Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has conceded the state of aged care in Australia “is not good enough” after a new report revealed patients were waiting an average of a year for services. Source: ABC News.
The federal government has been accused of burying the report by its political opponents, quietly dropping it during budget lock-up on Tuesday.
The report found that between November and March, patients waited on average 12 months to access ongoing care in a residential aged care home or support at home.
“The state of aged care is not good enough and that is why we are throwing everything at it,” Mr Albanese said at a press conference in Canberra yesterday.
“That is why we have billions of dollars of additional funding in the budget, both the home care and aged care residents.”
The report was the first after the new Aged Care Act made it mandatory for the government to publicly release wait times every quarter for funded aged care services.
The government was obligated to release the data as soon as practicable after April 28, but instead it was published on Tuesday, when many political journalists were in the tightly controlled budget lock-up, which strictly prohibits access to the internet or phones.
“Labor tried to bury this historic blowout in home care wait times by quietly dumping the data in the middle of budget lock-up, hoping Australians wouldn’t notice older people are now waiting a year for care,” Shadow Health Minister Anne Ruston said.
Independent senator David Pocock also slammed the timing of the report’s release, describing it as “pretty cynical”.
While there is no data directly comparable as the report is the first of its kind, health department data shows that in October, the average wait time for a support-at-home package was eight months.
Senior government frontbencher Clare O’Neil defended the timing and told ABC News Breakfast the fact the report was released at all shows the government is transparent.
“The only reason Australians have this information, which is not something they’ve had access to before, is because we are committed to transparency about government programs,” she said.
Senate estimates figures show that in December, there were more than 230,000 Australians currently on the wait list for aged care, either for an assessment or a package at their approved level.
FULL STORY
Australians ‘literally dying’ as aged care average wait times surpass 365 days (By Stephanie Dalzell and Paige Cockburn, ABC News)
