Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care, Senator Anne Ruston, says the Government is trying to claim victory on aged care waitlists while ignoring the reality facing older Australians.
"Minister Butler is celebrating a National Priority System waitlist of around 100,000 people, but when the Coalition left office the waitlist was fewer than 50,000 people. Under this Government, it has doubled," Senator Ruston said.
"The Government is calling this progress. Older Australians waiting for care would call it a crisis."
Senator Ruston said the latest Support at Home report is cherry picking only a part of the story.
"The Government reports how long people wait after they have been approved for services, but it does not tell Australians how long they wait for an assessment in the first place."
"When assessment delays are included, older Australians can wait more than a year from applying for support to actually receiving care."
"The Government's data obscures the true wait time and gives Australians an incomplete picture of the system's performance."
Senator Ruston said the only reason the waitlist has fallen from its peak is because the Coalition and crossbench forced the Government to release an additional 83,000 places through the Senate.
"Nearly three-quarters of those additional places have already been released, with 61,500 of the 83,000 allocated. Once those places are exhausted, there is no publicly committed pipeline to prevent the waitlist from growing again."
"The Government also fails to mention that 93 per cent of these additional places were released at only 60 per cent of approved funding."
"Many older Australians being counted as having left the waitlist are not actually receiving the level of care they have been assessed as needing."
"The Albanese Government said they would put the care back into aged care, but they are just putting the wait back into the waitlist."
"Almost 100,000 older Australians are still waiting for care. That is not a success story. It is a reminder that this Government still has a long way to go before it can claim it has fixed aged care."
“Ministers Rae and Butler are once again congratulating themselves on outcomes in a system where the crisis was of their own making.”
"Older Australians deserve honesty about how long they will wait and confidence that when they finally receive support, it will match the care they have been assessed as needing."
ENDS
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