Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the Aged Care Amendment (Residential Care) Bill 2006 in the House. As announced in the 2006-07 budget, the amendments in this bill will align the treatment of gifting and income streams for aged-care asset-testing purposes with the treatment of gifts and income streams for age pension asset-testing purposes. The changes are designed to simplify the interaction of the aged-care and pension arrangements for greater transparency and to facilitate wise financial planning for older Australians. This bill will also improve the sustainability of aged-care financing arrangements.

The purpose of the bill is to respond to concerns raised in consultations with the community that prospective residents who purchased an income stream after 20 September 2004 could possibly be disadvantaged. Some investment products that generate income streams are purchased using a person’s assets, and currently the money used to buy these income streams is fully exempted from the aged-care assets assessment.

But if you listened to the comments of those opposite in this debate you would not understand that the bill was in fact to simplify and address agreements with respect to assets testing. Those opposite are all about scaremongering. This is all about trying to present something which is not there. It is all about smoke and mirrors, using and playing on words to frighten frail, vulnerable and elderly people and, indeed, scaremongering amongst their families. I have witnessed the kind of scaremongering that we have seen in the House today in the comments that have been made with respect to the second reading amendment the opposition have proposed to this Aged Care Amendment (Residential Care) Bill 2006 that we have sitting in front of us. The opposition’s amendment says that ‘whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House condemns the government’ for these absurd allegations:

(1)

failing to protect our vulnerable aged population by ensuring that all residential aged care facilities receive at least one unannounced spot check every year; and

(2)

rejecting amendments to this bill that would have ensured the promised annual unannounced spot checks were enshrined into legislation”.

For goodness sake, the minister has implemented so many comprehensive protections for people involved in the aged-care system and their families. We have the Aged Care Complaints Resolution Scheme, which was supported by the Charter of Residents Rights and Responsibilities. It forms a significant part of the comprehensive accountability framework for Australian government aged-care homes.

This second reading amendment speaks of the failure to have spot checks. Yet we had a media statement some weeks ago from the Minister for Ageing announcing ‘Aged care spot checks already under way’. The media statement clearly states:

The Howard Government is delivering on its commitment of at least one random spot check for every residential aged care facility every year.

The government has in fact:

... allocated more than $100 million to deliver on a range of commitments ... announced earlier this year to increase the security of residents and ensure the standard of care in aged care facilities. These measures include at least one random spot check per year in each facility.

Again I reiterate there are absurd allegations and claims in the debate on this Aged Care Amendment (Residential Care) Bill 2006. It just shows that the opposition really have no understanding or concept of aged care and its requirements. Their only concern is to get out there and make statements that are scaremongering in the least and simply not acceptable in my Riverina electorate. Then you have the aged-care providers and the nursing home operators having to come out—I did not have to come out and decry Senator Ursula Stephens’s allegations in my electorate of Riverina—and reject Labor Party claims that residential aged care is going backwards in the Riverina-Murray region and that there was a shortage of 187 beds.

Of course, Country Labor is a fallacy in that I have never seen Country Labor vote against city Labor, so I am quite disturbed about Country Labor and how it works. Let Country Labor vote against city Labor occasionally. When there are things that are going to impact on country areas, such as the sale of the Snowy Hydro Scheme proposals et cetera, we did not see anyone coming out and supporting Country Labor and we did not see Country Labor voting against their city counterparts’ desire to sell off assets to get funding to run a campaign in the city areas where their majority vote is. But I will come back to—

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