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

I don't have the exact number for level 4 with me, but the number of Australians waiting on the national priority list for aged-care home-care packages is just under 100,000 as of the beginning of November. I don't have the breakdown for each level, but that number of people who are waiting for home-care packages has, of course, reduced significantly over the last 12 months or so, since March last year. In March last year, the number of people waiting for a home-care package was about 129,000, and it's now under 100,000—about 98,000 or 99,000. That is because of the significant investment that we have put into the home-care sector over recent years, with $4.6 billion invested into home-care packages since the 2018-19 budget; 23,000 packages at a cost of $1.6 billion over the forward estimates in this year's budget announced just recently; and, of course, 6,105 new home-care packages announced as part of the economic statement that we released in July. So there are almost 30,000 new packages this financial year. When we came to government in 2013, there were only 60,000 home care packages in the system. There will be 185,000 packages in the system by the time we get to the end of this financial year. I'm happy to come back to the chamber with the exact number of people on a level 4 package that are on the national priority list. As I've said, the total number on the national priority list is around 99,000.