Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Whilst I cannot and do not agree with the content of the member for Hotham’s address to the House in this budget response, I do recognise the sincerity of his views and the experience he brings to the table—and his passion for apprenticeships is undeniable.

In this budget reply speech I am brought back to the last week of my life and the passing of Mrs Joyce Marshall. She was the wife of Len ‘Gunner’ Marshall. She was called ‘Aunty Joyce’ around our community. Her son Greg Marshall and his wife, Sarah, Kate and James from the UK, her sister Brenda and Brenda’s husband, Graham O’Brien, and Heath and Reagan were all at her funeral. There was a poignant moment when Greg Marshall looked at his mum’s casket and said, ‘Mum, you’re out of your misery.’ This woman suffered from dementia.

A very important part of the experience of the budget is how it interacts with local communities. This particular woman, Aunty Joyce, was part of the Bush Church Aid Society, taking the gospel right across the country. She had a 45-year badge with the fire brigade auxiliary, was a member for life of the Pakenham football and netball clubs and of the St James Anglican Church. On the day she died she had not resigned from any affiliate organisation. One not without the other, Aunty Joyce Marshall was one of the golden threads, one of the unsung heroes that binds community, family, township and district. As they sang the 23rd Psalm, I could not help but look around the room and see her sisters-in-law, Alma, Norma and Aunty Thel, and her brother, Stan, who had just given a rather remarkable talk about this much loved woman. They sang the last verse with the line, ‘Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,’ and they did with Aunty Joyce Marshall.

People have suffered with dementia as Aunty Joyce did all the way to the federal parliament. Dementia is an issue that affects practically every family you can touch from Tasmania to the Northern Territory and from Brisbane to Perth. I am reminded of my father, who, in his latter years, also suffered from dementia. The issue that the federal government has to address, as I said, is its interaction with the community. While in the church, I looked around and saw how that community had come together to celebrate the life of an individual. We know that across the nation tonight people are dealing with someone with dementia in their household or they may be dealing with the need for a dementia unit in their community. They may even be dealing with loved ones much younger than they ever thought could be affected. I stood in my own community and remembered Aunty Joyce. I know that the member for Rankin has Aunty Joyces in his electorate, the member for McEwen has Aunty Joyces in her electorate and—being the age we are—we grew up with these people who are, as I said, not the heroes who are talked about every day. They perhaps do not get the Queen’s honours, but they get great community honours and they are greatly loved by their communities and their families. Every one of us knows one of those people in our generation who were so much a part of small communities, who supported their husbands in everything that they did, who supported their kids when they went to the footy and who were there for the tragedies of floods and fires.

Whilst I am responding to the budget of the nation, I recognise that the money that the federal government spends in every electorate right across the nation on the issue of dementia is important because it is important to families who have to face an ageing population. In my electorate, as I will come to later on, it is a little larger an issue than in most rural electorates across Australia, even though I extend from out of Melbourne. Dementia is a growing health and social issue. That is why, as local members, we try to be the bridge that goes from the electorate to the executive, where we pass on the experiences we have of the needs in our electorates and respond to our communities, because we are out there and we are faced with these situations every day. We see how the families struggle with this debilitating disease and we wonder how, into the future, we as a nation can address ourselves to these issues in a changing world that is, for someone with dementia, locked away in time. They are locked in a place they cannot escape from. As Greg Marshall said, only in death was his mother released.

Although only about one per cent of people aged 65 show symptoms of dementia, this increases to around 25 per cent in people aged over 85. This government currently invests more than $2.6 billion per year in dementia care, research and support. In recognition of its significance, dementia has been made an Australian government national health priority. This includes a total of $225 million to provide 2,000 Extended Aged Care at Home—EACH—dementia packages over four years. There are now a number of strands for looking after people with dementia with not only residential care, ageing in place care and the care that communities can give in the early stages but also direct in-home care to help families care for an individual in their home for as long as possible.

All of us are supporters of investment in aged care. There is not a member of the House of Representatives who does not have this firmly on their plate as they move around their electorate. I am pleased, through the representations that I have talked about, to be that bridge from the electorate to the executive—to be that bridge from the state to the parliament. Rose Lodge in Wonthaggi was a successful recipient in the 2006 aged-care funding round of a further 20 beds to help meet its increase in demand for dementia-specific areas. It will use that bed allocation for a specific dementia wing. As I mentioned, the other option for patients suffering dementia in McMillan—but this accords with the nation—is through organisations like Baptcare, who provide support to older Australians though in-home care programs. Baptcare, with whom I had a meeting recently, recognise the dementia demand and have applied in the 2007 aged-care funding round for an increase in their dementia community package programs in the Gippsland region.

The facts about the ageing of the Australian community are this: by 2051 Australia’s population is expected to reach 28 million, an increase of 37 per cent from today. Over the same time the number of people over 55 is expected to increase by 113 per cent from five million to around 10.7 million. The change will be even more marked among people aged 85 and over. At present this group represent about 1.4 per cent of the population. By 2051 they will account for between six per cent and nine per cent of the population.

My electorate is a snapshot of the ageing population figure—15.4 per cent of the population is in the 65 years and over bracket. That is higher than the average for Victorian rural electorates. Within the electorate of McMillan itself the figure varies widely, with the highest proportion of the 65-plus age group being in the South Gippsland region, in the south of my electorate, where the proportion is over 16 per cent. This is where the Rose Lodge beds went. McMillan has 24 aged-care services. Today that is 1,227 beds. In 1996, when the Howard government came to office, there were only 776 beds. The investment in aged care by the Howard government has been phenomenal. I do not like to use that word, but it has been. In expanding the outlays that we have, the millions of dollars poured into aged care, this government has made better the lives of families, of those caring for aged persons in their homes, of those caring for dementia patients in their homes and of those caring for them in fixed residential units.

This year’s budget, after all the outlays, continues the strong commitment to supporting older Australians. It contains more than $1.7 billion in new funding for further improvements to our aged-care system. I know we can always do more. If anything comes out of this address, I know this: we will always be looking for avenues where the federal government can do more to assist families, do more to assist people who need ageing support. Securing the future of aged care for Australians, this package will support the financial investment needed by the aged-care industry so that it can continue to grow and meet the demands of Australia’s ageing population.

It is incumbent upon me to consider how aged care particularly affects local communities—small communities like Toora and Foster. The nursing home in Toora is an older facility that needs support. One of the things that I will be drawing to my government’s attention is the fact that we need to put more money into those smaller communities, because they are the backbone and the lifeblood—they are some of the greatest carers in the world of older people. I have seen it firsthand. You have to be somebody pretty special, you know, to care for those people who have reached a great age. And their great sin is that they are old. They are not sick; they are old. Yet I see communities responding—in Foster, in Toora, in Pakenham, in Warragul, in Moe, in Trafalgar and in Wonthaggi. I watch every one of them and I see the care, the concern, the love and the sincerity that they are pouring into the care of those older people. And they know that there is somebody there caring for them, who will be there when they put their hands up. Even at the 100th birthday that I attended to read out the notices the other day here was this 100-year-old woman, bright as a button, cracking jokes in front of 300 of her family and friends who were all gathered. These are community events that we can only dream about here, but in which we can have some influence with the moneys that we provide.

All is not well in the whole of McMillan. There are places where we can do more and where we need to do more. If there is one thing we have in common across all our rural electorates—from Tasmania to Darwin, from the Northern Territory to Queensland and across to the west—it is a doctor shortage. I am no different from anybody else in my seat of McMillan. Even in areas where there is not a shortage as perceived by government bodies, there is, because we have an ageing population in our doctors as well. Many of them are due for retirement, particularly rural doctors, who have particular skills that affect local areas.

Though the budget includes new funding of $274 million to improve health services and equipment available to meet the healthcare needs of people living in rural and remote areas, the budget recognises that rural and remote areas continue to experience a shortage of GPs due to difficulties not only in recruiting them but also in retaining them. I said this shortage is not foreign to my electorate of McMillan. The Corner Inlet community, which includes the towns of Foster, Toora, Tarwin Lower, Fish Creek and Buffalo, has been experiencing a doctor shortage for over 12 months. Even though this community is not a declared area of workforce shortage, it has obtained a preliminary assessment of district workforce shortage. It is now seeking to extend that, and I have to talk to the minister about that. The Foster and Toora Medical Centre wrote to me recently and said:

I am writing to seek your support to help resolve our current crisis in medical workforce.

…            …            …

We urgently need to not only to continue our current classification as a District of Workforce Shortage but will also request that this classification is extended from one to two positions at our medical centre.

A recent … (Rural Workforce Agency of Victoria) forum has shown that 34.4% of the rural GP workforce are IMGs (International Medical Graduates) with 60% of new entrants since 2003 also being IMGs.

After some two years of active recruitment activities with no return, we see the only option in replacing our GP workforce—

in South Gippsland—

is to seek urgent access to IMGs to resolve our current crises.

Thus it is essential that we retain our District of Workforce classification and in recognition of our worsening workforce situation the number of allocated places needs to be expanded to at least two positions.

Other startling statistics show that 41% of Victorian GP’s are aged 50 and over (75% of our principal doctors are over the age of 44 for our clinic) and in the near future, we are expected to take a much larger role in undergraduate training with the local new Monash University Gippsland Medical Campus—

which we have been heavily involved in. They went on to say:

Furthermore, only 23% of the Victorian GP workforce are procedural GPs, the very skills that are required for our clinic’s type of diverse service.

It is not news to any of you that we have a doctor shortage. I know that in Tasmania people are working hard to get doctors to go to Tassie, and people in central New South Wales are working hard to retain their doctors. But there has to be some flexibility from government in provider numbers for GPs who go into country areas to provide a service—especially in areas where they have influxes of tourists in the summertime, which really adds enormous pressure. Some of the activities of those tourists put a bit more pressure on, too; some of the habits are fairly difficult to handle by local GPs, but they do it well.

If we are going to be able to provide the services to them and help recognise that, we have got to send a message that there is not a country-city divide. There are people who live in electorates far greater in size than the electorate of McMillan, and there is an expectation that they will have the services that people have in a suburb of Melbourne—let us say Heathmont—and that they are going to have those exact same services anywhere in Tasmania, remote New South Wales, remote Western Australia, remote Northern Territory or remote Queensland. While governments strive to provide those services, we have to come up with new and innovative ways. Yes, I do want new education facilities for doctors at the Leongatha hospital, and I will work towards that. Yes, we do want new educational facilities coming out of Monash University. I finish by saying this: for all members of parliament in this place there is always more to do, and it is up to us to progress that.

See this speech in context