Annette Ellis (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is indeed a pleasure to stand today to address the Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Bill 2008. In doing so, as the member for Tangney goes to leave the chamber—which is fair enough—I thank him for his resume about pensions but make the point that actually this is more about aged care. It is over a decade since the Aged Care Act of 1997 first became law. Since then there have been some major changes within the aged-care industry. What were once typically small scale single-site, single-service operations have now evolved to become multisite facilities operating over a number of states. Another way in which the industry has evolved is the way in which the facilities offer a broad number of different services under the one roof. The industry has developed corporate structures whereby the people operating the facility are quite often not the owners of the facility.

Australians now enjoy the second-highest life expectancy rates in the world, after the Japanese, and currently there are some 2.8 million people aged 65 years and over in this country. This is expected to rise by a further seven million people up until 2051. The number of people aged over 80 years will almost double over the next 20 years. One of the great challenges that we face is caring for our ageing population. This will require careful planning and adequate resources that include enough beds and facilities and measures that will protect our frail older Australians from harm. Our aged have contributed much to the nation and it is only right that they enjoy their later years in a dignified manner and with their needs adequately cared for.

Presently there are approximately 970 approved providers holding $6.3 billion worth of accommodation bonds—that is, money paid at the point of entry by residents going into low-care facilities. This legislation will provide further protection for 170,000 senior Australians who reside in almost 3,000 aged-care homes. The legislation strikes a balance between protecting the aged and frail and their assets while guaranteeing the long-term viability of the aged-care sector. This will ensure consumer confidence and the confidence of corporate investment in aged care.

One of the aims of this legislation is to widen the range of people who are considered to be key personnel of an approved provider. This will ensure that those pulling the financial strings can also be scrutinised if required. I do not actually call that ‘fiddling around the edges’, as the previous speaker commented. This is pretty essential accountability. The legislation will also provide a tightening of regulations regarding accommodation bonds to ensure that those bonds paid by residents in aged care are fully protected under the guarantee scheme. It will protect existing lump-sum payments held by providers in the same way as accommodation bonds are protected. New providers will be required to refund lump-sum payments they received before they became approved providers.

Changes to the hardship provisions will allow for a partial accommodation subsidy for people who are unable to pay a full bond or charge. Assets will be assessed under the Aged Care Act in the same way as they are assessed under the Social Security Act and the Veterans Entitlements Act with respect to trusts and companies. In exceptional circumstances aged-care places that are not yet operational may be transferred to another approved provider where it best meets the needs of the community.

The bill will reduce waiting times through the streamlining of assessments and a reduction in red tape. I cannot think of anything better. Where you are attempting to negotiate with a provider—because that is what you have to do—for the entry of a loved one or relative as a resident into their facility, nothing can be more frustrating, demeaning, or worrisome than going through a very convoluted and complicated assessment and entry process. Such a process appears, in many cases, to be so wrapped up in red tape that you can hardly see the words that are written in front of you. I applaud anything that makes that better.

The bill also extends police checks to cover all employees in the aged-care system in order to restrict the ability of people with serious convictions, even when supervised, from working in the sector. This will ensure that people in aged care are not exposed to people with convictions for serious offences such as physical and sexual assault and murder. Whilst this is a welcome initiative, I would also comment that proper supervision should be allowed for in the resourcing of these places because, unfortunately, there are people—albeit in the minority—who may not have such a record but who do need to have good training and supervision when working in a place as sensitive as an aged-care facility.

The bill will also improve methods of formal notification to the Department of Health and Ageing on the sad occasions when residents are reported to the police as missing. This will enable the department to assess whether appropriate action has been taken to ensure the safety and welfare of all residents. The changes to the legislation allow the department to give the most weight to whether an approved provider’s noncompliance is a threat to the health, the welfare and the interests of the aged-care recipients. The bill will also clarify what services are covered under the legislation. It is becoming more commonplace for developers to place aged-care retirement villages and disability care in the one facility or in the one area. This bill will clarify that only aged-care services are covered by the Aged Care Act.

The Australian government has a strong commitment to supporting our aged and frail community, and this has been demonstrated by the record funding that the government has made to support aged and community care. The government will provide more than $40 billion over the next four years to aged and community care, and more than $28.6 billion of this will be for nursing homes and hostels. This bill will complement this funding by providing a better quality of care for older Australians whilst providing a better regulatory framework that both reflects the evolution of the aged-care industry and makes it more streamlined and more efficient.

In my concluding comments I would like to reflect on—whilst not overstating their importance—some of the comments that have been made earlier in the debate. I think it was the member for Tangney who used words to the effect that the aged-care system is a disaster waiting to happen. We have been in government for a year now, and there is no doubt that we have been doing a lot in the area of aged care. A massive amount of legislative change occurred under the previous government. It undertook a multimillion-dollar review of aged care, called the Hogan review. The Hogan review was a very broad, very large, very long, very extensive and very expensive holistic review of aged care. If my memory serves me correctly, the Hogan review came up with a very long list—a raft—of recommendations of one sort or another for aged care. Some of us would have objected to some of those recommendations, and some of us would have and applauded them. But the government that undertook the Hogan review did not, in fact, take up a great many of its recommendations, many of which concerned questions of finance.

I am not, for one moment, wanting to give the impression that I may have agreed with the financial aspects of Hogan either, but members of the previous government cannot now come into a debate like this one on an aged care amendment bill and say that all of the blame for any disastrous impact that they are predicting is going to occur in the aged-care sector in this country is now entirely sitting in front of us. They can not say that we have to take the blame for any such impact when an enormous amount of work and money was expended by the previous government in looking into aged care, primarily through the Hogan review but through other tools as well. The aged-care sector, people with relatives living in the aged-care sector, and the community at large put great emotional, and other, investment into a hope that something really thorough, extensive and good would have come from Hogan.

I think it is only fair that if Hogan did not work then the previous government should say so; if it did work then the previous government need to explain why they did not take up all of Hogan’s recommendations. As I said a moment ago, I am not for one moment suggesting that I would agree with a lot of them either, but it was not my review; it was the review of the previous government.

In closing, I want to say that, in my humble opinion, the most important area of social policy and community concern in this country, along with looking after children, has to be our care of, our concern for and the services that we endorse and supply to the older members of our community. Nothing could be more important. I know that I am not on my own when I say that I have family connections in relation to the receipt of aged care. One thing that the community of this country really needs to feel extremely confident in is that, when you are in a position where you do not have any choice but to engage in aged-care facility care, or, for that matter, aged-care in-home care, all of the steps that can be taken are being taken to ensure good, regulated and properly supervised care. You need to know that, when you entrust your loved one to that system, you are doing it with all of those feelings of confidence and security. Any bill that comes before this House that is, in any part at all, working to ensure those sorts of services and assurances must be applauded, must be agreed to and must go ahead in a positive way. I am really pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this bill today and I am very certain that the steps that this bill covers will go some way to ensuring the sort of service delivery that I am talking about.

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