TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEW WITH LUKE GRANT, 2GB MORNINGS
30 January 2026
Topics: Labor’s aged care crisis, hospital funding negotiations, the Liberal Party and the National Party
E&OE…………………………………
Luke Grant: Let's have a chat to the Shadow Health Minister Anne Ruston who's on the line. Thank you for your time. The numbers are so disturbing for older Australians. In fact, all Australians. I thought the Government was going to fix up the broken aged care system.
Anne Ruston: Well, Anthony Albanese went to the 2022 Election promising all Australians that he was going to put the care back into aged care and nothing could be further from the truth. And the really devastating thing that we learned today – I mean, we've known for a long time what these numbers were despite the fact the Government's been trying to cover them up but now the Productivity Commission has come out and exposed the hugely worsening situation in aged care that's been created. I mean, in the last 12 months we've gone from 118 days that you waited for a home care package on average – which is still not good enough by the way – to 245 days. So that's more than double the wait time. And now you think about, you know, you're a 93-year-old who's just been assessed as needing a Level 4 aged care package. You get turned around and said on average you're going to wait for nine months. You might wait for fifteen months. I mean, when you're 93, you don't have a lot of time to be waiting around to receive care. You know, how can this government look older Australians and their families in the face and say that election commitment that ran pretty well during election time, they have completely failed on and quite frankly older Australians are dying waiting for the care they've been assessed as needing.
Luke Grant: Look, I got a note from a listener earlier who says, "I'm an aged care admin, I want people to know that with the New Support At Home scheme which commenced November 1 last, if you weren't on a Home Care Package before that, you'll now have to pay a percentage of contribution out of your own pocket for cleaning, shopping, transport and home help. This is a deceitful government cash grab." Does that meet with your understanding of this new package?
Anne Ruston: Well, I think the thing that's probably distressed me about what the Government did last year and then what they subsequently did – you know, what they promised in 2024 and what they did last year – was they put a whole heap of hidden things into what they call the rules. So there was all this headline legislation, and we agreed with the Government that we needed to have a sustainable system going forward. But then in the rules they did things like agree that if you've got a package they would only fund 60 percent of it. So, instead of actually funding the package at the level that the medical profession has agreed the person needs, they've said just to keep costs down, they're only going to give you 60 per cent of what they've assessed that you need. We didn't know anything about any of this and then we find out only when we start digging through the details or speaking to older Australians who get this information talking to providers. The Government has been so deceitful about what it tells you up front and then what it does behind the scenes in things like rules that are largely hidden from public scrutiny when the legislation is going through.
Luke Grant: I so agree with you, and as you and I are talking, I've got a listener Ian saying can someone actually tell me just one election promise of Anthony Albanese that's actually been delivered because my listener Ian can't think of any. And off topic briefly, you understand my frustration – as someone who opens his gob on air and talks centre-right because that's where I find myself on most issues – my complete frustration at the performance of the former Coalition?
Anne Ruston: Well, obviously you're entitled to your view there. All I know is what my commitment is in relation to the portfolios I have, and I've got health, I've got aged care, I have got the NDIS, I have got disability. I've got a huge set of portfolios where the promises have just been broken and re-broken and re-broken. They were going to strengthen Medicare - it's never been harder or more expensive to see a doctor. They were going to put the care back in to aged care and quite clearly all they've done is put the wait back into wait lists. With the NDIS, they were going to make sure that the NDIS was delivering the services to the vulnerable people in Australia that it was designed to and get rid of all the rorting, all the double dipping, all the inefficiency in the system. Absolutely nothing has been done. So I share your frustration, but I can absolutely assure your listeners, I am so focused on making sure we hold this government to account for its failures and work with the sector and with Australians about how we can come up with policies that actually will deliver on the promises that are made, not just headlines.
Luke Grant: Okay, how do we get the people stuck in hospital that should be in an aged care facility or awaiting NDIS support – how do we get them out of hospital and have hospitals for people who should be in hospital? How do you fix that one?
Anne Ruston: Well, the reason that we are starting to see such an explosion of older Australians, particularly in hospital beds – and I mean there's thousands of them around the country, I think there's over a thousand of them just in New South Wales in your home state – is last year the Labor Government released no new home care packages for over three months. So we've seen the wait times and the wait lists blow out. So because people aren't able to get access to the aged care services, because the Government's been rationing care quite frankly, it means that older Australians - you know, they may have had a fall or had some sort of medical incident which means that they require additional support to be able to go back home - it's just not there. And once they get assessed for these packages in the hospital quite quickly, they don't get the packages until on average 245 days and sometimes that's a lot, lot longer. The Government has got to stop rationing aged care and make sure that older Australian are able to get the care they need because it's much, much more expensive to keep an older Australian in a hospital bed. And you see the impact of that obviously blow out in hospital funding and people who need the acute care in hospitals are being denied or they're stuck on ramps outside of hospitals or, you know, denied elective surgery. This is like a chain reaction because the Government rationed aged care.
Luke Grant: Yeah, it's ridiculous, and I saw a report - might have been yesterday, Anne - that said the Pacific Climate Fund copped half a billion in the last financial year or something like that. Well, that half a billion might've just sped up the issuance of some of this, surely? Haven't we got our priorities wrong? Doesn't it come down to, you know, looking after - I think this is where we find ourselves in the political debate today. Any chance we could just do some stuff for everyday Australians? I know that's being overly critical, but you've got to look at where the money's spent. The priorities don't seem to be the Australian people.
Anne Ruston: Well, look, I'm a great believer you can walk and chew gum at the same time, but I think my criticism about how we are misspending money in this country is that it makes no economic sense. If you need care when you're assessed, you're probably likely to need a lot lower level of care, then if I make you wait for six months or nine months or twelve months. Your condition will deteriorate and by the time you get the care, you're going to need a much higher level of care and that's a much more expensive level care. It's just a false economy to think that putting older Australians and making them wait for six or twelve months for the care that they need is actually saving the budget. It's not saving the budget, it's actually causing a budget problem further down the track because the higher your care needs are, the more expensive they are. And it's really bad for the person too because if they get the care that they need when they need it then obviously they will hopefully be able to maintain a quality of life that is far better than if you leave them without the care and let them deteriorate. Every single thing about how the Government's handling aged care is just completely counterintuitive to both the best interests of the person and the best interest of the Budget.
Luke Grant: Well, I agree with your last point. It's disrespectful and it's un-Australian for God's sake. If you're going to contribute for decades and decades and if you're in God's waiting room, you don't spend time in the Government waiting room. I mean, time is pretty important when you get on as probably you and I only know too well. There should be greater respect for helping Australians as they near potentially the end. Do you have any hope that National Cabinet will be able to deal with the NDIS and other issues today? It didn't sound all that promising going in.
Anne Ruston: Well, look, I obviously like every single Australian want to see this ridiculous impasse around the funding of our hospital system resolved today. It's two years that we've been having this impasse between the Federal Government and the State and Territory Governments and it needs to be resolved. Am I confident that it will be resolved? Well, it hasn't been for the last two years, so I don't know what's going to change today, but it is an absolute travesty that our entire hospital system is left with incredible uncertainty. They have been left with uncertainty now for two years. The funding agreement runs out in five months time and after that point in time the hospitals have no certainty about what they've got into the future. We've got waiting lists blowing out, we've got ramping blowing out in every state and territory around the country and this Prime Minister and his Health Minister can't negotiate an agreement. So, quite plainly, he's failed to negotiate a funding agreement, he's walked away from his commitment in terms of hospital funding, he's refused to take responsibility for the impact of his aged care and NDIS failures on the hospital system, and he's ambushed the states on major disability reforms. Well, I hope he can resolve that today, but good luck with that.
Luke Grant: Finally, Parliament is back next week. Will there be a time, do you think now Anne, at one point next week that the Coalition will become the Coalition again?
Anne Ruston: Well, I absolutely hope so because I'm a coalitionist and I believe we're stronger together, but obviously these issues are matters that aren't entirely within my control or necessarily the Liberal Party's control, but the door remains open because I think it's really important that we present to the Australian public an alternative to the Labor Government. Because we've just talked about the failures in my policy areas and I can tell you every other Shadow Minister could come in and tell you the same story about policy failures in their area. But the one thing I can say on behalf of the Liberal Party - which is a party I'm a member of - we are absolutely focused on the things that are important to Australians like we've been talking about.
Luke Grant: You know it doesn't look like that, don't you?
Anne Ruston: Well, that's what we've got to do next week. We've actually got to show that we are the responsible alternative government - that we're going to hold this government to account and in the process of this term of government develop alternative policies to take to the next election, so Australians have got a real choice between what they've got now and what we offer into the future. That's on us to make sure that we convince Australians that we were up for it.
Luke Grant: Senator Ruston, thank you very much for your time.
ENDS
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