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

Well, I think we've just moved a motion in this place to make sure it does get passed one way or the other today. I'm keen to understand. Are you still absolutely convinced, given that you've said that you don't know what the grants program is going to look like—even though it seems to have bit of a rough definition around it—and you don't know what the communications program is going to look like, because we're waiting for the passage of this bill? I'm sure, if I asked questions on a number of other things, I would, once again, have a response that says, 'We're waiting for the passage of this bill.' I get that.

But, in the process of that, we still have a deadline of 1 July 2025 for this bill to be implemented. It seems to me that there's an awful lot that has to happen between the passage of this bill, which might happen today, and the implementation on 1 July 2025. You've given an ironclad guarantee that the government will be ready with sufficient time for the sector to be able to implement these changes so that older Australians are not negatively impacted in any way by these changes. You said that we're still waiting on just about all of the rules that are really fundamental in understanding what this reform is likely to look like for older Australians but, most particularly, in making sure that providers are in a position to implement the changes so that this is the most seamless and painless process for older Australians.

We all know that we want older Australians to have a rights based framework through which they receive their care, and we all agree about the importance of making sure that older Australians are receiving the dignified care that they deserve in their older years. Obviously, we have a very tight timeframe. We have a huge amount of information that isn't available to us yet. So I'm keen to understand whether the department has modelled what the level of risk of providers not being ready by 1 July to implement these changes is and what that risk looks like.