Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

For those who are listening to this debate in the gallery and elsewhere, let me just summarise what has happened in the last 45 minutes. So confident were the Labor Party, the Labor opposition, in their performance at question time today that, for the last 45 minutes, they have been talking about issues that were not the substance of their question time contribution. What does this mean? We now have half the time available to us to discuss the issues raised at question time. What does this demonstrate? It demonstrates that Labor do not even trust their own performance in question time.

Senator Polley said something very important. She said that leadership was required to steer the ship back on course. What ship are we talking about? We are talking about the Dementia and Severe Behaviours Supplement. There is no-one doubt that, as a consequence of the ageing population, more of our older Australians will unfortunately suffer from dementia. A smaller group of them, just as unfortunately, will suffer from severe behaviour difficulties. We know that, with age, the prevalence of dementia rises from one in 10 when you are aged 65 years and over to three in 10 when you are aged 85 years and over.

So let us just get to the nub of the problem. The Dementia and Severe Behaviours Supplement was the NBN of the aged care system under Labor. It was poorly designed and badly implemented. Its costs were exaggerated because Labor designed it badly. How badly did you design it? How badly could Labor have designed it? What was the depth of your poor design? Let us think about this. Originally, the program was designed to support the care of 2,000 residents with severe behaviours; at last count, it was supporting 29,000 residents. You designed a system that would cost the taxpayer $110 million over those 11 months. Now those costs are extreme, because you designed a very bad system. It must be embarrassing to find yourself in opposition now, having to curry favour with people and hide from your poor—

Senator Polley interjecting—