Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has refused to admit he cut $1.2 billion from aged care, saying it was a lie. But Sean Rooney from Leading Age Services Australia has said, '$3 billion has been taken out of the care system by successive governments over the last four years.' Is the Prime Minister calling Mr Rooney a liar?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. I know this is a very important issue. I thought a member from Western Australia, newly in the House, would want to ask me about the fairer deal for GST for Western Australia—clearly not on the top of his agenda. There are other things.

I go to the question. It is not true that the government has cut funding to aged care. It's simply not true, because the funding has gone up by more than a billion dollars every year. When there's more money provided, that means there is an increase. When there's less money provided, that means there is a decrease. It's simple maths. I'm happy to have the Treasurer explain it to you if you'd like to come around to his office, and he can take you through it.

I make the point again about the hypocrisy being shown by the Labor Party, because the very measure that they take issue with is the very measure that they put in place themselves when they were in government, and, based on their assessment, they took out $1.6 billion. When the member for Blair, the very overstated member for Blair, was responsible for aged-care services in opposition, before the last election, he was asked whether they would reverse this measure. He said: 'No, Labor is not. We're not going to do that.' That's what he said.

Further than that, Labor voted with the government against the classification amendment, which gave effect to that measure. Labor voted with the government to preserve that measure and they included it in all of their estimates at the last election. They come in here complaining about a measure that they actually voted for.

Again, stop playing politics with aged care and support the government to make the necessary reforms. We have had eight years of pretty good bipartisanship and the behaviour of the Labor Party today demonstrates why this royal commission is so necessary. I'm not going to allow this issue to be politicised in this way. The royal commission will do that job. It will determine the facts. It can remove the agendas of all of those who seek to put their twopence in to pursue their agenda. We will make decisions based on the facts of quality of care in the aged-care sector and that should be the basis for all policy going forward in this space.