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Speaker 1: Let's have a look at the budget from National Senior's

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Speaker 1: point of view, what is in it for older people?

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Speaker 1: The CEO National Seniors Australia, Chris Grice on the line, Chris,

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Speaker 1: good morning, thank you for your time.

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Speaker 2: Good morning, mass You's good to be with you.

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Speaker 1: Are you pleased with what you've seen?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we're pretty pleased because there's a bit of a

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Speaker 2: balance in a number of initiatives that they've announced around

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Speaker 2: cost of living, age care and in particular that these

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Speaker 2: are things that I guess seniors have been actually impacted

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Speaker 2: by for quite some time now, and in particular around deeming.

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Speaker 2: Really pleased to see that freeze for the pensioners. There's

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Speaker 2: about four hundred and fifty thousand that will benefit from that,

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Speaker 2: so that's going to I guess have a better good

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Speaker 2: impact in terms of their pension and retaining their pension

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Speaker 2: rend assistance. There's a perception that you know, there's a

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Speaker 2: lot of older strains that are fortunate to own their home.

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Speaker 2: Big chunks still ramp you know over for me and

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Speaker 2: it's still ran and so great to see the ten

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Speaker 2: percent read assistance on top of the fifteen percent from

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Speaker 2: last year. And I guess there's a lot of it

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Speaker 2: been a lot of talk about the energy rebate. We

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Speaker 2: actually called for basically a cost of living dividend in

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Speaker 2: our submission to Treasury. And because the thing is that

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Speaker 2: the idea behind the dividend was to support increased costs

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Speaker 2: around fuel, groceries and a particular insurance, massive increases in insurance.

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Speaker 2: Now the government what they've done is and also energy

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Speaker 2: I suppose as well. But what the government's done is

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Speaker 2: that they are delivering that through this energy rebate because

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Speaker 2: I guess it's the most effective and cheapest way that

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Speaker 2: that actually did physically put the money into the hands

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Speaker 2: of old restraints.

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Speaker 1: Okay, the Retirement Living Council on the issue of housing

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Speaker 1: says there's no vision for the future. Is a silver

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Speaker 1: tsunami approaches in terms of accommodation, finding suitable accommodation retirement villages?

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Speaker 1: I suppose. I mean that's who they campaigned for. But

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Speaker 1: is there a truth to that that we could be

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Speaker 1: doing a lot more in planning for the future with

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Speaker 1: older people.

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Speaker 2: Well, I know that the government's actually put a fair

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Speaker 2: chunk of money into back into the States to provide

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Speaker 2: support around infrastructure. They put a significant amount of money

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Speaker 2: in terms of supporting around just mind. Not sound too sexy,

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Speaker 2: but there's things like you know, drainage things like that

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Speaker 2: that actually support those developments. You're going to put them

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Speaker 2: in place, you've got to build it, you've got to

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Speaker 2: have this stuff around it. And the federal government put

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Speaker 2: money in the budget to actually support that. So that

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Speaker 2: does help around housing going forward. So that's at least

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Speaker 2: one thing that they are doing is a better billing

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Speaker 2: dollars that they're putting into essential services like water, power,

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Speaker 2: sewage and roads and things like that. So the giving

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Speaker 2: that back to the states, which is going to help development,

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Speaker 2: help building of new property.

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Speaker 1: Okay. Spoke with Rebecca Sharky, independent MP for the seat

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Speaker 1: of Mayo here in the Adelaide Hills last week and

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Speaker 1: she was concerned about age care packages just being on

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Speaker 1: hold and people in her electorate who had been waiting

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Speaker 1: for months and months and including people on diagnosed with

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Speaker 1: terminal illnesses needing packages and help dying before anything has happened.

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Speaker 1: So is there an improvement there? There is extra funding

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Speaker 1: for more packages. Are you pleased with that?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there's I mean, the demand is so high, but

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Speaker 2: we're really keen you know, we're really pleased to see

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Speaker 2: that twenty four I think it was about twenty four

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Speaker 2: one hundred additional age care packages, so that's going to

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Speaker 2: sort of help. But also what they've done is they

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Speaker 2: put money into supporting the system. Because it's all very

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Speaker 2: well to have additional packages, but if you don't have

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Speaker 2: the workers to support it, and you don't have the

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Speaker 2: system set up well enough to support actually processing, it

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Speaker 2: ain't going to work. So great to see that they're

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Speaker 2: stumped up in terms of from a wage perspective to

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Speaker 2: support age ke workers to retain or attract. And the

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Speaker 2: pleasing thing also is that age care workers will get

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Speaker 2: the benefit of the tax cut, so that's about nine

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Speaker 2: hundred and nine so there's a bit of a compounding

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Speaker 2: effect there which is going to help those workers. And

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Speaker 2: there's about one hundred and fifty thousand I think that

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Speaker 2: they've identified that they're going to on top of the

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Speaker 2: wage increase, there's about a nine hundred and nine dollars

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Speaker 2: average tax cup that they're going to get. So we're

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Speaker 2: really pleased about that. And probably lastly they're around they

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Speaker 2: put a significant amount of money into I think it's

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Speaker 2: about one point two b it's a big chunk of

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Speaker 2: money to actually fix the system, to be able to

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Speaker 2: make sure that when the Age Care Act is put

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Speaker 2: in place, which is that's from the Royal Commission, that

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Speaker 2: they actually have the system to support managing and making

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Speaker 2: sure that there's scrutiny in place over a keep providers

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Speaker 2: going forward.

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Speaker 1: All right, it sounds from a National Senior's point of view,

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Speaker 1: out of ten you'd be giving it a reasonable mark.

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Speaker 2: We'll give it a bat be positive. You know on

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Speaker 2: behalf of seniors, we always try to be positive, so

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Speaker 2: we'll give it.

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Speaker 1: We'll give it a bee positive all right, Chris Christ,

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Speaker 1: thank you for your time. Thanks be CEO National Seniors

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Speaker 1: Australia this morning.