QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Mr BUTLER (Hindmarsh—Minister for Disability and the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Minister for Health and Ageing and Deputy Leader of the House) (14:35): Thank you to the member for Petrie. She knows that government has no more important job than providing high-quality, dignified aged-care services to older Australians in their final months and years on this planet.

And, from the time that we were elected in 2022, there's been no higher priority for this prime minister and for the government, going through the hard work of implementing the recommendations of the royal commission into aged care—whose interim report, delivered to the former Liberal government, had a one-word title: Neglect—and growing and improving the aged-care services that older Australians need.

The year we came to government, the Commonwealth spent $24 billion on aged care; this year it is $44 billion. We have tripled the number of home-care packages for older Australians in just six years. There are now registered nurses onsite in nursing homes 99 per cent of the time.

Those opposite said it couldn't be done. And our staffing boost means that, every single day, eight million additional minutes of care are being delivered to older Australians in nursing homes. But we know we need more services—lots more services—with the ageing of the baby boomer population, and that is why this budget delivered more than $3 billion in additional aged-care services.

Now, while we in this government, more than any other before it, will do everything we possibly can to deliver an aged-care system worthy of the contribution older Australians have made to this country, we are also committed to sound budget management and working hard to find the responsible savings that we need to fund new services like aged care, and that's what the bill that I reintroduced into parliament this morning does.

Opposition members interjecting— Mr BUTLER: The bill returns the private health insurance subsidy system to its original design, where households next door to each other get the same rebate, based on their income, so that households on $50,000 or $70,000 or $90,000 will all receive a quarter of their private health bill paid for by taxpayers. Now, I don't pretend this is an easy decision.

I've said that from the beginning. But it is the right and necessary decision to free up the funds that we need to expand these critical aged-care services, and that is our view about better aged care. Now, I understand the Manager of Opposition Business, when he came into the parliament this morning, moved a motion that said that those additional aged-care services—more beds, more packages—were, in his words in the motion, 'wasteful spending'.

Well, that's not our view. You shouldn't be surprised—from the Liberal Party who cut funding to aged care in 2015 and 2016 and 2017, pushing the aged-care system into the crisis that led to the royal commission in the first place. Those horrific stories that Australians heard—we are determined to fix this, not supported by an opposition that pays lip-service— (Time expired)