Mr KELVIN THOMSON (11:18 AM) —Aged care in the electorate of Wills is now in a state of crisis. In the Wills electorate, one-quarter of the population are aged over 55 years and 12 per cent are aged over 70 years. This ageing demographic profile places unique challenges on the provision of aged care services. Those challenges are made more serious by the fact that it is located in inner metropolitan Melbourne. Since I have been the federal member for Wills, I have been party to many community discussions about aged care within my electorate. Since we met the challenge of the accommodation bonds back in 1996, I have been forced to watch this government—an idle government—complacently denying those calls from the aged care sector for more funding assistance while an increasing number of services and aged care beds have left my electorate. Now it seems, if media reports about the Hogan report are any indication, that after three terms in office the Howard government have no other plan or vision for aged care in Australia than to bring back accommodation bonds. Their fourth-term agenda is to go back to the agenda of term 1.

In the latest funding allocations under the 2003 aged care approvals round, two facilities in the Wills electorate received new residential aged care allocations. Coburg Aged Care received 60 high-care places and St Basils Nursing Home received funding for 21 new low-care places. Initially I welcomed this announcement, but when you have a look at the figures, you see that Coburg Aged Care has been forced to close down its high-care facility in Wills because of ageing and inferior infrastructure. The 40 beds currently in operation will move out shortly to an alternative site. In addition, 40 low-care beds from Munro Manor will leave. That means that the 81 beds that were allocated turn into a net gain of one new bed, not 81. We have had a number of aged care providers miss out in the latest funding round despite having workable and well-planned submissions to help ease the burden that we confront. We need more beds, more facilities and better funding and assistance for our aged care providers in the Wills community as a matter of priority.

It is not simply that we are not getting new beds; there are also beds closing. Last week we had the Salvation Army announce that it intends to divest itself of 15 of its 19 aged care facilities. This confirms that aged care under this government is in a state of crisis and is collapsing. In Coburg the Salvation Army's Gilgunya Village comprises 50 low-care hostel style beds along with 12 two-bedroom independent living homes. It is a stone's throw from major shopping and community services, it is close to public transport and it is only a few years old. The fact that the Salvation Army cannot continue to sustain the burden of operating these facilities speaks volumes about the aged care crisis in Australia. This follows the Church Nursing Home, operated by the Baptist Church in Brunswick, closing the year before. We have a longstanding problem in relation to retaining facilities in inner metropolitan areas.

The Salvation Army says it is committed to ensuring that the needs of Gilgunya residents are met. I want to work with them to try to ensure that that occurs. What we have here is inevitably high competition for limited land in inner metropolitan areas. That poses a challenge for aged care developers. People such as those associated with the Pentridge Piazza project have been interested in developing aged care services and facilities, but they have not been able to do it. Conversely, others have been moving out. I have talked about the Salvation Army. I have talked about the Church Nursing Home. Moreland Private Nursing Home moved its services 20 kilometres out of the electorate, to Sunbury.

I am told by the government that this strategy is acceptable, but it makes a mockery of the government's Ageing in Place policy. While the government has made a commitment to assist regional communities in providing suitable aged care facilities for older Australians, those living in inner metropolitan areas of our major capital cities are finding it equally difficult to access aged care services in the communities that they have lived in all their lives and want to go on living in. I am sure the government has had all these issues drawn to its attention through the Hogan review, but the government is continuing to stall and procrastinate on the release of the Hogan report. Speculation is that it is being held back because it talks about more user-pays systems. Unfortunately, as long as this government fails to release that report and sits on its hands, aged care facilities in my electorate are closing down and being relocated, and the aged care crisis continues.