Senator POLLEY (Tasmania) (15:09): I move: That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians (Senator Colbeck) to questions without notice asked by Senators Keneally, Marielle Smith, O'Neill today relating to aged care funding and home care packages. I'm taking note of these answers because, on this side of the chamber, we have been asking the government to urgently respond to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. This is really important to the Australian community: what has been exposed through the royal commission into aged care—the harm, the neglect and the lack of funding. But this isn't something that has just happened. This government was warned over eight months ago by its own department about how to fix the crisis in the aged-care packages home care package waitlist. We know that older Australians are having to wait between 18 to 24 months for a care package that they have been assessed as needing. There's record after record of people making contact with my office and with the office of every member on the Labor side, whether on this side of Parliament House or in that other place. People—92-year-olds—are being told they have to wait 18 months for a home care package. We now have the figures that demonstrate very clearly that there have been over 16,000 older Australians who have been assessed for the home care package and who have died. There are 14,000 older Australians who want to stay at home and who have been assessed as needing a home care package but who, because that package was not provided to them in a timely manner, were forced to go into a residential care home—forced! This government says, 'Well, we've got the royal commission's interim report, so we have to wait and something will happen at some time.' There have been 14 reports over the last six years, demonstrating very clearly the need for more investment and better transparency into the aged-care sector. The Prime Minister himself, when he was Treasurer, gutted the aged-care sector. He gutted it—they took a billion dollars out of the aged-care sector. They used the aged-care sector as an ATM. They can talk about having empathy for older Australians and those who have been neglected and abused in the aged-care sector now, but what we need to see is real action—not waiting for Christmas. Which Christmas? This is not new. I have been involved in countless inquiries since I've been in the Senate. We know that there has been report after report gathering dust. We've had four ministers now in the six years that those on that side have been in government, and each one of those ministers has failed the Australian people and failed some of the people who are the most deserving of our respect and our care. These are the people who helped build this country. They are our parents and they are our grandparents. They deserve to be treated in their later years with respect and dignity. Quite frankly, I don't think that's too much to ask. I am ashamed to be an Australian senator when we have to sit by and hear, day after day, the stories—the real stories—of families struggling with not being able to get the support to keep their older loved ones at home. We know that there's a shortfall of aged-care workers and we know those workers need better pay. But what we've seen from this government, from minister after minister, is their lack of empathy, their lack of concern and—most informative—their lack of interest in the aged-care sector. That's galling. We, as a nation, are judged by the way we treat our young people, how we treat our most vulnerable people and how we treat older Australians. If I sat on that side of the chamber, on the government bench, I would be hanging my head in shame. The Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians we have now is a Tasmanian minister. He has this responsibility. Tasmania has the fastest-ageing population in this country. He knows only too well of the countless incidents in Tasmania that have been reported to the aged-care royal commission this very week. He lives in the area where some of those atrocities are happening. We don't have a minister in cabinet who has some authority to sit around the cabinet table, unlike the previous Labor governments, where we elevated this ministerial responsibility to a cabinet minister, so they were there at the cabinet table, speaking up for these people. It is an indictment on this government that they still have not taken the action. Now, not only are there the 16 reports they have indicated but the royal commission— (Time expired)