Mr HARDGRAVE (5:45 PM) —Whenever members of the Australian Labor Party opposition speak on any matter relating to aged care a very simple theme always develops. While they offer the big scare, the coalition offers the big care. There is a definite difference between those opposite and those who are in government.

There is no doubt about it, when we came to power after 13 years of those opposite running this nation, it was the area of aged care, nursing homes in particular, which stood out as an area crying out for instant help and reworking. The fact is they defunded the area of nursing homes over a number of years as some sort of penalty to try to get nursing home operators to bring on capital works. All that did was fail.

We then brought in a system adopting completely the approach that they had taken on hostels. But do you think those opposite would offer support when we mimicked their policy that had worked quite effectively in the area of hostels? No, it was the big scare. It was the big scare targeting older Australians day in, day out for months on end. I am on the record on so many occasions as saying that the member for Jagajaga and her cohorts needed to be condemned for that big scare.

Today, the member for Lilley, who seems to have adopted the mantle of the big scare after his three years of exile in the paddock—as I think he calls it—is now back on the white horse of scaring older Australians. So too is the member for Charlton. I was, until the last few minutes, going to associate myself with some of her comments in regard to recognising the real heroes of the carer community in her electorate. In fact, I think carers are the untold heroes of Australia and deserve the sort of support contained in the measures before us. But the member for Charlton adopted the big scare herself and decided to highlight things that were going to go up as a result of a GST. One she mentioned was sanitary items but, of course, every sanitary item has a 22 per cent wholesale sales tax on it.

And did the Australian Labor Party offer any compensation to older Australians, disabled Australians or Australians in need when they increased wholesale sales taxes from 20 per cent to 22 per cent after the 1993 election? No. At least this government—the Howard government—is progressing along the path of recognising that costs will rise in some areas as a result of the changes to the taxation system and there will be compensation in such forms as: an up-front increase in pensions; holding on to the nexus between pensions and the male average weekly earnings—25 per cent of average weekly earnings will be the benchmark; and pensions will be tied at 1.5 per cent ahead of the CPI. These are all good reasons why this government can be said in fact to be in care mode while Labor continues in scare mode.

The member for Forde, who was in the chamber until a few moments ago, had a long and distinguished career in the area of disability services. Listening to the contributions from those opposite, she remarked to me that Labor never did the sorts of things this government is doing in the area of care and carers and care for disability services, and I believe the member for Forde is 100 per cent correct on that.

Whilst it was never stated by those opposite it was certainly implied in the contribution of members to the debate today—a continuation of the early debates about nursing home funding arrangements in the 38th Parliament—that Labor has this philosophical notion that, when Australians reach a certain age, families no longer have the prime responsibility for care, and that, rather, institutionalisation is the answer. I found that particularly offensive.

I actually put that to a meeting of people concerned about these matters, held in the Palomar Room at Sunnybank about 18 months ago. They realised that the automatic assumption that people reaching old age must be in a nursing home for some reason or other was a worrying philosophical underpinning of the Labor Party argument.

Most families understand their responsibilities and will do their very best to provide the care and attention that those in their family need as a first port of call. This government is doing something about assisting them. We are doing something about helping families realise that responsibility that they do, in the main, want to take on. Through these measures here today we are offering some additional assistance, a package of measures aimed at improving assistance to carers, making sure that there is a clearer cut and more understandable definition and better allowances, through eligibility criteria, for people who are carers of adults, liberalising it—if you like—to increase the number of recipients of benefits by 14,000.

I know that in my own electorate there is a crying need for assistance, particularly amongst those who are the carers of adults; parents who have gone through the emotional tragedy of finding their child afflicted with a disability at birth who is then denied the natural consequence of working, growing older and retiring. Instead they have to continue to look after a disabled child. As until now there has never been the sort of assistance they needed, it has been, I am sure, an absolute lifelong tragedy for them.

I know that the people at Soubirous Place—which our Lady of Lourdes Church at Sunnybank opened a couple of years ago and received substantial assistance for from this government—provide direct daytime respite for parents of the adult disabled in my electorate. I congratulate the work of the people in places such as that. I know that families undergo stress when they are taking on the role of caring for older relatives. They watch the person whom they looked up to as a child, and from whom they got all of the life skills that we all hope parents can pass on to their children, losing dignity.

I am thinking in particular about my own family and how my parents did everything they could for my grandparents. My father's father realised, I guess, in his own mind, that it was no longer a possibility for my father to look after him and he moved out of my parents' home where he had stayed for a couple of years. He went into a hostel and paid his bond money—there was never any argument about that—and he ended his life six weeks after moving into a nursing home, just a few months ago; a nursing home where, again, he fulfilled the government's requirements. He was a proud man who was never afraid to stand on his own two feet and do his darned best.

It is people like that that this bill is really all about. This government is all about supporting those who want to realise the personal priorities that they establish for themselves and their families, whether through birth or simply the degeneration of the body and mind as life progresses. I congratulate the government for having this sort of resolve in the area of assistance to carers. I believe this bill will, in fact, provide the sort of certainty that a lot of carers want.

But let us not kid ourselves that everything is always as good as it could be. I think we all understand that we would like to put as much effort as we could into assisting those who, of course, we can relate to in a personal way. I think it is worth noting for the record that, as a member of parliament from Queensland, I continue to have concern about the slowness of coalescing of nursing home payments which the government pays—federal funding, if you like—for nursing home residents in my state of Queensland. In fact, in comparison with Tasmania, Queensland continues to have a funding deficit of $7,391 per person per year for category 1 nursing home patients—a considerable deficit. In fact, $89.74 is paid per resident per day for category 1 in Queensland, while $109.99 is paid in Tasmania. That is no criticism of the circumstances that Tasmanians find themselves in but, in comparison with Queensland, Tasmanians do very well out of federal funding for nursing homes.

I am looking forward to receiving the final version of the Productivity Commission's inquiry into this matter, because it is important that Queenslanders understand that they are getting a fair and equitable set of circumstances from federal government funding to nursing homes in Queensland. The solution that has been put forward by lobbyists from Aged Care Queensland is budget neutral. It does not disadvantage other states and I hope the government will look closely at it.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am sure you will be disturbed to know that disparity occurs simply because of what occurred in the Hawke government era in 1987, and this government again is left with another mess in the area of nursing homes to try to fix up. It is also worth noting that those who are already receiving domiciliary care benefit or child disability allowance currently need to understand what will happen when the carer allowance is introduced on 1 July this year. The people who are already receiving these sorts of payments will continue to receive the same amount of money but it will be called carer allowance. Reviews of entitlements will continue to be conducted, of course on a regular basis, to make sure that both the child and adult streams of carer allowance are commensurate with the cost involved and so forth.

The new adult disability assessment tool will also be used for reviews of the adult stream of carer allowance, including recipients of child disability allowance who are currently receiving payments for a student child over the age of 16 with a disability. There will be reviews of their circumstances, and other people currently receiving child disability allowance for a child under the age of 16 will be reviewed and tested under the adult disability assessment tool at the same time as their child's 16th birthday.

Essentially this government is getting on with sensible measures, measures which will offer the sort of dignity that those who receive the care as well as those who give the care deserve. I think it is important that all in this place do pay a great deal of tribute to those people who are the untold heroes of this nation. That both sides of this chamber are supporting the measures contained in the government's bill—while, of course, taking the opportunity to make their comments, to make their observations, on how to enhance them—is recognition that both sides of politics see the need to give everything we can to those who give everything they have to those who deserve everything they can get. I commend the bill to the House.