Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to table a petition. Aged care, as we know, is an issue facing many Australians, particularly as we see a greater number of the population getting older. The difficulty in finding proper aged-care places and facilities is an issue affecting communities right across Australia. Last week, we tried to put a petition into the parliament from 2,000 local residents about the need for aged care in Doreen and Mernda, and it was stupidly knocked off. Fortunately, we found some very intelligent members of the government who accepted the petition and understood it was actually from the community and for the community and was not actually attacking the government but actually saying that we need it. We were able to split the petition, and we have another petition today that I will present to the House. I don't need to seek leave, because it's in order and has been checked by the Petitions Committee. So we won't go through the farce that we had to last week that caused a petition not to be presented.

The point raised is that we have a government in this House that has failed on every single criteria when it comes to aged care, through the inability of the minister to actually manage his portfolio to the inability of the government to actually supply services. There are 88,000 people waiting for stage 4 home care, and this government sits on its hands. All the government is worried about is giving its former Prime Ministers free international travel and a few of its 'envoys' that they've got—which is the pay-off for being knifed—extra staffing. It's actually costing millions of dollars. It's not fair, and it's not on.

I am therefore pleased to present the petition.

The petition read as follows—

[Document not available at time of publishing]

Petition received.