QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Senator McALLISTER (New South Wales—Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) (14:54): As the Senate knows, the government's priority is making sure that our tax dollars deliver the greatest benefit possible for older Australians, and that means directing more funding into the care that people rely on every day. These aren't straightforward choices from the government's perspective.

To help fund that investment in aged care, the government will return the private health insurance rebate for older Australians to the same rate that is available to all other Australians. We do understand that this is a difficult decision. It will not be a welcome decision for many older Australians, but we think it is the right decision.

The additional rebate is simply not the best way to spend precious taxpayers' dollars on behalf of older Australians when there is so much heavy lifting to do in aged care. And there's a reason that there is now so much to do in aged care. Senator Ruston, in her question, referenced 'lazy'.

I'll tell you what is lazy. It would be going to an election without a single costed aged-care policy. Unbelievably, that is what Senator Ruston did.

There are 214 commitments in the coalition's election costing report, and not a single one of them is about aged-care places, because, when it came down to it, the coalition had no answers whatsoever to the neglect that they had overseen in the aged-care system—not a single answer. They couldn't tell Australians how many packages they would fund. They could not tell Australians what it would cost.

They couldn't tell Australians how they would invest in the workforce to deliver care, and that is what is lazy. The PRESIDENT: Senator Ruston, first supplementary?