Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I'll finish on this particular issue. You'll excuse me for being somewhat sceptical. You don't have to be a Rhodes scholar in mathematics to understand that if you currently have nearly 80,000 people already assessed as needing packages that don't have them, and you've got 800,000 people that will need to transition onto packages over a period of two years, then, even if you release 30,000 packages next year and 30,000 packages the year after that, there is no way in the world that any mathematical equation could mean that that would halve the wait time for packages. So I would be really interested if the department may be able to provide some additional information about how they have somehow come up with this extraordinary calculation, given the numbers and the mathematical facts before us.

One of the things I would be keen to understand is something I asked about during the committee hearings and again during estimates. There is an expectation, under the package of reforms here, that older Australians are going to be asked to make a greater contribution to their aged care, particularly as it relates to those things that are non-clinical care components. I put on the record that the decision to make all clinical care fully funded by the government is something that the opposition entirely supports. We believe that the clinical care that every Australian receives is a responsibility of the government, and it should not differ. No matter who you are or where you are, you should receive the same level of clinical care.

But older Australians will, under this new system, be asked to pay more for their non-clinical care—everyday living expenses and independent expenses et cetera. So I was wondering if the department, subsequent to questioning through estimates and through the inquiry, has done any further work to understand the scale of risk in relation to unrecoverable debts. At the moment, the burden of liability for any unrecoverable debts rests with the private sector—with the many small businesses and the like that are providers—and not with the government. I'm interested to understand if you have done any assessment around the risk associated with the quantum of the increase in the likelihood of risk of unrecoverable debts to get an understanding of the likely increased liability on the sector for the burden of unrecoverable debts.