James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

You never know, when members draft these motions, whether or not the passage of time makes them begin to regret them or whether perhaps their minister from the government didn't quite keep the member updated as to whether or not the government were on track to, indeed, keeping promises they made at the election. In this case it's regarding aged care.

I notice that the first point here commends the government for delivering the 15 per cent pay increase in their budget. The government submitted to the Fair Work Commission to not give a 15 per cent pay rise. Their explanation was that they wanted to spread it over two years. With inflation running at seven per cent, if that maintained itself, an increase of 15 per cent would actually see the aged-care workforce going backwards, which is what the government sought: we don't want to give you 15 per cent straightaway; we want to spread it over the next two years. It's the kind of fine print that never seemed to be used in the election slogans.

Equally, this motion talks about increasing average care minutes and doesn't, interestingly, talk about the government's promise to have a 24/7 registered nurse at every aged-care facility in the country by 1 July 2023, which is less than 10 days away. Why? Because that's not happening. The government has now conceded that they won't be achieving the 24/7 nursing standard that they said they would put in place, leading up to the election. Why? It was for the exact reason that we said, honestly, during an election campaign: that the commitment would be misleading the people of this country because the workforce capability didn't exist to put in place 24/7 nursing in every residential aged-care facility. Worse still, if the government forced that commitment, as Labor in their election campaign said they would do, you would see two things happen. Firstly, aged-care facilities would close down, and/or secondly, other vital health services would lose their nursing staff, because aged-care facilities who are forced to employ nurses 24/7 could only poach them from other parts of the health system, where I promise you those nurses are doing vitally important work, particularly in regional communities.

We had a government that went to an election with a whole range of slogan promises in aged care that since the election, miraculously, are not being delivered. We were honest with the people of this country and said there were challenges in implementing some of the recommendations from the royal commission, particularly 24/7 nursing care. The now government very irresponsibly said, 'No, you've just got a government that's not prepared to listen to an outcome of the royal commission and implement those recommendations,' when we were always absolutely committed to doing so at the first opportunity that it could be done. Now, of course, the chickens are coming home to roost, and the people of Australia are seeing those promises that the government made for what they are—hollow promises designed to trick people into supporting them so they could get into government. Now it's all unwinding as we predicted during the election campaign.

There's no delight in this from our side of politics, because there's nothing more low and disgraceful than misleading people about something as vital as aged care and saying to people during an election campaign, 'We're going to do all these things,' that they absolutely knew could not be done. It was particularly low to try and delay the 15 per cent pay rise. To go to an election and say, 'We're going to give you a 15 per cent pay rise,' and then as a government say to the Fair Work Commission, 'We want that spread out over a couple of years, actually, to get a budget saving,' is particularly low. So this motion surprises me. I take the opportunity to speak on it, because, if I were the government, the last thing I'd want to be doing is talking about my record in aged care and, in particular, highlighting the broken promises—the commitments that were taken to the last election. There were promises made that I'm sure a lot of people believed. They took the now government at their word that they would deliver on those promises. Those people are now experiencing the heartbreak caused by the breaking of callous political promises made by a government that said what they needed to say to win votes. Now that they are in government, they are completely failing to keep their promises, which, I suspect, they always knew they would never be able to keep.

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