SENATOR THE HON ANNE RUSTON
SHADOW MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE
SHADOW MINISTER FOR DISABILITY AND THE NDIS
SHADOW MINISTER FOR SPORT
DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION IN THE SENATE

TRANSCRIPT

ABC RADIO NATIONAL BREAKFAST WITH MELISSA CLARKE
11 December 2025

Topics: Upcoming health ministers meeting, Prime Minister’s broken promise on hospital funding, home care packages, hospital bed block, travel expenses, immigration policy

MELISSA CLARKE: Federal and state health ministers are meeting tomorrow amid a bitter public spat over funding. State leaders are trying to hold the Federal Government to promises on hospital funding levels, aged care and disability support, while the Commonwealth argues states need to rein in the growth in their costs. Anne Ruston is the Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care. Anne Ruston, welcome back to Radio National Breakfast.

ANNE RUSTON: Good morning.

MELISSA CLARKE: In 2023, the Federal Government promised to increase its share of funding for public hospitals to 42.5% by 2030 and then to 45% by 2035, but subject to a spending cap to limit that growth. Is it fair for the Commonwealth to enforce a cap on costs?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, I think the issue here is that when the Prime Minister went out loudly promising this 42.5% uplift of Commonwealth support for hospital funding by 2030 and 45% by 2035, he did not say at the time that he was going to put a growth cap on it. We have in the past had a growth cap. He said he was going to lift that growth cap. But you don’t promise that you will get to at least 42.5% by 2030 and then, sometime later, make that conditional. And I think the states and territories have got a real cause for calling the Prime Minister out for making a promise that he quite clearly was either never intending to keep or now finds he can’t keep.

MELISSA CLARKE: As you mentioned, there has previously been a cap. Do you support the idea of a cap or do you think there shouldn’t be one?

ANNE RUSTON: What I support is that when you make a promise to the Australian public, that you keep that promise. Now, the Prime Minister has thrown older Australians into uncertainty, he’s thrown our hospital systems into uncertainty, he has provided great uncertainty to people who are living with disability over a lot of promises around negotiations that he is continuing to fail to achieve.

MELISSA CLARKE: The Coalition has been pushing the Government to be more restrained in its spending. A cap does that, so why are you criticising the Government for seeking to have one imposed here?

ANNE RUSTON: I’m not criticising the Government for seeking to have a cap. What I’m criticising the Government for is once again making promises that it doesn’t intend to keep. And it’s creating great uncertainty across the whole of the Australian care landscape, because it says one thing one day and then a few days later the Government’s saying something else. So what we’re saying to the Government is you need to be consistent, meet your promises, don’t keep on breaking them, and put some certainty back into our system.

MELISSA CLARKE: I mean, this is still being negotiated, so there is still a question about what the cap should be. The idea that there would not be a cap at all wasn’t what anyone was expecting. The question’s what level the cap should be. So what do you think is a reasonable level for a cap?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, actually, I don’t agree with you. I actually think that the Prime Minister quite clearly led the states and territories to believe that he was going to provide 42.5% of Commonwealth funding to the states’ and territories’ hospitals by 2030. I think that is quite clearly what he said. But I think your point is also well made in terms of this negotiation is still ongoing. The Prime Minister failed to negotiate this funding agreement once already. It was supposed to be in place by July this year. And we’re now coming up to Christmas with nigh on little more than six months to go before this agreement needs to be in place, as well as all the promises that the Prime Minister has made around the foundational supports with people living with disability. And as we go into tomorrow’s negotiation, I don’t think anybody’s got much confidence that this is going to be dealt with tomorrow.

MELISSA CLARKE: Just over a month ago, the Government’s reforms to aged care came into force. It was a big change to the way older Australians pay for residential care but also home care. What’s your sense of how well the reforms are being implemented?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, the thing that I was most shocked to find out, as I’m sure many Australians would be, is that - [despite] the promise that the Government gave us when we negotiated this particular package of changes - they were going to turn around and only provide older Australians with sixty percent of the value of the home care package they’ve been assessed as needing, which I think a lot of people were probably very surprised about. I have to say, I thought it was incredible that this was hidden from us when we were doing the negotiations.

MELISSA CLARKE: The Government says the release of these interim packages that aren’t the full amount is in line with the law. If that’s true, do you still have an issue with their use? Do you think it’s reasonable if it’s within the law?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, what I’d say is that the Government apparently funded 83,000 home care packages in the Budget last year for this financial year. They then delayed the rollout of those packages for three months and only did it after we forced them kicking and screaming to do so. So if they haven’t [released] packages for three months, and now they’re rolling them out at sixty percent of their value, they quite clearly have underfunded the promise that they made Australians before the election.

MELISSA CLARKE: Is it an issue of underfunding or is it something else? Because we hear from the sector that there just aren’t enough providers, there aren’t enough workers right now, and that while there might be demand in funding, there aren’t the people to provide those services. So does it make sense to limit the amount of Support at Home funding there is, given there aren’t enough workers to provide the services to meet that demand?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, that’s not what we’re hearing from the sector. We’re certainly hearing now that the sector are quite capable of gearing up to be able to provide the packages as they’re being rolled out. I mean, of course, in some markets we do know there are shallow markets, particularly in rural Australia. But more generally the sector are saying that they have the capacity to deliver these packages. And so, the Government has no excuse for underfunding packages that it promised Australians before the election.

MELISSA CLARKE: Earlier in the program we spoke to Sue Kurrle, who’s the President of the Australia and New Zealand Society for Geriatric Medicine, about the more than 1,000 patients stranded in New South Wales hospitals. This is the bed block case of where older Australians or Australians with a disability who’ve had medical care but don’t have resources in place to head off to an aged care bed or with disability support to head home. This is what she had to say about aged care places.

SUE KURRLE: Last year, or the 2024-25 financial year, there were about 700 new beds built and that’s across Australia, and we need about 9,000. So you can see there is a huge shortfall and this problem is going to continue.

MELISSA CLARKE: So that’s the shortfall in the residential aged care beds or nursing home beds as we used to call them. There’s clearly still a massive issue. When the government sat down and negotiated with the Coalition for these aged care reforms, you know, it had bipartisan support, has it done enough to really tackle the scale of change that’s needed to get help to everyone?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, no, quite frankly, this is a very, very difficult area and why we were prepared to work very hard with the Government to get some reforms in place to try and resolve some of the issues that were around at the time and are still around now. But I think the point of your contributor around the lack of beds that are being built, this is because of the lack of certainty that the sector has had for such a long time. The sector is just not building new beds. We need to do something to encourage our private providers to start building beds because we need about 120,000 additional beds over the next ten years and building 700 beds a year is not going to get us there. So there’s a lot of work still to be done when it comes to these aged care reforms. Passing the Act was the easy bit, the hard bit’s actually implementing it.

Melissa Clarke: You’re listening to Radio National Breakfast and my guest is the Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care, Anne Ruston. Can I just ask you on another issue, we’ve seen a lot of scrutiny of taxpayer-funded travel claims. It started with scrutiny of Communications Minister Anika Wells but has now extended to other current and former government MPs. Do the rules here that govern MPs and family reunion travel need to be examined to see whether they are in line with community expectations?

ANNE RUSTON: Look, I have no problem with us constantly reviewing the guidelines around the things that we do as politicians, because we do need to meet the community expectations about how we’re spending government funding. But I also understand, particularly with so many young mothers in our parliament, that it’s really important that they be able to have the flexibility for their young families to travel with them. So, I think we all - it’s incumbent on every single one of us that has the incredible privilege of representing our states or our territories, that when we are spending taxpayers’ money, we’re doing it in a way that we can absolutely guarantee that we’re spending it in the best interest of the people that we represent. And I think obviously what we’ve seen over the last few days, particularly with the Communications Minister, is that was not meeting community expectations.

MELISSA CLARKE: The Coalition’s expected to release its immigration policy or principles for it before the end of the year. There’s been some reporting that the Coalition will look to limit appeals by visa overstayers and tear up visas for people who breach Australian values. Is that what’s in the plan?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, obviously it’s still in the process of being negotiated at the moment amongst the people in my party who have responsibility for immigration. But I’m very much looking forward to our migration principles because we are a proud migrant country, but we need to make sure that our migration is properly planned. And we’ve seen over the last couple of years, over a million people arriving over the last two years with no long-term migration planning in place. And so, I think it is really, really important that we support our migration with strong planning around Australian infrastructure and services.

Melissa Clarke: Anne Ruston, thank you very much for joining me on Radio National Breakfast this morning.

ENDS