MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE

Mr CHESTER (Gippsland—Deputy Leader of the National Party) (15:25): The Albanese government has declared war on older Australians because the majority of them don't vote Labor. It's as simple as that. The Albanese government has declared war on older Australians because the majority of them don't vote Labor.

Now, through deliberate measures in a budget of broken promises and higher taxes and through rationing the services that our seniors need, the Labor Party has sent a clear message that it simply does not respect older Australians. The message we are receiving back in return is equally simple. Australians want their country back.

After four years of this government, Australians are worse off and our country is heading the wrong direction. It's older Australians who are copping it the most. Budgets are about choices, and this government simply doesn't choose to support our older Australians.

Now, for a prime minister who promised to govern for all Australians, this is yet another broken promise because our aged-care system is in crisis. There are now 230,000 Australians on waiting lists, and what those Australians don't need is the fake empathy we saw in question time from this minister. They need action.

The aged-care system has 230,000 people on waiting lists, and now what we're seeing on top of that, in terms of impacts on older Australians, is this government coming out and deciding to cut private health insurance rebates. We've seen this government come along and change the arrangements for capital gains tax, change the arrangements for negative gearing and change the arrangements of trust and self-managed super funds, all after the Prime Minister said not once, not twice, but 50 times he was making no such changes.

The Australian people weren't even given a chance to vote on those changes at an election. I'm going to focus my comments today more on aged care for a very good reason. This is literally a matter of life and death for a lot of older people in our community.

I have spoken on this issue in the past, in this chamber and in the Federation Chamber as well, and I make this contribution with a heavy heart because it should never have come to this. We have written repeatedly to this minister on behalf of constituents. In fact, my office is now tracking 18 outstanding representations to the minister since the start of the year.

This minister can take three to four months to bother responding to correspondence on behalf of my constituents. I'm not trying to score a political point in saying this, but we are trying to instil a sense of urgency in this minister and his department about the real-life consequences of their failure to fix the aged-care system. Now, the minister has told the House previously: Aged care is a fundamental promise this country makes to older Australians that … they will be safe, they will be seen and they will be cared for with dignity.

But, given that Senate estimates has been told that 4,800 older Australians died in just 12 months waiting for their Support at Home package, isn't this just another broken promise to the people of Australia? We simply don't know what the current figure is. The minister was invited today to give us a figure from 2022 to now.

He failed to do that. There could be up to 100 Australians dying each week as they wait for the support they are entitled to receive.These people have been assessed and have been deemed eligible for support, and they are dying on the waiting list. These are not abstract numbers on a page.

These are real people who have worked hard, contributed their taxes and helped to build our nation, and they find themselves needing a little bit of help to stay in their homes. They've been assessed for care, and they're not receiving the care they're entitled to. I'm going to give you one tragic example.

I've spoken about this in the past and in local media. I have the permission of the family to do so. I was contacted by a family member who was concerned about his 99-year-old parents, Frank and Velma, who were both 99 and both living at home.

They wanted to stay at home—and we all know that older people in our community do better if they have that opportunity to stay in their own, familiar surroundings. After some recent falls, Frank and Velma were reassessed as being eligible for a modest assistance package under the Support at Home program. Did they get the help, as the minister tries to pretend in this place?

No. Frank and Velma were told their package would be delivered in 11- to 12-months time. They were 99 years old!

We warned the government that they could very well die before they received that package. We asked in Senate estimates if there was any way we could fast track this package for Frank and Velma. I wrote to the minister.

We waited 74 days for a response from the government, and poor Frank died seven days before that letter arrived in my office. Frank died on the waiting list. We received no additional action, and the letter itself contained no commitment to try and fast track support for this 99-year-old couple.

I urge the minister and I urge the department to take some responsibility for these long delays and show some urgency on behalf of older Australians who are now waiting up to 12 months to receive Support at Home packages that they've been deemed eligible to receive. Sadly it's not an isolated case. I've got one other case here in a letter from Marie, who wrote to me a couple of weeks ago, I think, about her 100-year-old mother.

She says, 'My mother is 100 years old. She has already waited many months after being approved for funding and now faces further delays before any practical assistance can be provided. The government promotes programs that support older people to remain in their own homes, but the reality is that the system seems unable to deliver supports within a timeframe that reflects the urgency of their needs.

Perhaps those responsible for designing these changes should ask themselves a simple question: if this were their own mother or father, would they be satisfied with this outcome?' I appeal to the minister, and I appeal to the department: if this were your mother or father, who was 100 years old and waiting month after month for support in their own home, would you be satisfied?

I ask the department, and I ask the minister to do better. Just do better. The minister can't claim that he hasn't been told.

As I said, I've written to him on many occasions and so have my colleagues. In March this year the minister said: I think the Integrated Assessment Tool is doing a good job. Then, on 3 June, he announced a so-called rapid review of the same system that apparently eight weeks earlier was doing a very good job.

Surely the minister now understands that the system is not responding well to people whose conditions are deteriorating quickly and that they have been left on these waiting lists without receiving any support in their own homes. The algorithm simply isn't working. I've listened to the minister give media interviews.

The algorithm isn't working, human assessors in our communities are incredibly frustrated and the prioritisation of cases has resulted in warped outcomes. Various advocacy groups have written to the minister and have spoken publicly about their concerns. What did the government do in response?

Well, the government tried to bury the wait times report by releasing it in budget week because that wait time report showed older Australians were waiting more than a year to receive their Support at Home packages. The Older Persons Advocacy Network Director, Samantha Edmonds, in relation to aged-care waiting figures being confronting, said: It's so detrimental to the health and wellbeing of older people to have those wait times, to watch their health and wellbeing decline.

We have the New South Wales health minister saying that older Australians are now blocking beds in hospitals—up to 800 per night—because there's no support for them in their own homes. What happens when people are left on this waiting list is that their health deteriorates. They have falls.

They then need more help. They end up calling ambulances, and they wind up in hospital rather than in more appropriate settings. Ryan Park, the New South Wales health minister, said: The reality is the lack of aged-care places and the wait times for those places mean 800 people remain stranded in New South Wales hospitals … This is not good for patients—it decreases mobility.

It increases their risk of further complications. They and their families deserve better. That is the bottom line.

They and their families deserve better than this. This government's war on older Australians is hurting their health. This government's war on older Australians is hurting their finances and their retirement incomes.

It's hurting the people they love, who are seeing their family members suffer. Families are being traumatised by a government that is failing in its fundamental duty to all Australians: just keep Australians safe. Worse than that, we now know that the government is trying to hide the facts from the nation with sneaky political tactics which are unworthy of a minister in the Parliament of Australia.