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

[by video link] What we see in the budget that was delivered last night is over a trillion dollars in Liberal debt and still too many Australians left behind. Sadly, what we're seeing from this Morrison recession, the worst since the Great Depression, is over one million Australians currently unemployed, and, even with over a trillion dollars of debt, 160,000 more Australians are likely to lose their jobs.

What did we see? We saw a whole bunch of grab-bag announcements. We saw a whole heap of short-term things—a whole heap of reannouncements. But, really, what we didn't see was telling. How do you spend billions and billions more, have a trillion dollars of debt and have no new funding for frontline domestic and family violence services? How do you spend that and do nothing to address the gender pay gap? How do you have a trillion dollars in debt and have nothing on superannuation or about retirement incomes for women? How do you spend billions of dollars and do nothing new on child care? How do you spend billions of dollars and do nothing on social housing? How do you spend billions of dollars and not have any new money for residential aged care, when we have seen what the COVID outbreak has done in residential aged care in Australia?

It is shameful that this government has managed to find over $100 billion in new spending and has left all these critical areas out. It has, of course, as I said in my question in question time today, left far too many women behind. What we needed to see from the government was a plan for the future—a vision, an integrated plan that actually talks about what the role is for all Australians as we recover from what has occurred with the COVID outbreak and as we come out of this Morrison recession. That is not what we saw last night.

I am particularly concerned about the older Australians who were left out of last night's budget. When we look at the royal commission's recommendations, the first recommendation was to fix the home care package waiting list. The government has had the interim report for more than a year. We had 100,000 older Australians waiting then. Here we are, 12 months on, and we still have over 100,000 older Australians waiting for aged care. What did we see in the budget? There are to be 23,000 home care packages delivered over four years. What we have also seen, and what has been revealed recently by the government, is that more than 10,000 older Australians are dying every year without the home care packages that they have been approved for. By the time these new home care packages are delivered, more older Australians will have died waiting for the packages they never get. It is shameful. Once the government called this royal commission—they go on about it all time—it was the very first recommendation of the royal commissioners. It was the very first thing they told the government to do a year ago. Sadly, the government are saying they're going to wait for the final report in February next year. That will be too late for far too many older Australians.

I also want to take this opportunity to pass on my sympathies and condolences to the families of the more than 670 older Australians who have died in residential aged care during the COVID outbreak. I'm sure that everybody in this place joins me when I say they have our deepest, deepest sympathy. We are very concerned that the royal commission report into the outbreak of COVID-19 that was handed down last week was done in the early stages of what happened in Victoria, yet we saw again last night no significant investment from the government in the first recommendation from the royal commission about COVID, which was about more staff. The government haven't even done that; instead, they're saying they're waiting until February. How many more older Australians are going to die in residential aged care because this government did not do its job?

It is simply not good enough, when far too many women are being left behind, when far too many older Australians are being left behind and when far too many Australians generally have been left behind by this budget. The government has managed to spend hundreds of billions more and we are over a trillion dollars in debt. The real question is going to be: what are we going to have to show for it when all this is over and we have generations who will have to repay this government's debt? We need to ensure the money is well spent, and it is not going to be, we can rest assured of that, given their past history. We need to make sure that we have as few people unemployed as possible for as short a time as possible. Sadly, the government is going to fail in that regard, and I am very concerned for all those Australians who have lost their jobs during this recession and the 160,000 Australians who, according to the budget papers, are going to lose their jobs between now and the next budget. (Time expired)

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