Tomorrow I'm going to be holding a carers forum with the member for Dobell, Emma McBride, our shadow assistant minister for carers. We're holding this forum because we are inspired by the many carers who have spoken to me about what they do here in the Canberra community for their loved ones—people like Mel, Tanya and John. What carers do is a selfless act and is incredibly important for our community and for our economy. Deloitte Access Economics estimated that, if we tried to replace the value of the informal care that the 2.65 million carers in Australia do every day, the cost would be $77.9 billion. Yet these carers struggle to get the recognition that they deserve from the government, be it financial or otherwise. They struggle to get respite.

I want to say thank you to all the carers in Canberra and around this country for what they do. They battle, on behalf of those they love, with the systems that are increasingly letting them down, like aged care and the NDIS. And many of those people would never see good outcomes through these systems without a carer who fights tirelessly on their behalf. So tomorrow is an opportunity for me and the member for Dobell to hear from carers in Canberra about what the government can do to better support them and the incredibly important true act of love and selflessness that they do for those that they love.