Well thank you very much, Dr Gordon Moyes, ladies and gentlemen and to Mr Ian Hunt, the Chairman, it's great to be back, it's great to have an opportunity again of just saying a few words and then later on Janette and I would like to meet as many of you as is as possible. Can I say first up that over the years there's been no organisation in Australia that has done more than has the Wesley Mission to reach out to the less privileged in our community, to demonstrate in a very practical Christian way the care that men and women who are in more fortunate circumstances have for those in less fortunate circumstances.
The history of the Wesley Mission along of course with the other great organisations such as the Salvation Army and the Society of St Vincent de Paul and Anglicare and many other organisations, perhaps not as well know but all very intentioned and well motivated. The history of those organisations has really illustrated the concern that we as a lucky society demonstrate towards those in our midst who are not so fortunate.
Wesley Mission of course has a wonderful reach. It provides aged care facilities, such as this wonderful facility that takes its name after the great and late Alan Walker who was the Director of the Central Methodist Mission for so many years and the founder for the first time anywhere in the world of the wonderful Lifeline organisation which I'm very pleased to say the Government provided very significant funding to earlier this year in the tune of about $10 million in order to refurbish the telephone network and often those telephone services, be it Lifeline or Kids Help Line which is run by the De La Salle brothers - they are often the difference between somebody taking their life and somebody finding a bit of hope in a reassuring conversation from a trained counsellor and it was always a wonderful initiative and it's an initiative that I was very proud that the Government was able and willing to support out of the last Budget. The Wesley Mission of course has provided wonderful counselling services for marriage preparation and for people who are having difficulty in their marriages. And I announced recently that the Government was going to make major changes to the Family Law Act and the family law system in order to try and provide an alternative to the costly court battles that often go on between parents after they separate regarding the custody of their children and we're going to establish for the first time what's called a family relationships network and that will involve the establishment of about 65 centres across Australia to which people who separate and who can't agree initially on custody matters will have to go before they can take any court action and we will be asking obviously on the basis of the Government providing adequate funding, we will be asking organisations like the Wesley Mission to tender for participation in this family relationships network and I know the Mission already provides excellent services in many parts of Sydney and the other organisations I've mentioned also provide those services in other parts of the country. Now, I mention that because it's a recent example of the way in which the Government working in partnership with the Wesley Mission and other organisations is providing a better network of support services for people who need them.
We are a fortunate community. We are by any standard a wealthy nation and it is therefore incumbent upon all of us, particularly those in Government to ensure that to the maximum extent we can, we give a helping hand and we give assistance to people who really need it. But always of course upon the basis that self help and self provision is always something that should be encouraged and should be respected and should be rewarded and if I may say so that lies behind an announcement I made at the weekend which may effect a number of people here and that is we're going to make the private health insurance taxation rebate more generous.
Now, I know and you know that many people on very modest incomes all their lives have scrimped and save and done without other things in order to have private health insurance because they want the security of that when they get older and we think that self provision, that self sacrifice, caring for yourselves and taking the load off the rest of the community - we think that should receive better recognition and that is the reason why we have decided to provide a higher rebate for people 65 and over and higher again for people 70 and over and we think that is a proper recognition of the care and provision. More than a million Australians over the age of 65 have private health insurance. So we're not dealing with a minuscule number of people and hundreds of thousands of those people are on very modest incomes and we think that that provision should be rewarded.
But ladies and gentlemen the other thing and really I guess, the most important thing I want to say is that this is a wonderful facility and I know that you have had plans and Dr Moyes referred to them and I hope, and you're obviously very conscious of them and I think that is terrific and I can imagine that Chairman Hunt would be well abreast of all of the changes and all that is needed. We recognised earlier this year that there was a need to provide more resources for aged care and we've received a lot of representations on that subject, not least I might say from the Wesley Mission but indeed from aged care providers all around the country and we decided to include in the Budget a major additional provision, not only in relation to the running costs, but also in relation to capital.
Now we as a community like every other community with which it is fair to make comparison are an ageing society. The proportion of people over 65 will grow as the years go by rather than diminish and that's a good thing because it's a reflection that people are living longer and living healthy lives longer and that is a good thing but it's also of course be a good thing if our fertility rate were higher and as Peter Costello rightly said in the Budget, we did try, I mean, his principle of one for each other and one for the country is not a bad principle and I know that there are many people who followed that but the point I simply want to say is that, as a society this big demographic change that we must grapple with and it means more resources for aged care, it means maintaining the affordability of health care and that includes helping both public hospitals and private health insurance.
It's not one or the other - it's both together. It's a partnership. A good health system is a partnership between the public system and the private system, not one trying to wrong foot the other and that's always been our philosophy. But it also means, of course, encouraging people who want to do so to remain in the workforce longer. I think people should continue in the workforce for as long as they want to and as long as they're making a contribution and age is irrelevant. The most powerful economist in the world and somebody who arguably has a greater influence on the economy than anybody else in the world is the chairman of the American Federal Reserve system, Dr Alan Greenspan and he's only 78.
I mean, it does sort of make the point and I think it's a very relevant point. It's what you can deliver and how able you are, not your age. I mean some people's capacity to do things is diminished at a very early age sadly, others it goes on for a long time. So I simply make the proposition that we need to recognise in this changing demographic situation that people should be encouraged to remain in the workforce for as long as they want to and as long as they're able to make a contribution and the measure is the worth of the contribution. Not the age or station of the individual - it's as simple as that. And that is a cultural change that governments have to embrace and they have began to embrace it, but it's also a cultural change that many of the professions have to embrace. I think Ian would know from his own professional experience years and years ago it used to be accepted that some of the older partners would stay and then we went through a phase where everybody had to retire at a certain age and I think maybe now there's starting to be I hope something of a swing back and that's long overdue because it's a recognition of the quality of people and the resource that is available through mature age workers is enormous and it's a contribution that we should be willing to encourage.
But my friends, thank you very much for having Janette and I here. We know a lot about this facility, we know quite a number of you too who over the years we've had contact with in this area. Gordon was good enough to say that I regularly, despite my other duties come to the electorate and of course I do and I appreciate very, very much the contact I've had with Alan Walker Village and I appreciate very, very much the friendships that I've had with quite a number of you in this room over a very long period of time.
So thank you very much for having me and good luck, and we hope to say hello to as many of you as possible.
Thank you.