Truss slams inaction

UNCERTAINTY in the aged care sector will reach crisis point and will be felt for years to come, Member for Wide Bay Warren Truss has warned.

UNCERTAINTY in the aged care sector will reach crisis point and will be felt for years to come, Member for Wide Bay Warren Truss has warned.

He said the Labor government had failed to allocate a single aged-care bed or community-care package across the Cooloola, Bundaberg, Burnett and Fraser Coast regions, in the 2011 Aged Care Round.

"Aged-care providers no longer have any confidence that the places they offer will be commercially viable, so it seems that they have stopped applying for them," Mr Truss said.

"The government has been sitting on a Productivity Commission report since August, which made 58 recommendations on ways to improve the sector, but the report has been greeted with silence from the Gillard Labor government.

"Aged-care providers want certainty about the future. The government must release its response to the report and detail its plan and initiatives to ensure the aged-care sector is viable and future needs can be met.

"Until the government matches the places it offers with sustainable levels of funding, aged-care providers will be reluctant to apply for them or take them up.

"What is the point of an aged-care provider applying for a place it knows it does not have the funding to actually deliver? Thousands of previously allocated beds have never been built."

The region's Federal Members are demanding action from the Government.

Originally published as Truss slams inaction