Minister for Aged Care, doorstop – 4 March 2025

ZHI SOON, LABOR CANDIDATE FOR BANKS: Good morning, my name is Zhi Soon, and I am the Labor candidate for the seat of Banks at the upcoming federal election. I'd like to kick things off by first saying I'd like to acknowledge the Bidjigal people for their continual custodianship of the airs, waterways and land in this area for generations. It's a very exciting morning - we have a couple of very special guests here. But before I do that, I wanted to say thank you very much to the staff at Catholic Care here at Holy Spirit in Revesby. For those of you who might not be aware, Revesby is where I grew up, so it's a place that's close to my heart. And aged care is one of those issues that's also very close to my heart, given my mum was a registered nurse, and when we first arrived in Australia, she worked in the aged care sector.

But look, I'll start to hand over to our two wonderful guests. First of all, the Minister for Aged Care and Sport at Anika Wells, and then shortly through to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Murray Watt, to talk about this very important issue, recognising the skills and experience of the aged care workforce here in Australia.

ANIKA WELLS, MINISTER FOR AGED CARE AND SPORT: It's now 10.30am in Queensland, so I just like to start with a brief update about where things are at with Tropical Cyclone Alfred for Brisbane and for northsiders. I need people to know that they've opened a second temporary sandbag venue at Car Park 2 of Boondall Entertainment Centre. I checked just before we started this, and it is running in an orderly fashion, but you do need to bring your own shovels and zip ties in order to scoop your own sand there. There was a police presence managing the Zillmere sandbank depot yesterday, and we would urge people to be calm and methodical about preparing for TC Alfred. We've got Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday before it's due to cross Thursday night or Friday morning. It's time for us to look after each other. They have put on labour hire crews overnight providing the sandbags through, and as I understand, that is working fairly well this morning, but I urge you to just do those checks now. Be thorough, be prepared, check in on your neighbours, and all work together. And we will keep you posted with those updates as we get them in.

The reason we're here with the lovely Zhi, who is our hard-working candidate for Banks, this morning is to talk about pay rises for aged care nurses. Specifically the fact that as of this week, aged care nurses, because of the Albanese Labor Government, are now $430 a week better off. That is $22,000 a year. That is life changing money, and we know that that is bringing people back to this much needed sector. We know that for too long, aged care nurses, alongside their colleagues and personal care workers, chefs, people who work in their kitchens and lifestyle, were appreciated by the residents that they looked after, but not in terms of their pay. So the Albanese Government, even from Opposition, pledged to support and pay for the outcome of any decisions at Fair Work. We have done so to the tune of 2.6 billion additional dollars today for aged care nurses. That is $430 a week for 60,000 aged care nurses across this country. That's something that we're very proud of as the Albanese Labor Government, and we really hope that that extra $430 a week means real differences and real improvements in the lives of our hard working aged care nurses that we value so much.

Now I note that we pledged to support the outcome of any Fair Work case. I note that because the Coalition Government - who was in government at the time - did not do that. The Fair Work case was lodged, the Coalition Government did not support it, and they didn't provision a single cent towards paying for it. Whereas we have provisioned and paid for this, which is now $17.7 billion in pay rises for aged care workers across this country. It's a very good thing. It's a thing that we're proud to support.