Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Aged Care Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Bill 2008. I do so because I think it is a sensible piece of drafting and it is important that we amend the Aged Care Act 1977 and the Aged Care (Bond Security) Act 2006. These acts set the framework for funding for aged care in Australia. As the Minister for Ageing said in her second reading speech:

The bill is part of a package of reforms designed to ensure that frail, older Australians who enter in residential care receive high-quality care, that the significant sums of money paid by care recipients are managed responsibly by the aged care provider, and that the aged care regulatory framework is robust.

We have certainly seen an enormous evolution in aged care and the challenges that we face are enormous. In the next four years the Australian government will provide more than $40 billion in funding to aged care and community care, including more than $28.6 billion to nursing homes and hostels. Earlier this year the Minister for Ageing met with the Queensland Minister for Communities, the Minister for Disability Services and the Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Seniors and Youth. The Australian and Queensland governments reached what I would describe as a historic agreement to provide record funding to support services for vulnerable Queenslanders, particularly assistance for Meals on Wheels, community transport and help at home.

Queensland HACC has assisted more than 159,000 people in the last financial year. Under that agreement, which was reached by the Commonwealth and Queensland governments, there was a boost to home and community care services of about $1.2 billion over three years. In the early 1990s and prior to that the majority of those people involved in the aged-care sector had stand-alone facilities. They were almost like cottage facilities, often managed by a local community group or a local group of churches. Sometimes a private operator would run them and, over time, those kinds of facilities and operators have gone by the wayside. These days there are very few of those in either the profit sector or the not-for-profit sector. Many of the small operators have sold out to the big operators. Many of the small operators in the charitable sector, such as individual churches, or groups of churches, or communitarian groups, have approached organisations like Blue Care, RSL Care and other large providers to take over the running of their facilities.

Before I came into this House I was on the board of Queensland Baptist Care for 14 years. They run seven quality-care residential facilities. They range from hostels and nursing homes to respite care. Three of those facilities are in my electorate of Blair in South-East Queensland. Karinya is a 36-bed hostel accommodation facility and a 29-bed nursing home. It is located about seven kilometres off the Warrego Highway in Laidley. It is a beautiful area and it is a wonderful facility. Staff there have a wonderful approach to the residents. I agree with the comments made by the member for Parkes in relation to the commitment by so many people who work in this sector to the residents there. The kindness and the caring nature of the staff I have seen in places such as Karinya, in my electorate, is to be commended.

It is the same thing for Colthup Home in Ipswich, which is a much bigger facility, with a 33-bed nursing home, 15 community aged-care packages, 38-bed hostel accommodation and 13 unfunded hostel accommodation places. It is run by the Ipswich and West Moreton Baptist Association. My grandmother was actually the matron of the home. I remember as a young boy going up there and visiting people in the home. I can recall that they were in their 50s—people like Rev. Cyril Baldwin, Grandma Cran and other people I used to visit when I was a boy. But now we do not think of putting 50-year-olds in aged-care facilities. They are usually 80 or 90 years of age when they enter those types of facilities. My uncle, Merv Neumann, was administrator of that home for many years as well.

There is Elim Village in Raceview, which is a great facility as well. Both Colthup Home and Elim Village were run by the local Baptist churches, but eventually they had to be taken over and run centrally by Queensland Baptist Care. I give that as an illustration of just what the minister is talking about with this type of legislation. Those three facilities were run locally by local people, and now they are having to be run centrally by an organisation like Queensland Baptist Care, which has a turnover in the multimillions of dollars. That is why this legislation that is before the Main Committee today is so important. It deals with the realities of life in the aged-care sector. Those are just some examples of large organisations running local community facilities, albeit with local community support—from the local churches, the Ipswich City Council, the Lockyer Valley Regional Council and others.

The reforms in this bill were the subject of consultation with the profit and not-for-profit aged-care sectors. They relate to changes to the definition of ‘key personnel’ for the purpose of regulatory oversight by the Department of Health and Ageing. The reforms will mean that what I describe as the ‘money men’—those who financially control the aged-care facility—are the key personnel of an approved provider. DoHA will be better able to investigate and liaise with key personnel for the purpose of oversight and accountability. That means better protection for the residents who live in the facilities, and I think it is better for staff as well.

The amount of money held in accommodation bonds in these types of facilities and by the aged-care sector is quite enormous. As at 30 June last year, 970 approved providers—about 75 per cent of all providers—held accommodation bonds valued at $6.3 billion. That is an enormous sum of money. The aged-care sector is an enormous industry. The reforms will ensure that the accommodation bonds paid by our aged citizens upon entry into those facilities are completely protected under the Accommodation Bond Guarantee Scheme. This scheme guarantees the refund of bonds in the event of insolvency of the aged-care provider, and the bill that is before the Main Committee this evening improves the guarantee scheme. It also seeks to reduce unnecessary assessments by the aged-care assessment teams, or ACAT. In 2006-07, ACAT conducted a total of 189,000 assessments of older Australians in hospitals, residential and community areas. The reforms contained in this bill include changes to the aged-care principles. These relate to reducing the risks to older Australians by strengthening police checks to ensure people with very serious criminal convictions are not employed in the aged-care sector and do not come in contact with our older citizens.

A new approach is also legislated for. Aged-care providers will be compelled to report to DoHA when a resident has been absent without a reason and where there has been a report to the police concerning the absence. There will be amendments to the governing act, and this will ensure that what we talk about as aged care will be a better system in terms of functionality, governance and accountability, dealing with DoHA and dealing with residents and their families.

The bill is just part of the Rudd government’s plans to reform the aged-care sector and its funding. We have almost 3,000 nursing homes in Australia, with more than 170,000 beds allocated. As the minister has said on numerous occasions, we have the second longest life expectancy in the world after Japan. Presently there are 2.8 million Australians—or about 13 per cent of our population—who are 65 years of age or over. That number is expected to triple in the next 40 years, and the number of people over 80 years of age will double in the next 20 years.

The challenges we face in the aged-care sector are enormous. They did not arise on 24 November 2007 with the election of the Rudd Labor government. They have existed for a long time. Giving our older Australians access to high-quality aged-care facilities and services is a great challenge and will remain so regardless of which side of the political divide sits on the treasury bench. The Australian Treasury has estimated that, without any significant policy changes, we could find that what we spend on aged care in this country will increase from 0.7 per cent to 1.9 per cent of our gross domestic product by 2047. Clearly, how we ensure that our aged-care sector can remain viable is crucial to how we treat our older Australians, and it will say much about us—about our degree of charity and compassion and our view of equity and social justice—in the future.

There have been a number of reviews and reports in recent years commissioned by the government and the aged-care sector in relation to the future of aged-care funding and models for consideration. Perhaps the most significant—it is certainly the most well known—was carried out by Professor Warren Hogan in 2004. He was commissioned by the previous Howard coalition government. His review was entitled Review of pricing arrangements in residential aged care. It is not a particularly sexy title, but it is a very important document. I have had reason to speak personally with Professor Warren Hogan about what he found. I have listened to him speak on numerous occasions at aged-care functions in Queensland and elsewhere. His knowledge of the industry is very impressive. What became known as the Hogan review was considered by the Howard government and then simply ignored. His recommendations were thrown in the trash can.

A financial analysis has been conducted by Grant Thornton, a respected firm of accountants. It was conducted by Grant Thornton and commissioned by the Howard government in 2006. That report showed that more than 40 per cent of aged-care providers reported a loss in their residential aged-care segment results. Returns on investment had fallen from 5.31 per cent in 2005 to 2.95 per cent in 2006. The net profit per bed dropped by almost 30 per cent between 2005 and 2006.

This was not new. Backbenchers in the Howard government from Queensland repeatedly petitioned the Howard government to seek more bed allocations in South-East Queensland and Queensland generally and more funding for the aged-care sector in Queensland—without much success, I might add. Those people who work in the aged-care sector in Queensland know very well that the Howard government failed the sector. That is quite clear when you have a look at the submission to the federal government by the Aged Care Alliance which was submitted to the review of conditional adjustment payments, which is being conducted by the Department of Health and Ageing, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Finance and Deregulation and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. That submission was put forward on 24 October this year. It is quite caustic about the Howard government. It says in the executive summary of the report:

The evidence of cost pressures and declining financial performance of many providers since 2004 is a consequence of long term Coalition policy.

Here we have RSL Queensland, TriCare, Queensland Baptist Care, Blue Care and other aged-care providers in Queensland—they are not card-carrying members of the Labor Party; it is not the miscos union; it is not the metal workers union; it is not the ASU—saying that what they are experiencing in Queensland is the direct consequence of the Howard government’s neglect of the aged-care sector in Queensland. They put forward some very interesting proposals. We will not agree with everything they say, but they certainly have played a very constructive role in arguing for further aged-care funding. The minister has taken the time on numerous occasions to meet with these stakeholders, and I commend her for it.

We are providing substantial financial assistance for the aged-care sector. We have announced a number of important measures in our 2008-09 budget—$293.2 million over four years for an extra 2,000 transition care places for older people. We have increased the level of conditional adjustment payment by 1.75 per cent, from seven per cent to 8.75 per cent of the basic aged-care subsidy. That means an additional $407.6 million over four years for investment in the sector. Certainly, in my many meetings with the aged-care sector in Queensland they have commended us for that.

We have increased the nursing workforce in residential aged care by encouraging up to 1,000 nurses to return to the nursing workforce over five years. We have provided an enormous amount of assistance. In my area particularly, we have received $1.5 million for the Curanda aged-care development project in the area west of Ipswich and, as part of our interest-free loans, $5 million for the RSL Care Milford Grange project in Ipswich. These are two practical examples of the Rudd Labor government making a difference in terms of the aged-care sector in the federal electorate of Blair in South-East Queensland. The commitment that we have made in terms of interest-free loans will see 1,350 new nursing home beds and more than 100 community care packages delivered in areas designated as high need across the country. This is about the Rudd Labor government showing compassion and caring for the people of Australia, and particularly South-East Queensland and the electorate of Blair. I commend the Minister for Health and Ageing for her work in this area.

The Rudd government is to be applauded, and the Howard government condemned for its failure in the area of aged-care funding. When aged-care providers say there is much to be criticised about the Howard government, it says it all. I commend this bill to the House. I thank the minister for her commitment to my electorate of Blair and the aged-care sector in South-East Queensland and Queensland generally. I thank the minister for bringing this legislation before the Main Committee.

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