Morrison’s aged-care pitch about more than a dollar figure

Scott Morrison has been announcing billions to “bust congestion” in the cities or “fight drought” in the bush but his $537m in response to the interim aged-care royal commission report was about much more than numbers.

The Prime Minister knows the Coalition’s response to the horrors of aged care gone wrong and the realities of institutional aged care requires a lot more from than just a big number.

Aged care is a long-term crisis, not just in financial cost but also in terms of personal trauma and social responsibility. Before the election it was a political problem that forced the government to call a royal commission. Now it is even more of a political problem as people grasp the human cost of putting the elderly and disabled into care.

Given the billions of dollars in road funding and car parks being spent with the states, Morrison needed to ensure there was a real impact with the finance and the targeting of what people are most concerned about — shortage of care, the cost of care, the misuse of chemical and physical restraints, staff shortages, poor care, bad food and untimely death.

Half a billion dollars directed at 10,000 new home-care places and a medical regime aimed at cutting the use of drugs as stupefying and pacifying controls was a good start with the promise of more to come.

But the promise of money was not enough: Morrison has to frame this response as personally as he can to regain some of the lost confidence in aged care arising from the horrors exposed by the royal commission.

Not wanting to frame the spending announcement as an economic stimulus, and wanting to play up the credit for calling the inquiry, Morrison has tried to identify with all the people connected with the decisions being forced on the elderly.

“I know quite precisely the sorts of things that you are thinking about at the moment when it comes to the treatment of your loved ones in aged care. My family is no different to yours in that respect,” he said as part of the appeal to the public to look beyond the numbers.

“I have a very deep understanding of the difficult decisions that you’re having to make, the conversations you’re having to have with the partners, husbands, wives of those loved ones going into care, other siblings. This is hard.”