David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Aged care is so important. It is really important in the Lyne electorate, because we have one of the oldest demographics in the country. Over a quarter of my constituents are aged over 65. There's also a huge base of people who work in aged care, way greater than the average across the country. In fact, residential aged care employment is the biggest employer in Lyne electorate. Certainly, federal funding for the aged care system in Lyne electorate has grown in the years from 2013 to 2016, then again in the last parliament, and in this parliament it's also budgeted to increase. When I was first given the honour of representing Lyne, there was $19 million a year in recurrent funding. That is now up to $160 million a year, in 2020. We have been investing in a range of expansions of existing aged care, as well as an expansion in home care. Aged care in the residential space is being expanded, as we speak. There will be another 10 places at Banyula Lodge, in Old Bar, and eight in Taree, at Alkira Lodge. Construction of the Gloucester seniors living complex state-of-the-art aged-care facility is underway. Pacific Cape is being expanded by GLAICA, with 144 new residential aged-care places. The Salvation Army is due to commence construction of an expansion in Taree, with a whole new facility there as well. And Bundaleer home care has a state-of-the-art expansion planned for Wauchope.

Some of the previous speakers have focused on complaining about surgery lists, the NBN, the NDIS and pensions, but I want to focus on what this MPI is about—the really important stuff—and that is aged care and home care. We have had announcements made as a result of the royal commission, and everyone is really committed to making things better. There are obvious deficiencies, but one would think that every aged-care facility is bad. There are some people who don't meet the standards. There are some people, who we have seen on TV, who obviously shouldn't have been working in the industry. But everyone is committed to improving the case. The people who are working in aged care in my part of the world at all the facilities I visit have an enormous commitment to deliver high-quality care. They all work under pressure, and they deliver as good as they can.

In the home-care space, we have delivered a record expansion in home care packages—44,000 and $2.7 billion extra. When we were first given the responsibility of governing after the 2013 election, there were only 60,308 home-care packages in the system. By 2022-23, the end of this term, that will have expanded to 158,000 home-care places. The funding is increasing gradually because the workforce has to increase gradually. Otherwise, you have the case where you get inflated fees. I know the minister and many of us who have people in the home-care space are looking at the charging of administration fees, because we want all the money that the taxpayers are committing to be delivered to the people—not sitting in the accounts of businesses providing home care, using so much of the critical funding on administrative charges rather than care.

At the last election there was no commitment, as far as I could see, from the other side for an expansion of home-care places. Those opposite are big on complaining about everything—but it isn't about what they say; it's about what they do. They promised taxes upon taxes. Almost $390 billion of taxes were promised, but they failed to mention what they were going to do. But they come in here and complain and complain.

There were some things that were pointed out in the royal commission. We are addressing that with a $537 million package and 10,000 more home-care places. We're trying to get medication management under control and we're addressing the problem of young people in— (Time expired)

See this speech in context