Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Mental Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lyons for his question. This morning I had the honour of helping to launch Carers Week down at Old Parliament House with the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers, the shadow minister for carers—both from the other place—a number of carers, carer ambassadors and the incomparable Noeline Brown, the Ambassador for Ageing. Carers Week is a week for celebration of the achievements of carers and the work that informal carers do all around Australia every day. Today Carers Australia released a report commissioned from Access Economics that tells us that now 2.9 million Australians provide informal care. Some 500,000 of them work as the primary carer or sole carer for those for whom they care.

The theme of Carers Week this year—‘Anyone, anytime’—reflects the diversity of our carer population. There is no stereotypical carer. With that diversity comes a range of very different needs. For example, the ageing parents of an adult child with a mental illness or disability have caring needs of their own as they grow older. Thousands of young carers, many of whom are still adolescents, need help to reconcile their caring responsibilities with their ongoing education and training.

Across the board, though, we know that the work of carers is almost invariably stressful and physically draining. That is why the government supported the 2008 parliamentary inquiry into better support for carers, an inquiry that resulted in a bipartisan report, Who cares…? In response to that report, the government committed to the development of a national carers recognition framework which would include both legislation and the development of a national carers strategy. To that end, the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs introduced the Carer Recognition Bill back into the parliament in the last sitting week, and today the government has launched a discussion paper towards a national carers strategy. Consultation around that paper will be driven by Carers Australia and Children with Disability Australia who will be conducting workshops around the country with individual carers themselves to ensure that they have input into the final shape of the strategy.

This framework will build on a range of important initiatives already undertaken by the first-term Labor government. Most obviously, these initiatives improve financial security for carers through increasing by more than $100 per fortnight the maximum single rate of the carer payment, through introducing an annual and ongoing carer supplement of $600 per year paid to almost 500,000 carers around Australia and through introducing new rules to make it easier for carers of children with a disability to get income support. Last year more than 143,000 carers accessed respite care through the National Respite for Carers Program, and that is funded to the tune of more than $200 million in the 2010-11 financial year. The consumer directed care trials that were initiated by my predecessor include 200 respite care packages with individual budgets being paid to carers for them to spend on respite options that they choose. Carers Week has become an important part of the national calendar. To all Australian carers out there, I say that your caring is not just appreciated by those you care for—your loved ones—but also acknowledged, admired and appreciated by all Australians.

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