Mr BRIAN MITCHELL (Lyons) (15:51): It gives me great pleasure to speak today on this matter of public importance. Few things are more important in this country than looking after our older Australians—people who have, for their entire life, contributed to the welfare of the nation. I will come to the aged-care issue and the government's treatment of pensioners, but I want to raise very briefly the issue of older Australians who are seeking to get back into the workforce. As we know, the Newstart rules are that you have to keep looking for work well into your 50s, and older Australians find it very difficult. They are facing age discrimination. I have two cases that my office is dealing with now. One case is of a 64-year-old man. His job used to be training delivery drivers for supermarkets. He was made redundant several years ago. He recently applied for a delivery driver job at another supermarket chain and, despite his years of experience, he did not get the job. He asked why and he was not given a reason. There are aspects to this that I'm seeking to find out, but what concerns me is that he seems to have been displaced by someone on a visa—and I think that certainly bears more investigation. We are talking about an older Australian who, on the face of it, seems to have been displaced by somebody on a visa when he is ready and willing to work. This was for a supermarket delivery job. We are not talking about a highly skilled job which a worker needs to come in from overseas in order to do. We are talking about somebody with the experience and the skills who has not been given that job—and I really question why. Another case I have is of a 55-year-old woman with years of aged-care experience. She was made redundant and went to a job provider. The job provider keeps putting her name forward for aged-care work, but she never hears anything back. There is an aged-care centre in her city which has put on several overseas workers in aged-care roles. She is an aged-care worker with years of experience and she's not getting the offers. Why not? Why are these people with this experience being held back? These are questions that need to be asked. As we know, there are far too many people on visas coming in and taking the jobs that can go to Australians with experience. We know that there is a place for people on visas with special skills—nobody doubts that—but it is absolutely disgraceful that experienced and skilled Australian workers, particularly older Australian workers who face all sorts of hurdles getting into the workforce, aren't being offered the jobs. We come to the aged-care system. It is absolutely broken. Yesterday was the anniversary of the calling of this royal commission. The lack of progress by the government since then, on any action—and the Prime Minister's disgraceful words today, where he was essentially saying that he's going to wait another year before he takes any meaningful action on dealing with the crisis facing aged care—is just untenable. There is not one part of Australia's aged-care system that has not been impacted by the ongoing crisis. Not a day goes by without another disturbing account being told. Just this week we have had the disturbing revelations of what has been going on with Bupa, one of the main providers in this country, a for-profit provider, creaming off millions from the public purse to provide a service to older Australians, and failing to provide that service. It is absolutely disgraceful. Personally I took great pleasure in—I shouldn't say 'working'; that is overstating it—spending a day in the life of an aged-care worker. Some of us on this side—I'm sure those on the other side have been invited to do the same—spent a day in the life of an aged-care worker. We went to an aged-care service and we spent our day in the kitchen, on the floor, looking at the work that aged-care workers do. They work incredibly hard under very stressful conditions. I worked in a kitchen on that day. Mr Shorten: Good on you, Brian. Mr BRIAN MITCHELL: Thank you, Member for Maribyrnong; I appreciate that. The pace of work they do, from 6 am till well into the afternoon, is unrelenting. They have mere minutes to mop up and to roam through the rooms. They are on their feet. We are talking, again, usually of older women in these very physically demanding roles, with heavy trays of dishes to put into the big washers and dryers. It is very demanding, very fast-paced and unrelenting, and they are very short-staffed. (Time expired)