By Situation Theatre 4/11/2019

Health Minister Greg Hunt says it’s a real pity there isn’t some kind of functional federal institution which had the power to fund and regulate the sector.

In an interview with Fran Kelly on Insiders yesterday, Greg Hunt said he was blindsided by the Royal Commission interim report describing the poor treatment of elderly Australians in the aged care sector. He pledged that now the Government has found out about the hidden crisis which has been serially reported through dozens of official channels and thousands of media stories over many years, they’ll still do bugger all about it.

When confronted with the fact that 16,000 elderly Australians died last year while waiting for a home care package, Mr Hunt pointed out that due to their mortality status these people wouldn’t be voting for the Coalition anyway, so the case for action remained unclear.

Mr Hunt added that government action was a matter of priorities and rightly pointed out the lives of millions of older Australians were less important to the Morrison Government than their budget surplus fetishism, particularly considering the determination of elderly citizens to vote Liberal no matter how much suffering they endure because of them.