ADJOURNMENT

Mr CONAGHAN (Cowper) (19:40): Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of welcoming the shadow minister for health and aged care, Senator Ruston, to my electorate of Cowper. My electorate is consistently ranked amongst the highest in the country for the number of residents accessing aged-care supports, so we are the perfect community for her to visit. While I routinely have shadow ministers in my electorate to better understand my community's needs, this invitation was specifically requested by some prominent members of Cowper's local aged-care industry.

There were two reasons for this request. Firstly, they wanted to outline their concerns about the negative trajectory that aged care has taken over the past few years but, more specifically, over the last 12 months. Secondly, they felt their calls for help and for change were being actively ignored by the minister, with one of the attendees going as far to say that they felt that they had been gaslit at recent industry events where the minister was presenting.

We're no strangers to being gaslit during question time in this place by a government intent on avoiding questions and using the age-old 'divert, deflect and deny' strategy while waxing lyrical that Australians have never been better off, but it was truly disappointing to hear that this behaviour stretched beyond the confines of this place. So we designed a roundtable forum in Coffs Harbour and invited the wider aged-care provider community to join.

Our forum's topics included financial stability, reform impacts, workforce shortages, clinical challenges and the increase in regulatory burdens that are affecting providers' ability to supply the dignity and the care that older Australians deserve. By all accounts, we have an aged-care system that is going backwards. In the feedback that we received on the day and that has been flooding into my office in recent months, a consistent message has rung loud and clear: it is harder today for our older residents to access decent standards of care and harder for our local providers to supply that care than it was four years ago.

As the opposition, it's our responsibility not only to hold Labor to account on behalf of our constituents but also to form the counterpolicy that will fix these issues. I'm not going to pretend that the coalition got everything right when it came to aged care while we were in government. We didn't.

But it must be acknowledged that things have been getting worse, not better. It's the duty of each successive government to create policies that will enact positive change for our communities and older Australians. But, as the Inspector-General of Aged Care, Natalie Siegel-Brown, stated last month, 'The way aged-care reform is being implemented is causing harm.' That is now an undisputed fact.

Since the most recent changes were implemented in November, we have seen the industry in freefall. Older Australians were promised dignity and independence, but Labor has delivered waiting lists, rationed care and a computer algorithm which determines their care needs. It is critical that we hear the issues and ideas of those at the coalface, but this minister and this government are actively avoiding that process, instead making decisions from the Canberra bubble without fully pressure testing the knock-on effects that bother providers and recipients.

Good policy is created on tables with seats filled by people who have lived experience and informed ideas. So I want to take this opportunity to thank Senator Ruston and her team for their dedication to understanding and addressing the needs of our older Australians, for listening to our local industry experts and for proactively forming the vital counterpolicies that Australians need to fix this mess that is our current aged-care system under this government.

I'd also like to thank every forum attendee for their time and commitment and for providing their feedback so well. Your voices are critical and we need to hear them echoed as strongly as possible in this place. To every older Australian in my electorate of Cowper who has reached out to my office to ask for help, I would like to say that we hear you.

While those across the floor are burying their heads in the sand and dismissing your existence, we on this side are committed to fighting for you and finding the best way to provide the care and dignity you deserve.