Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

For all of the years I have known the member for Shortland, I have known her to be a very decent and caring person. When she says that she has great empathy for people who need the services of the aged-care industry, she means it. She does; she has got a heart of gold. But I am not so certain that the Rudd government has that same heart of gold. A case could easily be made that, since winning government, Labor has ignored older Australians; you can easily demonstrate that. You can easily demonstrate that the current government is in denial about the serious state the industry is in.

Over the years there has always been a tremendous shortage of aged-care places, but in some areas of Australia those places are now undersubscribed. Bed licences are being handed back. Providers do not want them anymore. That is of serious concern because in other places in Australia there remains quite a shortage of bed licences, and I am going to refer particularly to Townsville in this contribution in the parliament this afternoon.

When the former government were defeated a year ago, we left a world-class health system to the Rudd government. Over the four terms during which I was a member of the Howard government, from 1996, we addressed the hard issues. Some of the time it was just so difficult getting through those issues in aged care. It is like the health system—there is never enough money. But we did leave a very robust and well-performing system, because we delivered wide-ranging reforms that resulted in high-quality, affordable and assessable aged care that met the needs and preferences of older Australians. Of course, part of our policy was to try to provide in-home care—that is, caring for the person in their home rather than sending them off to an aged-care facility. That began in 1997 with the Aged Care Act 1997. We went from there, and at the end of the Howard government’s term we were certainly very proud of the system that we had been able to deliver.

But where are we now? The industry is very different to what it was in 1997. The sector continues to evolve, as all sorts of sectors in Australia do. We can see the issues that are in the aged-care sector in relation to the issues that I find in my city of Townsville. The first issue is bed shortages. That impacts around the community but it also impacts on the local hospital. Right now, 22 beds in the Townsville Hospital are being taken up by older Australians who should be in an aged-care facility, but there are no places. The 22 beds are being taken up by people who are being cared for by the nursing system when they should be cared for in an aged-care facility. I encourage providers in Townsville to look at obtaining more bed licences and providing additional beds in the city.

The Good Shepherd Hospice, an existing aged-care provider, in cooperation with the Townsville Hospital, wants to provide an additional 36 places to clear the bed blockage. The state government, as I understand it, is prepared to contribute, but the federal government needs to contribute. At the last election there was a commitment from Senator McLucas, the senator who represents North Queensland, for the $2 million needed to build those beds, and there was a commitment from the Howard government as well. The hospice itself is going to put in a significant amount of money. So the commitments from the state government, the federal government and the aged-care facility itself are there but nothing is happening. It is not happening because the aged-care facility cannot get any clarity from the Rudd government as to when its $2 million will be delivered. That is a real shame.

The Good Shepherd Hospice is ready to go now, the hospital is ready to help, the state government is ready to help, but we are having difficulty with the Rudd government. I plead with the Rudd government: please honour your election commitment to provide that money. Please look after the people in Townsville who need that care and get them out of the hospital. Getting them out of the hospital will mean people will not have to sit on trolleys in the emergency ward. Relatively recently, a cancer patient was on a trolley in the emergency ward for such a length of time that they actually died in the corridor. That is a terrible standard of care in the hospital system, a very sad situation indeed, and it comes back to supporting the aged-care industry.

Many in the aged-care system are running on impossibly tight margins these days. I recently spoke to a number of operators in Townsville and they gave me the grassroots version of what is happening. One of their problems is that they cannot pay the staff what they need to pay them to keep them. Their staff are both enrolled nurses and registered nurses. A registered nurse in the aged-care industry in Queensland looks at what the Queensland government is paying registered nurses in the hospital system and says: ‘Why am I working in aged care? The hospital system pays a whole lot more money for the same job.’ So they go off to the hospital system.

The aged-care facilities have difficulty keeping their staff. They say to me: ‘We should look at the role of registered nurses in the aged-care system. Do we really need to have a registered nurse for many of the functions that are carried out in the care of older Australians?’ As a community we really do need to look at that because we have to keep the care up in the hospitals and in the aged-care homes. We really do need to look at whether we need qualified people doing jobs that less qualified people could do perfectly satisfactorily. I want to make quite clear that I am not for one moment suggesting that we should in any way prejudice quality care for older Australians. I am asking the aged-care industry and the government to look sensibly at which staff might do what jobs and what the requirements might be. There may be a way that we can get more staff back into the aged-care system and stop the leakage that is happening now to the hospital system.

I had another aged-care provider tell me that their home had been there for four decades and it was time to do a complete refresh. The provider said: ‘It is just not economically viable to do it. Why would I do it? It is going to cost too much money and there will be no return at the end of the day in investing that capital in a complete refresh. We need to be much larger than we are to make a refresh economic.’ That that might be happening in Townsville is of concern. And, if it is happening in Townsville, it is happening in every other city in the Commonwealth.

I have also been concerned that some of the administration that is needed these days in aged care is overwhelming the management and the staff of these facilities. Yes, we have to be careful about ensuring compliance with standards and we have to have the proper records, but I am advised by the aged-care industry that the paperwork these days is out of control. We ought to have a look at that with a view to freeing things up and seeing if we can do things in a smarter way that does not generate all of the paperwork that is there.

I specifically want to point to the RSL Rowes Bay aged-care facility in Townsville. I believe they have been very unfairly treated. Earlier this year there was a time when they did not meet some standards. That high-care RSL facility is as good as you would find anywhere in Australia. It is a wonderful place. It is first class and very new. They had a staffing problem at that time and that caused them a little bit of grief. They immediately overcame it when they saw there was a difficulty. But this has gone on. I saw in the paper last week that the RSL was named as one of the non-performing aged-care facilities in Queensland. That is terribly unfair. No allowance has been made for the work the good people and the management at that RSL aged-care facility have done to make sure that they are better than the standards that are required for the care of our older Australians. I hope there is some mechanism whereby we can address that kind of situation.

The government, to its credit, announced that it would be looking at having increased visits to aged-care facilities by the agency, the independent watchdog; increasing the powers of the agency; expanding the requirement for all aged-care employees to undergo police checks et cetera; investing in staff to check on both residents and paperwork in a facility; and filling in gaps in the legislation. But we can do more than that. I appeal to the government to look at the points I have raised in this speech tonight on the Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Bill 2008 and to make those the subject of further legislation in due course to make the aged-care industry even more appropriate for the care of older Australians.

See this speech in context