Amanda Stoker (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'll take that interjection from Senator Bilyk. She says, 'Take a look at the budget papers.' Well, do you know what? I would love to take this chamber to the spending that has gone on under this government in the aged-care space. The Leader of the Opposition said in the other place today—and members of this chamber have been repeating the misleading comment—that we have been cutting funding to aged care in the time we've been in government. They say it over and over again, as though to repeat a lie often enough makes it true. But it simply doesn't work that way. And if you don't believe me, if you want to say, 'Okay, well, she's partisan; she's part of the coalition; she's got a vested interest here'—don't listen to me; that's okay. Listen to a group that is, let's face it, no friend of the coalition: the ABC.

Senator Seselja interjecting—

Senator Seselja's right. On most topics and at most opportunities the ABC takes every opportunity it gets to criticise the coalition. Yet one article—which was, granted, from November 2018—was a Fact Check: 'Did the government cut $1.2 billion from aged-care funding?' Well, there's a big old red X here, and the word 'misleading'—it just isn't true. Today they've doubled down on that and said, 'No, no, no: it's not $1.2 billion; it's $1.7 billion.' Well, I can tell you, if we didn't cut $1.2 billion in 2018, we certainly didn't cut $1.7 billion in 2020.

They are operating in a fantasy land where numbers can be plucked from the air and cast about with no correlation to reality whatsoever. So, let's do something of a fact check, because we know what's being said by those opposite doesn't bear much correlation to fact; the very ABC tells us that. Let's go to some facts. Total aged-care spending under Labor was $13.3 billion per year when they left office. Compare that with this year: under the coalition, $22.6 billion. Now, that doesn't sound like a cut to me, but hey, let's make an adjustment. Time's passed; there's been inflation. Let's assume there's been inflation. It's still an enormous increase. And here is the kicker: in 2022-23 that figure continues to increase, rising to $25.44 billion a year. That's not a cut. That's nothing even close to a cut. So, I'd implore those opposite to either look at the numbers or reacquaint themselves with their fidelity to the facts, because they are a long way off in what they're presenting to the chamber.

How about this for another fact check? Every year, under the coalition, the number of home care packages has increased. The number of residential care places has increased. And, as I have mentioned, every year aged-care funding has increased. It's a record investment over the forward estimates. It has never been higher than this, and, when you add to that an additional $3 billion to go to an extra 50,000 additional packages since the 2018-2019 budget, things are nothing like what's being painted by those opposite. I'm loath to spend my precious time just labouring numbers, because sometimes people can glaze over when the numbers are just so big, but I'll finish with this important figure on the funding and resourcing front. As at March 2020, 151,958 people had access to a home care package. That was an increase of 36 per cent on the year before—36 per cent better than we did the year before. Don't compare us against Labor's terrible underperformance; compare us to how we performed last year, because every year—every day, every week, every month—we are trying to do this better.

That is because we recognise something that is quite serious in the future of this country: we have an ageing population. We owe it to our parents, our grandparents and, if we're blessed enough to still have them, our great-grandparents to give them the very best life possible in their later years. As their care needs increase and as health complications increase, we know that many families often need help. Of course it's always better when people can be in their homes or be cared for by their loved ones, but the demand on aged care has never been higher, because of the combination of an ageing population and changes in the way that families are structured. Oftentimes, we don't have our elders living together with a broader extended family in the way that people might have done in the past, meaning there is a need for more of this kind of help. But, for all of the difficulties that come with providing a high level of service to a group of people in our community that have high needs, 98.5 per cent of senior Australians who are waiting for a package at their assessed level have been offered support by the Commonwealth, as at 31 March this year. It's not perfection, sure. Are there still problems from time to time and hiccups that have real-life consequences for individuals and their families? Sure. But all of those numbers tell us an important story, taken together, and that is that this coalition government has a commitment to aged care and a commitment to its continual improvement, and that we are prepared to back that ambition with the resources that are necessary. So I'm loath to allow those opposite to continue this narrative of crisis, when there are so many glimmers that should encourage us when it comes to the aged-care sector.

There is plenty we can also do to take encouragement from the way Australia is performing during this COVID-19 outbreak, as compared to other nations facing similar challenges. While every person lost is a blow and every family's grief matters, sometimes the statistics that are cited by those opposite are in fact a measure of—when taken as a whole—relatively good management of a difficult situation. I'll explain it this way. When those opposite cite figures that suggest a relatively high proportion of the number of people who pass away with COVID-19 come from the residential aged-care sector, that doesn't tell us that residential aged-care homes are doing particularly terribly. In fact, by international comparisons, they are doing really very well, and I'm sure that some of my colleagues will take you through those statistics in their addresses to the chamber shortly. What it tells us, though, is that our ability to keep COVID-19 deaths low in the broader community has really been very successful. So when you consider the relatively low number of deaths in our broader community, it makes the number of people who have passed in aged care seem disproportionately high, when, in fact, it should be a measure not of failure in the aged-care sector—though we acknowledge that every life matters—but rather as a measure of success in the broader community.

There are plenty of measures you can look at to satisfy yourself that we are doing rather well, broadly speaking, when compared to other countries. Australia's death rate per million people in aged care is surprisingly low given the tone of the debate in this place over the last two days. Indeed, our figures for the broader community are remarkably low, too. We've got a lot to be proud of. We've got a lot to grieve during this difficult time. But we are doing everything that's necessary to give aged-care residents the dignity they deserve. (Time expired)