George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the starkest examples of the seriousness of the insurance crisis in North Queensland is that of an aged-care home in my electorate that has recently been hit with a 1,000 per cent premium increase. They battle on at present, but they face an insurance bill they'll not be able to pay. The consequence could be that we could have 250 aged residents, some of them our most vulnerable citizens, who will lose the aged-care service they depend upon.

The Assistant Treasurer heard this horror story as well as many others when he travelled to North Queensland, at my invitation, to hear directly from those affected in Mackay, the Whitsundays and Townsville. We've hit crisis point. Home and unit holders, those in strata title, businesses and hospitality operators are all facing premiums that they can't afford. Some simply can't get insurance at all. The Assistant Treasurer sat down with the insurance industry representatives afterwards to ask them how they can justify the situation. I'm glad to say that they have acknowledged the problem and have agreed to work with the government to look at the option of a re-insurance pool for North Queensland. I thank the Assistant Treasurer for his work on this critical issue, and I encourage other North Queenslanders to come forward with their stories at www.nq insurance.com.au.

Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia's aged-care system is broken. There is not one part of Australia's aged-care system that is not in crisis. There are currently 120,000 older Australians who are waiting for aged care at home. A few weeks ago I met with one of them, a resident of Aspley, named Joyce. Joyce is delightful. She is 98 years old, legally blind, needs a walker and was assessed as needing low-level residential care.

It took over three months to have her care increased from level 2 to level 3, and she has been told there is a 12-month waiting period to get to level 4. Joyce told me that she thinks she will die before getting to level 4 care, and, sadly, more than 16,000 people have died—in one year—waiting for their approved package. Fourteen thousand had to enter residential aged care because they could no longer stay at home waiting for care that wasn't coming. Others enter the hospital system, often, through our emergency departments.

With this in mind, there is damning new evidence that the Morrison government received advice from the Department of Health eight months ago on how to fund more home care packages—but it ignored this advice. Why did the Morrison government ignore this advice when it knew 120,000 older Australians were waiting for their approved home care package? On top of the home care packages waitlist crisis, a week doesn't go by without another disturbing account. It's not good enough for Joyce, it's not good enough for me and it's not good enough for older Australians.