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

I, too, want to thank the member for Parramatta for bringing this important issue to the parliament. She's been very passionate, as have many on this side, about this homecare waitlist for some time. We do acknowledge that the government has done a little bit of work here, but when you've got 120,000 people on the homecare waitlist, when you have seen the waitlist blow out from 88,000 people 2½ years ago to 120,000 now, when it's only due to political pressure from the community, from this side of the House, from unions, from workers in the sector that the government has finally actually done something—it wasn't a priority prior to that pressure—then I think it shows just what sort of government this is. This government isn't doing anywhere near enough when it comes to aged care generally, as we've seen from the royal commission, but particular in homecare packages.

This is something the government could fix today if it wanted to. The government could easily bring forward packages that are in the forward estimates and deal with this issue today. The government also knows that there's about half a billion dollars currently sitting in unspent funds that could be utilised for people who have been approved a homecare package. The government could also prioritise people with terminal illnesses who have less than six months to live or people in their 90s. The government could do so much more today if it chose to do so, but the fact that we've had six years of this government, four ministers, and the waitlist blowout over the last 2½ years, from 88,000 to the 120,000 that it is today, shows that whatever the government's doing it is nowhere near enough and it's not good enough for all of those people and their loved ones who are advocating so hard to try to get them the care they need.

As we've heard from so many speakers, these people want to stay in their own homes. They're able to stay in their own homes with a little bit of support. When you're in your 80s and your 90s and you've contributed to this country and you want a bit of support to stay in your home, you would have thought that the government of the day would actually be able to provide that support. Well, that's not what's happening in Australia today. We're a wealthy nation; the government should be able to fix this.

As we've heard, tragically 16,000 Australians died whilst they were waiting for home care in the 2017-18 financial year. They died without receiving the home care they had been approved to receive. We also have heard that around 14,000 people on that waitlist went into residential care or hospital before they wanted to, or before they needed to, because the care that they needed to stay at home was also not available under this government. The government needs to listen to these stories; it needs to do more. You had the Prime Minister on 7.30 saying that aged care, and home care particularly, was a priority. Well, it's not something you sit on for years if it's a priority; it's something you act on if it's a priority, and the government has been very slow to act. As I've said, they only acted in response to pressure.

We're going to wind up that pressure. Indeed, the parliament last week in the Senate approved a motion that was moved by my Tasmanian colleagues Senator Carol Brown and Catryna Bilyk that actually condemned the government for the shameful number of homecare packages and the number of people waiting on the waitlist today. So that's one chamber of this place that has actually moved a motion, which has been supported, to say the government needs to do more as well as condemning the lack of action to date.

Interestingly, we have the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook coming later this year—it's just a few weeks away—and this would be an opportunity for the government to do something about the homecare package waitlist. You've got the Prime Minister saying, you know, 'Well, it's a priority for me,' on 7.30 and then a couple of weeks later we have him in the parliament saying, 'No, no, no; I'm going to wait till the end of the royal commission.' This is something that doesn't have to wait. My call to the Prime Minister is: you can fix this today. You can do things today to help people waiting on this waitlist today. You have the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook in late November, early December. This is a great opportunity for the government to show that it is prioritising older Australians, to show that it will actually fund some home care packages. The government needs to deal with the home care package waitlist. It is simply not good enough that we still have today 120,000 older Australians waiting on that waitlist. It is terrible to get those calls—as many members in here do, as we've heard today—from loved ones trying to advocate for their loved person, to get them care so that they can stay at home, because they prefer to stay at home. In this country today, this should be able to happen. Australians who want to stay at home should be able to stay at home.

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