I’d like to start by acknowledging that we are gathered today on the land of the Wodi Wodi People of the Dharawal Nation, and I pay my respects to their eldest past and present, as well as extending that respect to any Indigenous people we may have in the room today.

A massive thank you to everyone here for coming along to this event today.

A special thanks to Selena Stevens and Adam Zarth from the RDA, and of course their amazing team for putting this together as well.

We are so fortunate in the Illawarra to have such a passionate, dedicated and importantly experienced community services sector.

We’ve got a lot of challenges locally, but that is particularly the case in the Aged Care and disability sectors as we are all very aware.

I always feel so fortunate that, despite these challenges the experience of our local advocates means we can get everyone together in a room like we have today, have constructive conversations, and really drive the change our community deserves.

So what has brought here today.

As I know everyone here knows – we have a critical shortage of aged care beds in the Illawarra.

We are 1000 odd beds short and there are up to 170 people in acute beds in Wollongong Hospital each night while they are waiting transfer to a permanent residential care facility.

It is heartbreaking.

I go to bed every night thinking about Margot Mains and her team playing tetris trying to fit people into her hospitals.

The LHD led by Margot do the most incredible job with what they have.

We know the problems well – and today is not about prosecuting that again, it is about driving solutions.

Collectively, the Health District, the state, local and federal governments, and the community sector have been working hard to find both short and long term solutions to this problem.

In 2023, I was pleased to secure funding along with Ryan Park and the state government for an additional transitional 20 beds at Figtree Private Hospital under the Transitional Aged Care Program.

Ryan and the LHD also have the amazing medical flying squad as we like to call them – the Aged Care Outreach Service – helping older people across the Illawarra to access medical care in their aged care facility to hopefully stop them from reaching ED – again leading to better outcomes for patients and our health system.

In 2024, Labor delivered $15.8 million under the Aged Care Capital Assistance Program to support IRT’s upgrade to its Marco Polo facility in Unanderra which has recently commenced and will deliver a more modern facility with an additional 48 aged care beds by early next year which is fantastic.

And in March of this year, Carol Berry and I worked closely with Minister for Aged Care Sam Rae to ensure that the Federal Government targeted the Illawarra as one its first priority regions to access $115 million made available through the Aged Care Capital Assistance Program to fund projects which can build and open more beds within two years.

This is great news – but I know it isn’t enough.

What we want to do here today is work towards solutions.

That’s what we’ve being trying to do through the amazing work of Nicky Sloan and Mark Sewell and the Aged Care Taskforce, and through my many conversations with both the former and current Ministers for Aged Care.

I am on the phone with Minister Rae or his office most days.

We have all three levels of Government here working together. The elected representatives that I work closely with in my electorate and in Canberra - Ryan Park, Paul Scully, Maryanne Stuart, Carol Berry, Fiona Phillips and Lord Mayor Tania Brown – I can tell you that each and every one of us care really deeply about this issue and we are working to find solutions.

I know you all care deeply about this too.

And the simple answer is that government can’t solve this all on our own.

Government doesn’t build residential aged care – some of you do. And we need to build, we need to build quickly and we need to build well. We need shovel ready projects.

We are investing $3 billion in delivering more aged care beds, more packages and better care for older Australians in the Budget next week.

So today we’ve brought together providers, investors, landholders, government and industry experts together so that you can collaborate and start to work together to develop shovel ready projects.

If 35 years of experience in government has taught me anything its that ideas are born from collaboration with community on the ground – this is where the real ideas start, in rooms like this.

We need to build on this to form partnerships, find innovative solutions and work together to build the projects we need. I quite often joke that my job is a little bit like Perfect Match in the 1980s or Tinder in today’s world – it is about bringing people together to form partnerships to get things done.

We’re so lucky in the Illawarra to have people like amazing people who care so much and can think outside the box to get impactful solutions.

Jenni Hutchins from Warrigal is providing a strong example of how innovation in aged care can be both practical and purposeful.

Their approach recognises that innovation is not only about large-scale reform, but also about continuous, on-the-ground improvements that enhance the daily experience of residents.

From small changes led by staff and residents through to more significant service redesign, Warrigal is demonstrating how a balanced focus on both incremental and transformative innovation can deliver meaningful outcomes.

Jenni has a person-centred philosophy when it comes to innovation.

Through her leadership, Warrigal has embraced and implemented ‘Australian firsts’ in technologies, such as contact-free radar monitoring, to support earlier detection of health changes while maintaining dignity and privacy.

At the same time, they are exploring new models of care and living that respond to the evolving expectations and demographics of older Australians; supporting independence for longer and providing more flexible, responsive care.

It is this combination of thoughtful technology use and service innovation that we need in the sector.

We call ourselves the City of Innovation.

Across the Illawarra, we have a sharp focus on solutions, a focus on outcomes, a focus on innovation – and most importantly a focus on people.

Because each and every one of those people stuck in hospital, and the people waiting for an aged care bed – they’re someone’s mum, someone’s dad, someone’s loved one.

They’re a person.

They deserve to age with dignity and they deserve to get quality care in the right setting for them.

I encourage you to be bold, to be innovative, to form partnerships and most importantly I encourage you to build!

Thank you again to everyone for being here today and I can’t wait to hear what you come up with.