Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

so a $20 billion increase in aged care investment and expenditure. In response to the royal commission, we have put in place 80,000 additional home-care packages, 40,000 in 2021-22 and 40,000 in 2022-23, so $6½ billion over four years. We have put in place $798 million to support informal carers and $272 million to connect senior Australians to aged-care services. In particular, in residential accommodation facilities, we have put in place $7.3 billion over five years from the current year, which is currently being held up in the Senate by the ALP.

In addition to that, we have the aged-care new funding mechanism, AN-ACC, and $189 million to help our residential aged-care facilities. We are also improving access to primary care, $365 million; empowering consumers of aged care, $200 million; and, very importantly, growing the workforce helping our seniors with $216 million. Now we have also put in place $600 million of retention bonuses. We've announced $800, the fourth such bonus, for those workers that have been serving through the pandemic, those workers that have helped lead to an outcome which has saved countless lives by comparison with countries around the world. We've had one of the lowest rates of loss of life in aged care. Each life lost has been an immense sadness for the families affected, but because of the work of our aged-care workers we have saved thousands of lives. We thank them and we honour them.

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