Sussan Ley has had the aged care portfolio added to the health and sport portfolios she already manages in the Turnbull ministry during a supplementary swearing-in ceremony in Canberra on Wednesday.
Ley would not say specifically why she was not sworn into the aged care portfolio during the first induction ceremony, explaining to reporters on Wednesday that a “machinery of government change” had to occur first.
Aged care did not have its own portfolio under Tony Abbott, leading Labor to say that it had been neglected. Ley said it was “common sense” that aged care would sit alongside health in the ministry.
The ceremony also inducted Australia’s first minister of Indigenous heritage, Ken Wyatt, to assistant health minister.
In 2010 Wyatt was the first Aboriginal person elected to the House of Representatives. Before that, he was the director of Aboriginal health within both the Western Australian and New South Wales health departments.
He missed the initial swearing-in ceremony, which took place last Monday, because he was in the US as part of an official parliamentary delegation.
Ley said she put her hand up “to bring responsibility for aged care back to health and give it a seat at the cabinet table”.
“Bringing the aged care portfolio to sit alongside the ministries of health and sport will complement our integrated health system,” Ley said. “We know aged care plays an important role in the overall health system and this move will benefit all Australians, particularly those over the age of 65.”
Wyatt will work with Ley as assistant minister, with a focus on aged care.
Labor criticised the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, for failing to appoint a minister for aged care when he announced his ministry after a leadership spill earlier this month.
“Older Australians, their loved ones and those who provide services and care for them will continue to be overlooked and ignored by a second Liberal prime minister,” the opposition spokesman on aged care, Shayne Neumann, said.
“The Turnbull Liberal government will simply build on Tony Abbott’s shameful record of mishandling aged care issues that abandoned those living with dementia, turned ageing into a dirty word and failed to address vital aged care workforce issues.”
Turnbull’s revamped ministry saw the number of women in the cabinet rise to five, with nine in the ministry overall. Marise Payne become the first female defence minister.
Her predecessor, Kevin Andrews, was one of six Abbott ministers dumped from the frontbench.
Ley and Wyatt were sworn in by the governor general, Sir Peter Cosgrove, at Government House in Canberra on Wednesday afternoon.
