Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate that. The fact is that thousands and thousands of Australians are dying on the watch of this government. If you care about your family—if you have an older Australian, a mum or dad, that you care about in your family and you're banking on this government to give you a bit of help or support if they become unwell, have a stroke, develop dementia or need someone to come in and give them a bit of a hand to have a shower, I'm sorry to tell you it won't be there. If by some miracle the government should deign to give you acceptance of your request and provide you with a little bit of care, be pretty confident that if, say, your mum has a sudden health crisis and is assessed as needing a high level of care—level 4 is a high level—this government will think it's okay to give you a level 1 package. It actually thinks that that's okay. I don't want to trivialise this, but this lunacy is like if you went to a shoe shop and asked for a size 7 and they gave you a 2. It doesn't fit. That is how ill fitting this government's policy around aged care is.

So I urge Australians: don't accept the ridiculous rhetoric of this self-aggrandising government that pats itself on the back day in and day out and that spent $1 billion telling you how good it is. If it had spent that on aged care, maybe some of the 28,000 people who got buried while they were waiting for a package might still be here.