Ms COLLINS (Franklin) (10:59): I'm obviously up on my feet because, as the member for Newcastle indicated, there has been only one government speaker on this motion. It appears that not enough of those on the other side care about older Australians waiting for home care packages. I must say I am flabbergasted that they have no speakers for this motion other than the minister, who just happened to be here on duty. But I do thank the minister for his contribution. As the member for Hindmarsh and the member for Newcastle have pointed out, Labor is very concerned about this waitlist. This government has followed through with Labor's reforms—the Living Longer Living Better reforms. Indeed, it is these reforms that, for the first time, have given us a national priority queue for people waiting for home care packages. But what the minister hasn't said is that this queue started 12 months ago tomorrow. On 27 February last year these reforms were implemented, so the government has now been collecting this data of people waiting for home care packages for a year. Indeed, we've only had two releases of data about the numbers on these packages and, in between those, in that three-month period, the waitlist grew by 10,000. So not only do we have 100,000 people waiting on the list; we know that last time it grew by 10,000. We're expecting another release of data, the December quarter, so we can find out how many people are waiting now, because we don't know how many more older Australians were added to that list last year. I am particularly concerned that this list continues to grow. To date the government's only response has been to add another 6,000 packages, and that has been by adjusting level 1 and level 2 packages to create more level 3 and level 4 packages—that is, the high-care need packages. But what we're really concerned about is that our offices are being inundated by people contacting us because their parents are too frail to contact us themselves directly. They're saying, 'Please help me help my parents. Please help me.' We heard from the member for Newcastle that one of her constituents had spent over 300 hours talking to My Aged Care, desperate to get help for their parents. As the shadow minister for ageing, I am inundated daily by requests from people saying, 'Please help me help my parents.' People want their older parents to receive the care they need. We are a wealthy nation. We should be able to fix this. The government should be able to fix this. After all it is cheaper for the government to fix this than to let older Australians languish in their own homes without the support that they need, because the alternatives to this are, of course, the acute hospital system—where many older Australians end up if they're not getting the care they need at home—or residential aged care. Many older Australians who want to stay at home—and, with the right supports, could—end up in residential aged care when they don't want to. It is simply not good enough for the government and the minister to come into this place and say, 'We'll cobble together some support—just a little bit—for them while they wait for what they actually need.' In this nation in this day and age that is not good enough. If we can afford $65 billion in tax cuts for big business, we can afford to look after older Australians. It is not good enough that we have 100,000 older Australians, many with dementia, at home, waiting for care. Their children are coming to our offices absolutely desperate to get help for their parents, and this government is sitting by. They had options last year; they had MYEFO last year, and we're hearing, 'We'll fix it in the budget.' Well, they'd best be fixing it, because I will not stand by while older Australians continue to suffer in their own homes and while their children ring our offices desperate for that help and care for their parents. It is not good enough, and to have just the minister come into this place and say, 'We'll cobble together some support; that'll be alright for a little while till we fix it,' is not good enough. That waitlist continues to grow, more older Australians are added to it every day, and the government needs to do something to fix it. It needs to act, and it needs to act today—not in May, not in July, not later in the year, but today. It can do something about this. It should have done something about it last year. I will continue to get on the government's case and the minister's case until they do something about it. Ms FLINT: We are here to talk about the motion today, because the coalition government are doing a range of excellent things in the healthcare space, including giving people more choice over the sort of care that will best suit them, their families and their needs. In February last year we transitioned to a new home care system which gives consumers—individuals and families—more choice and control over the care that best suits their needs. The new system means that packages are released directly to consumers rather than to providers, and people who have the most urgent needs or have been waiting the longest receive care packages first. We know that there is a strong demand for the higher levels packages, and it's important to note that people needing these packages are receiving interim support packages which allow them to access services while they wait. In September last year we announced the release of an additional 6,000 level 3 and level 4 homecare packages over the year 2017-18. This more than doubled the planned growth of high-level packages this financial year, and a number of these have already been assigned to people. The minister and the government are releasing almost 2,500 homecare packages on a weekly basis. In addition to this, in the 2017 budget, the government provided an investment of $5.5 billion to extend the Commonwealth Home Support Program for a further two years to June 2020. I want to note some other very important points that relate to the care that we provide to all members of our community but which are particularly important to the older members of our community. We have record rates of bulk-billing under this government. Something like 85.9 per cent of all GP visits are now bulk-billed. That's a remarkable achievement that helps many people, particularly our older community members and our pensioners. We have added more than 1,500 new and amended medicines worth $7.5 billion to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which means greater access to medicines for people who need them most—often our older citizens. Also, under the coalition government, the funding for public hospital services, which is also of course of great importance to our older citizens, has increased from $13.8 billion in the year 2013-14 at the end of the failed Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government to a record $22.7 billion for 2020-21. This is a 64 per cent increase in funding. This means more doctors, more nurses, more surgeries and fewer wait times in hospitals across the nation but particularly in my home state of South Australia. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Minister for Health announced some really exciting news at the COAG meeting about an additional $30 billion for public hospital funding, which would provide almost $128 million over the five years from 2020. But unfortunately this was apparently not enough for the Premier of South Australia, who is only interested in cutting funding to public hospitals and shutting them down. One of the most important and iconic community hospitals in my electorate of Boothby which particularly serviced a lot of my older residents was the repat hospital, and the state Labor government have shut it down. It is one of the most disgraceful things the state Labor government have done. My community remain terribly distressed about this, and I am really pleased that when we see the state Liberal Party elected on 17 March they will reopen a number of key services at the repat hospital including things such as orthopaedic surgery, which for a lot of our older president is just absolutely a critical service that they use quite a lot. The repat hospital was built for our returned service men and women, and they are many of the people who are suffering from the fact that this hospital has been shut down. Providing these sorts of services, particularly through the repat hospital, is how we look after the older members of our community, working with the support that the government is providing through homecare packages which give people choice over their care.