Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be able to speak in support of this motion. Caring for people with disabilities, with chronic conditions, with mental illness or with frailty is one of the most essential, but regrettably inadequately recognised and unrewarded, tasks conducted by many of our fellow citizens. The physical and emotional support provided by carers across the nation is priceless. This year’s Carers Week was organised around the theme ‘Anyone, Anytime’, and I think that theme picks up the realities associated with caring: almost everyone will provide care at some time during their life.

In terms of those in need of care, almost four million Australians have a disability, a chronic condition, a mental illness or are frail aged. The majority are cared for at home by informal or unpaid carers, rather than being cared for in assisted accommodation or residential aged care facilities. Because of this informal care provided by so many, many Australians, they have a reduced capacity for workforce participation. Official data from a recent ABS survey indicated the following: there are today about 2.6 million carers in Australia who provide informal care to a relative or a friend; that nearly half a million of these are primary carers and, not surprisingly, 75 per cent of them are women; that most primary carers are under 65 years and are of workforce age; and, perhaps more surprisingly, that 60 per cent of carers aged 15 and over have cared for five years or more, one-third have cared for over 10 years and some carers have been in this position for as long as 30 years.

In 2005, Access Economics investigated the economic value of informal care and estimated that in 2005 informal carers provided 1.2 billion hours of care. If this informal care was no longer available, the replacement value to all levels of government would be at least $30.5 billion annually. Providing informal care comes at a cost to carers in terms of their wellbeing, quality of life, financial security and opportunity to be in paid work. We all know of tales of carers who have often had to leave work or reduce their hours of workforce participation because of caring responsibilities that often come in very unexpected ways. The majority of carers who are of workforce age report great difficulties in balancing their caring responsibilities with workforce participation.

The national association Carers Australia, who advocate on behalf of carers, have argued for more flexible workplace options, more affordable quality alternative care arrangements and improved transition to work programs for carers. One-third of primary carers have household incomes which place them in the poorest one-fifth of households in Australia and, for 55 per cent of primary carers, their main source of income is a government pension. There are strong economic arguments for enabling Australians caring for the elderly and people with a disability to increase their levels of participation at work by a more effective subsidisation of their care costs. A recent report by the Taskforce on Care Costs has argued for extending the current childcare tax rebate to elder and disability care and increasing the rebate to a 50 per cent cost reimbursement—and I think that makes for good economic sense. The contribution carers make is not only to the people they love and care for but also to the community and the economy more broadly.

For caring to be sustainable, carers must have ready and affordable access to quality support services. Services such as these are often not there and not readily available. By that I mean flexible respite care, counselling and in-home services delivered on a regular basis, together with an expansion of residential care, particularly to care for the frail aged and those with dementia. We need to better appreciate the pressure carers are under, adapt workplace practices to make them more carer friendly, provide greater institutional support and consider how our tax and welfare payments system can be better targeted to assist all carers.

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