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

No, I am talking about the member for Bass, not Parramatta. Parramatta got plenty of dough, too, but nothing like Bass. The amount of money was just incredible. The Labor Party virtually purchased the seat with its promises.

The disappointment that rages across the whole of this budget also comes from the environment. Look at what they are doing to Landcare. Look at what they are doing to the whole program. They have made some changes in the environment area that actually reduce the amount of money. Who would have thought a Labor government would have come into power and reduced the money allocated for the benefit of the Australian community, the future and the environment? Who would have thought that a Labor government would make cuts in those areas that are most important not only to the environment as a whole and what we are leaving to our future generations but also to funds expended mostly in the regions. Why? They do not believe they have a political future in the regions of Australia and they are pulling funds out of there. They are base political reasons once again.

There is great disappointment across the community on what they expected of this government and what they have received. What you saw at the election was, yes, the end of the Howard era and the beginning of a new government. But this budget is actually the first time that the community could make any assessment whatsoever of what the government is doing. I have actually been positive. I have said to the Koonwarra Sustainable Communities Centre, ‘I think that this government will have a program that you can apply for.’ They would like to have a place where they can have demonstration projects in the environment, particularly in regard to wastewater, and where people can come and see how they might invest in those things for their own purposes around their home, their farm, their business or whatever. There is great disappointment in this budget. It is disappointment that is being felt right across the community at a time when the government has a lot of money that it is able to spend.

I wish to address today the issue of aged care and the ageing population. In its outcomes summary the government declares that its priority in this budget is to improve equitable access to community and residential aged care and to strengthen existing access arrangements. But the actual commitments in the budget fall well short of the industry’s hopes and expectations. There was relief that a feared cut in the coalition’s adjustment payment did not materialise, but the announcement of interest-free loans did little to eliminate concerns over how the industry is going to fund future expansion.

For the first time in Australian history there are more people over the age of 40 than below the age of 40. We have recognised for some years that we have to do more to provide for our own futures, rather than leave future generations the legacy of a crippling financial burden. Australians in recent years have been urged and encouraged to provide for their own retirement through superannuation and investment, rather than relying totally on social welfare in their retirement years. As people live longer they have also been urged to work beyond what has long been considered the retirement age, and the Howard government did provide incentives for them to do exactly that.

These measures and messages have been largely understood and accepted by the Australian population. Australians are making a major contribution to planning their own futures and they are working longer. But we still seem to be unable or unwilling to come to grips with one of the major problems of an ageing population, that of care of the frail aged. It is an emotional issue because it affects every family at some stage. Too often decisions about aged care seem to be put off until they can no longer be avoided. This is true at the personal level, at the community level and at a national level. Quite often we do not make a decision on care for an aged family member until faced with the inevitable.

It seems the same thing applies at a community and national level when it comes to planning and providing accommodation and care for the aged. The most contentious issue facing the aged-care industry at the moment is raising capital for new high-care places. As the population ages and the demand for high-care places continues to grow, this problem will snowball. We have the inequitable situation at the moment where entrants into residential low-care accommodation are required to pay an accommodation bond. However those entering high-care facilities do not.

This situation is reflected in the lopsided capital income of the two classes of accommodation which cater for approximately equal numbers of residents. Figures prepared by the Aged Care Association of Australia show the high-care sector earned a total of $123 million dollars in the 2003-04 financial year from capped accommodation charges. For the same period, the low-care sector earned an estimated $288 million dollars from the interest on accommodation bonds and retained fees. Without significant cross-subsidisation from the low-care sector it is highly unlikely that any new high-care beds would have been built.

In his review of the aged-care sector in 2004, Professor Warren Hogan made 19 wide-ranging recommendations aimed at improving equity and access, improving efficiency and quality of care, and achieving sustainability in the aged-care sector. The Howard government legislated to give effect to one of Professor Hogan’s recommendations for improving sustainability. It provided residents and their families with greater security and peace of mind with regard to accommodation bonds. The legislation established new prudential arrangements applying to providers to ensure their ability to refund the bonds. It also provided residents and their families with more information about the financial standing of a provider. Other key recommendations aimed at achieving sustainability relating to the simplification of residents’ fees and a more consistent requirement for accommodation bonds have also gone into effect.

But the critical area of accommodation bonds for entrants into high-care accommodation has still to be addressed. Professor Hogan argues that the options for making capital contributions should be consistent between high-care and low-care facilities. He called for an end to the present accommodation bond system with retention payments. New entrants to both high- and low-care places, he says, should have the option of paying either a refundable deposit or a daily rental charge for the duration of a resident’s stay.

There is no doubt we will have to act sooner rather than later if we are to meet the challenge that will be posed by the growing demand for aged-care places in the decades ahead. In the next 10 years alone it has been estimated that the capital requirement will be more than $9 billion. The difficulty is going to be to strike a balance between the demands on governments to provide increasing amounts of taxpayers’ money and the responsibility of residents to contribute to the cost of their own care. Earlier attempts to introduce accommodation bonds for high-care residents proved too difficult. I know—I was there. There was concerted opposition to any notion that a resident would have to sell the family home to get into a nursing home.

We are now at the point where we have to revisit the issue of refundable deposits if we are going to meet the challenges ahead. That challenge is magnified for the smaller, community based facilities such as I have in my electorate of McMillan. They are already struggling to find the capital they need to provide the places for aged members of their local communities who want to spend their declining years in familiar surroundings and with easy access for family and friends. Surely we can no longer sanction a system that discriminates against one sector of the aged community.

As I said before, it is an emotional issue and one that will surely spark a lively debate. But, if we are to continue to provide the standard of accommodation and care we expect for our aged population, it is a debate we have to have. My hope is that this time it will be conducted in a reasoned and calm atmosphere with the objective of reaching a fair outcome for all concerned. Last time this issue was used it was in the heat of an election campaign and it was used to discredit the federal Liberal coalition government at the time it was just trying to do the right thing in aged care.

I put the challenge out now to the new Labor government to address this issue of bonds and allocations in nursing homes across Australia so that into the future we can have a nursing home system, an aged-care system, that addresses our needs and, as our numbers increase, as the pressure increases, we will meet the challenge. We have a little respite at the moment because the Howard government went from putting $2 billion into aged care when they were elected to $6 billion when they finally left office. They poured billions of dollars into aged care to make the difference that we have made. But even that will catch up with us in the future if we do not act now to make sure that those that are providing care, especially those community based people particularly in electorates such as mine—and I am sure yours, Mr Deputy Speaker—have the means to do so. We need to support those people so that aged-care residents can have a facility close to home, nearby, and one that provides the very high quality of service that we would expect for our aged community.

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