Santo Santoro (Queensland, Liberal Party, Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I simply say: thank you to those opposite for their welcome today! The Howard government has been committed and remains committed to providing a world-class system of aged care which is high quality, affordable and accessible and which meets the need and choices of older Australians. In answering the question, I would like to compare the performance of this government with the performance of the previous government. In 1996, honourable senators will be interested to know, there were only 141,282 operational places, but as of June 2005—talking about performance and talking about the contrast in policies—there were 193,753.