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

I'm still not quite understanding what you're saying in relation to this. My question was in relation to the 24,100 packages released in 2024-25, and you're saying 83,000 are going to be released in 2025-26. What changes proposed in this bill are going to substantially change the means through which packages are delivered that would warrant you restricting packages to 24,100 this year when somehow you've been able to find the capacity within the system for 83,000 packages next year? You're making it sound like the reforms that are before us, within this package of legislation, are somehow going to change the ability of the sector to deliver those packages.

I take your point around a previous decision in relation to wages, which has certainly seen a stabilisation of the exit of staff from the aged-care workforce, and I know that the aged-care sector is grateful for that intervention. But I'm trying to understand what is happening here or what changes you are referring to that would mean that you are releasing more than three times the number of packages in 2025-26 than you have 2024-25. What is the basis for that? To me, it has a very strange look of you restricting the release of packages in 2024-25. If the capacity exists in 2025-26 for more than three times the number of packages than were released in 2024-25, I would like to understand why you have restricted the release of packages in 2024-25.