The government’s aged care legislation – which it calls ‘once in a generation’ – has passed the Senate. It will bring some pretty big changes, including giving new rights to aged care recipients and increasing in-home care packages. But many residents and in-care recipients will have to pay more.
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TVTranscript
00:00It's been a long time coming. We had the Royal Commission into aged care, a task force that
00:07the government set up looking into aged care, which reported back a lot earlier this year.
00:12The government has been negotiating for months with the Coalition to get this into, onto
00:17the floor of Parliament and we're finally there. So it's passed the Senate with some
00:22amendments. Notably, it does mean that there will be new rights for aged care recipients,
00:28more in-home care packages so people can stay at home for longer. But aged care is expensive
00:33and it's been called unsustainable. So the big change here will be towards funding. So
00:40people will have to spend a bit more on things like non-clinical care, so that's like gardening
00:45if they're living at home, or food expenses. But the government will continue to cover
00:50all clinical care costs. So months of negotiations in the making. It's passed the Senate. It
00:56will go to the House next week where it will be ticked off there. The last or one of the
01:00last sitting weeks before the election next year. So two of the big ticket items are election
01:06reform and the social media ban. Those two reforms have also been negotiated between
01:11the government and the Coalition, and the Coalition has said that they're pretty well
01:15likely to support those pieces of legislation. On the social media ban, that is a little
01:19bit more contentious. The crossbench have said they've got some concerns with it, but
01:23it is likely to come up next week and is likely to pass. There are a few big pieces
01:28of legislation though that don't have as clear a path to being passed in Parliament. Things
01:33like international student caps that many thought the Coalition might support, but doesn't
01:39look as likely. Things like housing as well that's been sitting on the wayside for quite
01:43some months now after a deadlock in the Senate with the Coalition and the Greens as well.
01:48The government also introduced a bill into Parliament, into the House yesterday, which
01:53would confiscate phones from immigration detainees in immigration detention. It's something that
01:58the Greens and human rights experts have been quite concerned about, but something the Coalition
02:03has put forward in the past. The government says on those, if the phones are confiscated,
02:08detainees would be able to get a replacement phone so they could contact lawyers and family
02:14if they need to, but there are some concerns there. But it's one of the things that will
02:18be debated most likely next week and into the new year.