I'm definitely there!

www.facebook.com/senatorpenny...

Labor are raising the price of aged care so that corporations can cash in. Meanwhile over 200,000 older Australians are still waiting a year or more for care.

This is Labor: selling out the most vulnerable so the investor class can grow their wealth.

The Commonwealth Employment Service! The government employment agency that existed before the conservatives shut it down in 1998 and replaced it with a market-based model that has - predictably - produced worse outcomes for people looking for work.

Agreed. We took an initiative to abolish the private job provider system and reinstate the CES to the last election.

Older Australians and their families are copping massively increased costs for their care so that providers can bank bigger profits and investors can cash in. That’s just wrong.

I look forward to chairing these inquiries and giving older people the chance to be heard.

The first inquiry will investigate the planned phasing out of the Community Home Support Program, which could force thousands onto ballooning waitlists; the second will probe the new Support at Home program, including the impacts of pricing changes and co-payments.

Read the story here:

*"Private equity", of course, not "enquiry"

If the health and wellbeing of older Australians was really the government’s central concern, they would have designed a universal system based on need, not a rationed and two-tiered system where only the wealthy are guaranteed care, and for-profit providers call the shots.

Meanwhile, private enquiry firms are circling the industry, and private ownership in the aged care sector continues to grow.

Make no mistake: these reforms represent a massive wealth transfer from some of the poorest and most vulnerable Australians to the investor class.

Former ANZ and News Corp exec Prue Bowden from Australian Unity - one of the country’s biggest for-profit providers of home care - said the changes were a “net positive”. Sure, costs for older people are going up but it’s “important to our overall economy”!

In an interview earlier this week, Aged Care Minister Sam Rae dismissed concerns from older people about their ability to keep accessing essential services, saying, “We're seeing profits for aged care providers climbing for the first time in decades." 👇

The Greens will stand for the rule of law no matter what and we’ll be fighting this change when it comes to the Senate.

This is a cooked idea from the Scott Morrison era that even he ended up abandoning.

Sneaking this amendment into other legislation at the last minute is deeply cynical and shows just how little Labor still think of people on income support.

Everyone has the right to be treated as innocent until proven guilty in this country, no matter what.

Labor pulled this seemingly out of nowhere. Yet welfare changes designed by the Robodebt Royal Commission 2+yrs ago to limit harms to welfare recipients, they’ve just rejected.