Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Christine is a constituent in my electorate who has contacted me about this government's decision to cut funding to dementia patients in nursing homes. She would have been horrified to hear the Prime Minister say in question time yesterday, 'This is the budget the Australian people elected us to bring down.' Christine wrote:

With much disgust I read in the Courier Mail how you want to cut the Dementia Payment to Nursing Homes. I suggest you spend a day and a night in one of these homes and see what the staff have to endure in their working day. My husband has Advanced Dementia and needs a lot of their time as do the others. He now spends most of his time in a regency chair as he is no longer steady on his feet. Now has pressure sores and extra medical aides have to be used to try to stop this from happening further. This is an extra cost to the home and you want to cut funding. Who the hell do you think will have to pay when this funding stops, the good old pensioner who has very little money left over from his pension. The other alternative is the home will have to make cuts and once again the patient will suffer.

The way I see it is, it is now a crime to become old and need help …

Christine, like many others, needs a government that will fight for such essential services.

If the Treasurer thinks that spending $6,000 per Australian for welfare is unfair, he needs to wake up and see that this provides care for the elderly and for veterans, that it ensures the unemployed have something to eat, and that it gives people with disability some independence and care. It is an amount any caring Australian would find very reasonable.