Greens leader Adam Bandt has made a case for the management of the aged care sector to be restored to the Government in a wide-ranging speech to the National Press Club on Tuesday.

“Over the next year – in aged care, private health care, employment services, education, the public service and banking where we bankroll cheap lending for the big four ‘too big to fail’ banks – the public will be delivering private entities $52 billion to prop up their profits,” he said.

“It’s time to wind back privatisation. The Australian people hate it and it has been a demonstrated failure.”

Mr Bandt added that selling public assets, deregulation and outsourcing services had left the country “more unequal, less able to withstand shocks and teetering on the edge of civilisational collapse”.

“We will seek the Senate’s support for a wide-ranging inquiry into the failures of privatisation,” he said.

“Given the likely supportive views of the crossbench, we hope we can shame Labor into backing it so that it begins before the end of the year.”

Given only a very small number of aged care providers are Government-run, that appears unlikely to happen. But the argument demonstrates that the idea that providers shouldn’t be making profits is still ticking along.