Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Improved Support for Carers) Bill 2009. This bill provides part of the government’s response to a report of an inquiry initiated by the former Howard government into the carer payment for those who care for children, and gives effect to a number of measures aimed at improving assistance to carers from 1 July 2009. The main measures include relaxing child disability and care requirements for the child, to allow more carers of children to access carer payments; allowing carer payment where the care required is short term; allowing continued payment of carer payments where the child goes into hospital; allowing carer payments where the child has a terminal illness and the anticipated life expectancy is short; and allowing automatic qualification for the carer allowance where the carer is qualified for carer payment.

Obviously, carers are amazing Australians. Often through no fault or predisposition on their part a carer, whether it is a parent, an older sibling, a foster parent or some other person in the community, when they have a very sick or disabled child they often dedicate their lives to making sure that that dependent child or person being cared for has a good life, a life that is as far as possible comfortable, pain free and loving, despite their particular condition.

There are carers in Australia, however, who are most concerned that as they grow older they may not be able to care for their children, who may still only be teenagers, in the future in the way they have always wanted to. It is extremely important that, as a caring nation and as a nation that, despite its troubles, still has resources, we put proper support into the carers’ pockets to make sure that, at least financially, they are given some reimbursement for the often 24-hour, seven-day-a-week support they give to their loved ones. The carer payment is an income support payment for carers who, because of the demands of their caring role, are unable to support themselves through substantial participation in the workforce. This bill will cost some $271 million over four years.

The report entitled Carer payment (child): a new approachwas released last year. It found that the qualification criteria for carer payment in respect of a child were too restrictive and the assessment process overly rigid, often producing inequitable outcomes. The coalition is pleased that the reports and the Howard government emphasis on solving this problem are being followed through with this bill. Due to the narrow set of medical and behavioural criteria currently determining eligibility for the payment, it is currently received by the parents of just under 7,000 children. There is an expectation that this bill will increase the number of carers eligible for carer payment to around 19,000. This bill is about a very important sector of our community—that is, the carers of children who have a serious short-term or longer-term condition.

But there are still real gaps in what is delivered as an equitable outcome to carers who, for example, might be from an ethnic minority non-English-speaking background. Those carers often are not familiar with all of the resources that are available in the community. They may not have a driving licence, particularly if they are women from cultural backgrounds where women traditionally are not expected to drive or be independent outside the home. Often these carers do not know where to go and they are not contacted or even sought out by agencies that should be making it their business to make sure that carers of children across our society are fully resourced and understand what support there is in the community for them. I have had representation from ethnic minorities—particularly from non-English speaking background ethnic minorities—that material is not translated into enough of the home languages of parents with responsibilities for care. They are unfamiliar with how to go about contacting Centrelink, and very often our medical system is a mystery to them. I urge this government to look very carefully at the needs of carers from ethnic minorities—whether they are responsible for children or adults—and to take special measures including translating information and making sure carers understand what support there is in the Australian community, have respite that is culturally appropriate and are given a great deal more support than they currently are.

Let me also say that there is a real problem with carers in rural and regional communities. We are quite often talking about bigger distances for carers to travel to take children to medical appointments or to hospitals. There is often a real difficulty if a child is hospitalised. I know of a family in my electorate of Murray who literally had to sleep in their car while their child was attended to in a hospital in Melbourne. There was not enough income in the family to pay for accommodation and they were not aware of or were not told about the hospital’s family accommodation or it was not available to help them at a time when it was very much needed. I think it is quite disgraceful that parents should have to sleep in a car in order to be with their children at a time of extreme stress, when a child is hospitalised.

There are also real issues associated with when a chronically disabled child reaches the official age of adulthood. They transfer then from the responsibility of one program to another or from state to federal government funding. Often, by the time the very disabled child reaches the age of 17 or 18, they are physically very big and their parent requires a lot of skill to lift them and help them to be mobile. Sometimes these children are bedridden and have been since birth. I heard recently about a very sad case. It really brought home to me the significant gap in our caring for disabled Australians, particularly those who have been disabled in a very significant and serious way. This young man, whose name is Zac, was severely injured a few days after his birth when he was thrown against a wall by his parent. As a tiny baby he was not expected to survive the injuries, particularly the head injuries, but in fact the child has grown up into a very loving young man. He has been in the care of a foster family who have dedicated their lives to making sure this young man has all the love and care that he needs. But he is bedridden. He requires feeding and every other sort of physical support that a young baby might need.

When Zac had his 18th birthday and had to move out of the state supported system, which was giving him some daily activities in Shepparton, his foster parents came to realise that they could not continue to care for and love Zac in their home 24 hours, seven days a week. It was physically beyond their ability to continue to do that, especially given they were also fostering other children in their family. So we looked around for accommodation for this young man. Of course, it will be no surprise to many people, particularly my rural colleagues, that there was absolutely no accommodation available for this young man, with his disabilities requiring 24-hour care.

The state system and, unfortunately, the federal system said, ‘We acknowledge the problem, but we can do nothing for you. You’ll just have to wait until perhaps a bed becomes available, but we don’t know when that might be. We don’t anticipate a vacancy soon.’ So we went to our local aged-care facilities. Of course, we are very fortunate, after 11 years of the coalition government, to have good aged-care facilities in many of our very small country towns, including in towns close to where this young man was living. We approached some of those aged-care facilities, which were more than pleased to look after Zac and have him make a new home in their facilities with 24-hour care, seven days a week. The agency assessed him as appropriate for that sort of support but said, ‘You can’t have a young man in an aged-care facility; it would not be fair to him or to the other residents.’ The young man in fact was perfectly happy to be in a facility where he had his music, where he was close to his foster family and their home, where all of his physical and emotional needs would be met. We had to fight and argue and, finally, the federal authorities relented and allowed this young man to take up a bed in a local aged-care facility where, I am very happy to say, he lives very peacefully and happily and is loved and cared for.

This is a very serious situation for small rural communities, for country communities, where often there are not a large number of people needing this sort of care, but those who do need the attention are chronically in need. We have to be more flexible in the way we determine who may live where in state funded, private sector funded or even not-for-profit homes. In this case it was extremely stressful and it took nearly six months for that foster family to be assured that we had found a home for young Zac. I do not think that sort of stress should be visited upon any family who have done their best for a young person but who, are physically beyond being able to care for a person 24 hours, seven days a week in the way they were able to many years before.

We have to address this problem most urgently. This is an ongoing issue, particularly as more of our disabled young people can look forward to a longer life, who will survive their early childhood.

This extra carers support is also very important for our Indigenous communities. Very often they are not informed and not engaged in the sort of support that is available. Again, I urge this government to reach out into Indigenous communities to ensure that, whether it is the grandparent, which it often is, looking after a disabled younger person, or someone who is chronically ill, they are very aware of the support that is available from government agencies and these payments, which will help them meet their day-to-day costs.

My remarks are to do with equity, social inclusion, the rights of individuals to live their lives as best they can and to share in the good things of this country, despite circumstances which are often not of their choosing but which make them have to live from day to day in ways where they themselves are denied time to relax, to work and to visit others in the community. This is a very important area of concern for an Australian population that prides itself on being caring.

I believe this bill is important but it is unfinished business. We have to make sure that it is not simply a case of those who are already familiar with the system being better remunerated, which is very important, we must reach out and ensure that people from all communities—whether they are from rural or regional areas, are non-English-speaking ethnic minorities or Indigenous Australian—get the same level of support. We must then look very carefully at what sort of residential accommodation is available for disabled Australians when the caring task literally gets beyond their carers in terms of their physical capacity or age or when their exhaustion is such that they cannot continue in the way they have done for 15 or 20 years.

It is great to see the former Howard government’s report move towards implementation, but we look forward to seeing this particular area of support for carers in Australia continue to be a focus of attention for this government. Certainly the coalition will support any moves to make the lives of carers better and which acknowledges the huge amount of care that they give to their loved ones and, indeed, the amazing contribution they make to broader Australian society by teaching all of us what it is like to love unconditionally. I commend the bill to the House.

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