Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Shortland. Indeed, the reforms in the 2010-11 budget build on our major commitment to deliver a lot more services for our older Australians. My answer will touch on some of the issues the member for Lyne brought up about providing better health, hospital and aged-care services for our older Australians.

We will be investing more $900 million over the next four years to deliver a national aged-care system. The federal government will be taking full funding and policy responsibility for aged care. We recognise how important that is for service delivery. Part of that will be taking responsibility for home and community care, which as you know is currently delivered by the states. This is so we can provide a seamless system for older people so that they can get the care they need at the right time—whether it is some home modifications or right through to high-level residential care.

We are also committing more than $36 million to establish one-stop shops to provide information to people. We know how difficult it is for people to access aged-care information and services, so this will provide one point of reference where they can find this information. This is all about providing more services for our older Australians.

In this budget we have also committed to providing more aged-care places through $300 million in zero-interest loans to support the development of 2½ thousand places. This builds on our earlier investment in zero-interest loans, which saw quite a large level of interest, as capital assistance to have more aged-care places built. Also, there are 1,200 consumer directed care packages for aged care, which places people right at the centre for their care needs, which is vitally important.

There is also $122 million for more than 280 sub-acute beds in MPSs and over $10 million to boost rural and remote community care providers. There is $280 million to support longer-stay older patients in our public hospitals. As part of taking responsibility for aged care we are providing for those people in our public hospitals whilst we are building more aged-care places.

We are also committed to building the aged-care workforce for now and for the future. We recognise how important that is. There is $310 million in funding for more than 30,000 aged-care training places and scholarships, which are vitally important. We are also committed to providing a clear career path for those people moving through the aged-care sector. These workforce programs will include clinical and graduate placements.

We are also looking to establish teaching nursing homes. That is so important because those teaching nursing homes will combine local knowledge with the resources of many of our universities and nursing homes. We have also got more than $59 million for aged-care education and training incentives payments. In this budget we have also committed to better protections for our care recipients, which is something the Rudd government is really committed to. There is more than $70 million to improve the operation of our complaints investigation scheme. We are also expanding the options for the resolution of complaints and greater protections for accommodation bonds. These are two vitally important areas for increasing the protection of our older Australians.

We are also improving access to care services, with funding of more than $98 million for GPs and flexible funding for Medicare Locals program to provide more services in our aged-care homes as well as $7 million for a benchmarking tool of business advisory services to improve the operation of our aged-care facilities. All of these measures, worth more than $900 million, will go towards providing better services for our older Australians throughout the country. Also in relation to aged care, we have committed to the Productivity Commission looking at the future needs of our aged-care sector and making sure that we address those. This builds on the reforms the Rudd government has had in place since it came into government over the past 2½ years. We have more than 10,000 aged-care places, we have increased our funding by about 30 per cent, we have recently announced all of this—more than $900 million in reforms—and we are committed to the Productivity Commission inquiry to build the aged-care system of the future.

Of course this is all in absolute stark contrast to the previous government. As I said, we have increased our funding by about 30 per cent and funding per resident has increased by about 16 per cent. If we look at the difference in the previous government, if we look at the opposition leader when he was the Minister for Health and Ageing, and compare that then we see that their funding commitment was a lot less. In fact, there would be $730 million less funding for aged care if we continued to have the same level of aged-care funding as it was when the Leader of the Opposition was the Minister for Health and Ageing. So there is a very stark contrast between what the Rudd government have been doing—our record investment when it comes to funding for aged care—compared to the opposition leader when he was the Minister for Health and Ageing—$730 million less. And we are committed to building an aged-care system of the future.

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