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

This really is an important MPI. Some are just political battles, but this is a really important issue. I have more aged people in my electorate than most members have in three or four electorates, and aged care is a huge part of the Lyne electorate. We had a diatribe coming from several members on the other side, and I want to correct the record, because I deal with the facts, not the emotion and the made-up allegations of some of those who spoke earlier.

First of all, it was Prime Minister Morrison who called the royal commission. There were allegations made that we were dragged kicking and screaming to it. But I just checked the record, and he called it in September 2018, which was after the Leader of the Opposition at that time, the member for Maribyrnong, was asked whether he supported a royal commission into aged care, and his response was, 'Um, as for a royal commission, I don't know.' That was on Q&A on 11 June. That is the first thing.

The other thing I'd like to bring to the attention of members opposite and people listening is that The Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Ageing Agenda website state that there have been 1,000 fewer deaths in aged care in this current year than there were for the whole of last year, before the pandemic struck. I looked at the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare death figures in aged care in 2012 and 2013 and, in those two years, 245,000 people passed on. In the last couple of years there has been 32,398. There are less people dying now, even with the pandemic. As the member for Mackellar said, there has been a rapid increase in the standard of care in aged care.

There are some institutions that have failed. They have failed miserably. That's why we set up the aged-care royal commission, but before that we set up the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. We've increased funding every year since 2013. It was $13 billion annually when I was first elected to this House. It's up to $24 billion now.

The other thing they were criticising us for was home care packages. When they were in government and then left the government benches and we took over the responsibility, there were 60,000 home care places and now there are 185,000 funded places. In the last budget we added another 23,000, we added 6,000 back in July. The number of people waiting for a home care place has gone down by 20 per cent. These are facts, not allegations.

I noticed that when I started pointing out the facts the member for Franklin departed. Even her interjections couldn't drown out the facts. The fact is that there are things that need to be improved in the aged-care system, but we have been doing it. The royal commission's direct responses have all been addressed. There has been action taken on them. I've mentioned the home care packages. There's the extra funding for dementia training. On the other thing about too many people in aged care being heavily sedated, medication management programs, policies and education programs have been rolled out. Guidelines have been changed. There was also a criticism of there being too many young people in aged care, but the numbers have reduced from the 6,000 two years ago to 4,860.

We are addressing the problems and correcting them. There are more funds in aged care, because of the COVID response, whether or not we're doing these reforms. The response centre was criticised. The problem of aged-care deaths was because there was a community pandemic and the pandemic came in through the front door, because there was community transmission. That is a public health issue. The aged-care institutions aren't necessarily set up as sterile institutions like hospitals, so it's a real step change when a pandemic rolls through an aged-care system, but look at what has happened oversees. What we have done is exemplary in a very bad situation.

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