QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS
Senator LIDDLE (South Australia—Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate) (15:43): I move: That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today. I start by addressing Senator Wong's answer, which failed on every transparency and accountability level and measure on aged care. In our home state of South Australia—the great state of South Australia that we both call home—record ramping, mostly for old people, is through the roof.
Bed blocking is a crisis due to aged-care shortages. There's the cancelling by Labor of the private health rebate for older Australians. The latest data from this month in South Australia says waiting an average of 317 days is someone's mother, grandmother, aunt, sister, brother, uncle or grandfather.
They're waiting for non-specialist support-at-home services. That's the aged-care system under a Labor government—poor, inadequate, unresponsive. Now, let's talk about the Four Corners expose.
It's not a surprise to anybody trying to navigate the aged-care system under Labor. It confirmed exactly what the coalition has been warning for months: that the algorithm for aged care that was developed under Labor, that was pushed through under Labor, is hurting vulnerable older Australians. A leading expert on that program showed that changing the answer to a single question can make a difference of tens of thousands of dollars in someone's funding.
That's not a sophisticated tool; that's actually a lottery in the life of older Australians who have contributed to our great country. They are then subjected to an algorithm that says no. A bit like Labor: no to the evidence in front of them that this is flawed; no to the alarmed experts that say, 'There is a problem with your algorithm'; no to the painful stories of older Australians—true stories, honest stories, raw stories; and no to their families, who just want a better deal for older Australians.
Labor designed the system, legislated it and implemented it. Every failure we are seeing has happened under their watch. Labor must return human override to its untested, unreliable, rigid and flawed algorithm assessment tool.
It's hard to believe that's a difficult concept to grasp. We're not talking about a tool; we're actually talking about humans and the tool you introduced to assess their needs. In South Australia, we've got a particularly big problem with aged care.
We should be caring better for our older people. It is simply not acceptable that more than 5,000 people have died waiting for a package. That's not acceptable by any measure.
The coalition's position is simple: if an older Australian has been assessed as needing care, they should receive the care they have been assessed as needing. Not a fraction of it, not a portion of it, not after months of waiting and certainly not after they have died! That's not acceptable.
(Time expired)