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

When the Howard government came to power in 1996, there were minimal fire standards, there was no accreditation process and there was no complaints abuse mechanism to take care of complaints from the aged care sector. The sector had been neglected under the 13 years of the Keating-Hawke government to the extent that it was a cottage industry. It was the Howard government that introduced all the reforms that I have just mentioned—fire safety, accreditation, complaints tribunals and complaints commissioners—and all the other quality control mechanisms that have been put in place.

In addition to that—and I give credit where credit is due—we took up an initiative of the Labor Party to start moving the aged care sector into community care. When they left government, as a result of a wise decision by the Australian public in 1996, there were 5,000—