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

I don't ask flippantly about the risk associated with this, because it was quite clear throughout the entire inquiry, where witness after witness after witness came in and said they were concerned about the lack of detail. I think we got a sense of a genuine preparedness and desire by the sector to make sure that they are ready and that the people they care for or are going to care for into the future are not negatively impacted by their inability to be ready.

I draw attention to this particular issue on the basis that we talked about ICT. That is probably, in a sense, one of the more mechanical things: the more resources you throw at it, the better the chance that you're going to be able to achieve it or achieve the timelines. But we know that there's not a lot of money that's going to be made available to this sector, and we know that, in the last report from StewartBrown, half of Australia's residential aged-care providers, as an example, were still operating at a loss or weren't making a profit.

So this may only be a small burden, and a little bit later I'll be keen to prosecute what you know and what you understand in terms of the impact of these changes on the sector. But there are a number of other things that still remain outstanding that will have a significant impact, particularly on home-care providers, not the least of which is that we're still not expecting the final determinations on pricing for Support at Home until February. So I ask the minister: do we have a firm date for when we will be guaranteed to receive the final pricing determinations from IHACPA?