Mr PEARCE (3:25 PM) —My question is addressed to the Minister for Ageing. Can the minister inform the House of what progress has been made in bringing provisionally allocated aged care beds online since the minister initiated a review of places?

Mr ANDREWS (Minister for Ageing) —I thank the member for Aston for his question and note that I was delighted to be able to visit a number of aged care facilities in his electorate over the recent weeks. As the member alluded to, earlier this year I asked the Department of Health and Ageing to review each and every provisional aged care allocation over the two years afforded in the legislation to determine progress being made in those beds becoming operational. One of the government's major priorities in aged care has been to ensure that beds are brought online as soon as possible to ensure that older Australians who require residential aged care are able to access it.

All providers with provisionally allocated beds are now required to report on progress towards bringing new places online on a quarterly basis with a view to making them operational as soon as possible. The review undertaken by the department revealed, as I indicated to the House in April, that there were 2,816 outstanding beds that had been allocated for more than the two years under the legislation. I am pleased to be able to inform the House that of these 829 have become operational since that announcement, 68 have been revoked, a further 59 have been surrendered and some 1,211 will become operational this financial year.

Following on from that review of the pre-2000 provisional allocations, the department is now reviewing places allocated in the 2000 aged care approvals round that are still outstanding. I can also report to the House that a total of 1,580 provisionally allocated aged care beds have become operational in the last six months. This is in part due to the government's determination to send a strong message to providers that the community expects that these places will be brought into operation as soon as possible.

Indeed, since the coalition came to government in 1996 over 49,000 aged care places have been released to meet the needs of older Australians and there are now 169,000 operational places nationally. In May this year I released another 8,231 new aged care places to meet the needs of older Australians requiring aged care, and we are committed to achieving a target of 200,000 aged care places by 2006. This will restore the balance in aged care provision by continuing to make up for the 10,000-bed shortfall in aged care places which we inherited from the Labor Party.

Mr Howard —Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.