ADJOURNMENT

Mr CHESTER (Gippsland—Deputy Leader of the National Party) (19:50): The Albanese government has declared war on older Australians and is treating the people who helped to build this great nation with complete contempt. The government's war on older Australians is hurting their health, it's hurting their finances and their retirement income in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis and it's hurting the people they love.

Families are being traumatised by a government which is failing its fundamental duty to keep Australians safe and then has the audacity to try to hide the facts from the nation with sneaky political tactics that are unworthy of a minister in the Parliament of Australia. Now, plenty has been said about Labor's broken promise on the private health insurance rebate for older Australians.

By their very own admissions, the Labor Party knows that that decision will force older people to cancel private health insurance, place more pressure on public hospitals and undermine the viability of private hospitals, particularly in rural and regional areas. There's no doubt that it will add to waiting lists in public hospitals, and there's also no doubt that it will deliver poorer health outcomes for some of the most vulnerable people in the country.

But tonight I'm going to focus more on aged care because we have an absolutely delusional minister who is clearly out of his depth and should be removed from his portfolio. Now, I don't say that lightly. In fact, in my whole time in this parliament, I don't think I've said that about any minister.

But this minister is dealing with matters of life and death, and he is clearly completely and utterly out of his depth. We have a junior minister who has repeatedly demonstrated no empathy for older Australians and no urgency in fixing the problems with a system which is failing hundreds of thousands of people every year. In the last financial year, by the minister's own admission, 4,812 older Australians died waiting for a Support at Home Package.

Keep in mind that in 2021 the Prime Minister said: The idea that you can have an approved aged care package and then die waiting to actually receive it, is just extraordinary. Well, wake up Minister; it's happening on your watch. The Albanese government has tried to hide the full extent of the problems being faced by older Australians.

The government actually tried to bury the wait times report by releasing it in budget week. It's all about the spin with this government. They tried to hide the report by releasing it in budget week, because it showed that older Australians are waiting more than a year to receive their Support at Home packages.

Last night on the ABC's Four Corners program, we learned even more about the extent of the problems. We heard from experts about the algorithms being used and the failures of the integrated assessment tool. But this could not have been news to the minister, because we've been raising our concerns on this side of the parliament for months and months and months now.

The minister had the audacity to tell the ABC Four Corners program: Where there are individual cases where people are waiting an unnecessarily long period of time, I'm always happy to follow them up personally. This is deceptive at best from this minister. I have written to the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors on behalf of more than 30 older Gippslanders more than 30 times since 1 November last year, and he hasn't responded to a single letter.

Now, it's hard to believe, but we've written repeatedly about long delays for people with urgent needs and received no replies from this minister. Without any question of doubt, this is the worst-performing minister I have dealt with in my time in office. I don't know whether it's arrogance, incompetence or just the sheer workload of complaints coming to the minister's office, but it's simply not good enough to ignore genuine requests from older Gippslanders concerned about their Support at Home packages.

As 96-year-old Audrey Staniland told the ABC last night They say they want to keep you in your home, but why are they making it so damned hard? That's what I don't understand. The consequences of these aged-care failures are impacting the entire health system.

New South Wales Labor health minister Ryan Park says, 'Elderly Australians are effectively blocking hospital beds.' He 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 … They and their families deserve better. Up to 3,000 beds per night in hospitals currently have older Australians who are waiting for the right level of care in a more appropriate setting.

This is the crisis we are talking about, and this is the government's failure to care for the needs of older Australians.