Greens Leader, Adam Bandt MP, has backed in calls from aged care workers and their unions for a 25% wage increase for the aged care sector, saying their forthcoming fully-costed aged care policy will include a $6b yearly fund to help meet the pledge, along with other measures to be announced. 

Greens Leader, Adam Bandt, has backed Labor’s call for Aged Care Minister, Richard Colbeck, to resign, and called for an end to the dismal failure of running aged care for profit.

The Greens also reiterated their support for wage rises in the sector. In July, the Greens publicly backed the Nursing and Midwifery Federation and the Health Services Union push for an increase to aged care workers’ pay saying current wages are insulting. 

Australian Greens Disability spokesperson Senator Jordon Steele-John has backed calls for the NDIS to scrap its age cap and allow disabled people over the age of 65 to access the supports they need to live a good life.

Senator Steele-John said it was both arbitrary and discriminatory to block disabled people over the age of 65 from accessing the NDIS.

"Older Australians with a disability deserve to be able to access the supports and services that they need to live a good life, just like everyone else," Steele-John said.

“This budget is a surplus of scatter gun approaches and tinkering around the edges. 
 
“This is a budget that continues the ongoing disdain this Government has for people who have been doing it tough for a long time and for whom things have only got worse due to the global pandemic and recession: people on income support, older women, young people, single parents and disabled people.
 

Greens Leader Adam Bandt says the first stop for funding needed improvements to aged care in the wake of the Royal Commission, should be to take billions of dollars being grafted out of the system in profits and spend it on more staff instead.
 
“Already we’re hearing a government start laying the groundwork for putting the needed reforms in the ‘too expensive’ basket, but there’s over a billion dollars in low-hanging fruit if the government unwinds privatisation and stops subsidising the profits of big corporations” Greens Leader Adam Bandt said.
 

The Greens say that the Aged Care system is fundamentally broken and there needs to be a sense of urgency in fixing it.
 
"The Royal Commissioners set out a five year process and the work needs to start today", Senator Rachel Siewert said. 
 
"This reform needs to be underpinned by a new aged care act based on a human rights approach. 
 
"For too long, aged care has been put in the too hard basket. The Royal Commission Report clearly shows that years of tinkering around the edges has fundamentally failed older Australians. 
 

Greens Leader, Adam Bandt together with Greens Aged Care spokesperson Rachel Siewert have responded to the Prime Minister’s press conference about the long-awaited Royal Commission into Aged Care.
 
“What’s clear is that privatisation has failed older Australians. The 1997 Howard reforms have led to decades of disaster for aged care,” Bandt said.
 

The Greens say evidence given to the Royal Commission into Aged Care and statements of the Prime Minister have become utterly contradictory. 

“The aged care disaster in Australia lands squarely at Scott Morrison’s doorstep,” Greens Leader, Adam Bandt said.

“The Greens, aged care advocates and now the special council to the Royal Commission have pointed out, in no uncertain terms, that this was a predictable outcome of government inaction and neglect."

Questions to Prime Minster and Cabinet today at the COVID hearing have shown that despite the aged care crisis the Government is not doing enough to ensure that all aged care providers around Australia are completely prepared. 
 
"It’s pretty obvious that prevention is better than cure and after speaking to the Department today I have very little confidence that they are taking an appropriate leadership role. 
 
"We cannot just wait around, rely on self-assessment by providers on their readiness for an outbreak, there needs to be action around the country.