For decades, Western governments have known that they faced a looming demographic tsunami of Boomer codgers swamping health and aged care systems. The electoral cycle being what it is, decades of governments have chosen to do sod-all about it and just keep kicking the can down the road for somebody else to deal with.
So Aged Care Minister Anika Wells is at least right that decades of inaction have left the government in an unenviable position.
The minister said governments had failed to act on the future viability of the aged care sector for roughly 20 years.
“This is just one policy area that has been allowed to drift as ‘too hard’ for decades and decades.”
All true. The problem is, being a Labor government, the only response they can come up with is: more taxes!
Aged Care Minister Anika Wells says the government has a “genuine duty to deliberate” a levy on taxpayers to help fund a better-aged care system.
Says who? The shrinking cohort of productive younger taxpayers? Or the army of grey-haired leaners, who’ve had everything handed to them on a plate their whole lives and aren’t about to take their snouts out of the troughs, now?
But an aged care levy was not a Labor election policy, and the opposition has labelled the suggestion a “lazy” way to fund improvements in the sector.
Almost nothing the Albanese government has done was an election policy. Its key election policies — cutting electricity bills, and lowering the cost of living — have been ignominiously trashed.
Now, they’re proposing slugging already-struggling working Australians with yet another tax.
Last week, Ms Wells used an address at the National Press Club to float the idea of a taxpayer levy to fund improvements to the sector […]
Ms Wells said the taskforce was focused on ensuring older Australians have a choice when it comes to their care.
“Whether that’s a choice to stay at home for as long as possible, whether that’s a choice to enter a particular model of residential aged care,” she said.
The Australian Financial Review
The only choice no-one will have is paying for it. Once again, it won’t be the beneficiaries.
As always, it’ll be the Boomers screeching “Gimme, gimme, gimme!”, and everyone else reaching into their pockets.
