Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says his third budget on Tuesday will include a package for aged care which will be bigger than the $10 billion a year than has been speculated.

It will include reforms to home care and residential care, and governance, as well as skills and training initiatives.

“It is a very significant commitment designed to deal with what the royal commission has found to strengthen our system and ensure that older Australians can retire, can live with dignity, respect and with safety,” he told the Nine Network on Sunday.

Health Minister Greg Hunt and Minister for Women Marise Payne also announced a $353.9 million health package for women spread over four years, which provides funding for cervical and breast cancer.

‘Pandemic Budget’

Mr Frydenberg said the Budget will include a separate women’s statement on women’s economic and safety and health.

“You would have to go back more than a decade to see anything equivalent from that,” Mr Frydenberg said.

These initiatives come after a string of announcements in recent weeks which the Treasurer says are primarily aimed at protecting the economy from the ongoing pandemic and securing jobs.

“It is a pandemic budget. We are still in the middle of pandemic,” Mr Frydenberg insists.

“The budget is about people staying safe with a series of health measures and ensuring more people get into work, because we have got the unemployment rate down to 5.6 per cent, but we want to drive it back to where it was in the early stages of that pandemic which was 5 per cent.

-AAP