PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Mr NEUMANN (Blair) (13:27): Since coming to office, the Albanese Labor government has invested billions in additional funding and made vital structural reforms in the aged-care sector. Our new Support at Home program began on 1 November, and we've seen waiting times come down across high, medium and standard priorities and every person assessed as urgent continues to receive their funding within a month.
We've changed the prioritisation system so that people assessed as high or medium priority can get a place faster and get the care they need. We've announced a rapid review of how the integrated assessment tool, or IAT, prioritises care places to make sure the system continues to put aged-care people first. We've delivered 83,000 additional in-home care places, and, in the budget, we announced our plan to deliver another 32,000 places next year.
These extra packages continue to take pressure off the national priority system. Once we've rolled out these additional places, by the end of 2026-27, 420,000 older Australians will have access to Support at Home. That's almost three times the number of older Australians who are receiving care, compared to the coalition's Home Care Packages program back in 2020.
We're providing $1 billion to change the treatment of personal care services, like showering, to make it free of charge through the Support at Home program, alongside clinical care. It took the coalition 32 minutes when they were in last in government to cut $1.2 billion in aged-care funding to workforce development supplements. They cut dementia supplements.
They cut veteran supplements. They cut $3 billion in budget funding when they were last. I know this.
I was the shadow minister for ageing at the time. They also cut $1.2 billion over four years through changes to the scoring matrix of the aged-care funding instrument, which determined the level of funding paid to aged-care providers. The interim report from the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety was titled Neglect.
It is not good enough for the coalition to come into this place and criticise us when they have monumentally failed when in office. So all the sanctimony and tears over there mean nothing because those opposite failed to care for older Australians when they were last in government. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Wilkie ): The time allotted for this debate has expired.
The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting. Sitting suspended from 13:30 to 16:00