Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks, Senator Siewert, for the question. The $171 million that we announced on Friday was a further contribution towards our response to the COVID-19 pandemic. That's what it was specifically targeted to do; it wasn't designed to fix the aged-care sector. It's a different situation. We are currently in the middle of a royal commission into the aged-care sector, which was given the task of forensically looking at the entire aged-care sector and then coming back to government with recommendations on what we should do to improve the residential aged-care sector in this country—in fact, that includes the home care sector. We are watching that process very closely. Our officials engage with the commission on a regular basis. They continue to issue papers, including one that they issued this morning with respect to quality indicators. We will respond, as I have said and as the Prime Minister has said, to the royal commission when it makes its recommendations. I acknowledge, and the Prime Minister has acknowledged—it's why we called the royal commission—that there are issues with residential aged care and the aged-care sector more broadly in this country. Clearly, there are. That's why we called the royal commission. We look forward to its report when it reports on 26 February next year. The objective that I have, and I know that the Prime Minister has, is for us to make a significant response to that royal commission report in our budget next year. So that's the timeline we have. We acknowledge that additional funding is required for this sector, and we have invested significantly in this sector in the last two budgets, in excess of, say, $3 billion for 50,000 home care places. (Time expired)