisions that they make. I know that all members of this House would understand that. You are placed in a position of trust by your loved one at their moment of greatest fragility and vulnerability, and every single Australian deserves to have the confidence that the system into which they are placing their loved ones is up to standard. Over the course of the last few years, we have increased not only the funding support for aged care but the compliance and policing resources into aged care, and what that has revealed is a disturbing and alarming increase in the level of risk of noncompliance and substandard care. That is not something that we can allow to continue. We have put additional resources in, but it requires the additional work of a royal commission into the aged-care sector, both into residential aged care and in-home care services, including residential aged care for younger Australians living with a disability. That work that has already been done has shown that the problem could be very widespread, not just in for-profit or not-for-profit centres, not just in large centres or smaller centres or in regional and rural centres or those in metropolitan areas. It is very important that we have an independent and clear understanding of the facts upon which future policy can be based.

As I said to the Leader of the Opposition when I spoke to him the night before making the announcement, it is my intention this will provide a basis of continued bipartisanship when it comes to the issue of addressing the aged-care sector. Over eight years, going back to when we were in opposition and the Labor Party was in government, we have supported reforms—not all of which were popular, but we supported them—and we have had some support for the reforms that we have continued. But this royal commission provides the opportunity not to have a superficial understanding of these issues but to have a clear and detailed understanding, which can be the basis for this chamber and the other chamber to work together to ensure that we can deliver on the needs of Australians being cared for in our residential aged-care sector. I don't want to fight about this issue; I want to fix it.

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