Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I agree with the member for Fraser when he says that we should never complain about being old. Certainly, Nationals New South Wales Senator John Williams said to me only recently that none of us should complain about getting old because some Australians, indeed many people in the world, do not get that choice and unfortunately die far too young. This motion is about aged care and Australia's ageing population. For many, it is Australia's most challenging social issue. Present projections have it that over-85-year-olds, who currently make up 1.7 per cent of the population, will represent 5.7 per cent of the population in Australian by the year 2047. How we deal with this as a nation and how we meet the growing costs of aged care will be critical for future Commonwealth governments.

While Labor's living better package claims to, as the motion states, deliver enormous commitment and investment in aged care, there are significant gaps. This is probably because the government brought the announcement of this package forward a few weeks and the same old Labor spin doctors were at it again, unfortunately. The government claimed this was part of its positive aged care plan, which this motion seeks to acknowledge, but it was, I believe, just an idle attempt by Labor to give the impression it was doing something in aged care when it was really years away. Sure, a headline figure of an additional $3.7 billion over five years sounds impressive but, like most of Labor's ideas and promises, the devil is indeed in the detail. This so-called new spending initiative is a combination of the government's means testing as well as the reallocation of funding from other existing projects. The actual amount of new money being spent on aged care is only $577 million, a far cry from the $3.7 billion headline.

The coalition's response to this plan was cautious. We wanted to wait and see what the actual detail of this plan was. It is fortunate that we did, because there are some significant oversights. In Labor's usual style, it has missed an opportunity to reduce red tape. The aged-care sector has been crying out for somebody who can go in and fully cost a plan which will be positive for them. This was evident when the shadow minister for aged care, Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, and I toured aged-care centres in Griffith, in my electorate, last November. Labor could have made the system much better. But it did not. So many people in my electorate are complaining about this very fact. Labor had the opportunity to increase productivity in this crucial system, but it chose not to. In an industry where aged-care centres are wallowing in red tape, the government's Living Longer Living Better package will, unfortunately, place additional demands on an already crowded system. In fact, the coalition has been advised that at present some aged-care nurses can spend up to one-third of their time on bureaucratic paperwork. There were reviews and consultations, as there always are with this government, but the government has ignored this advice and cherry-picked from the Productivity Commission's report, taking only a few of its recommendations.

The sector has some significant concerns about Labor's new plan, which this motion fails to acknowledge. Chief among these is the government's decision to rip $1.6 billion out of the aged-care funding instrument over the next four years. These cuts, according to the government, have been made because of assertions of rorting within the sector and for which there has been no substantive evidence produced to date. These are not cuts in places where they are needed, such as unnecessary bureaucracy. These cuts are coming out of funding for essential services such as reclassified patients who are high care to medium care. This will lead to staff cuts in aged-care homes and place an even greater demand on an already ailing system. It is no wonder we saw headlines in the Sydney Morning Herald 'Minister defends cash cut for aged' and in the Australian Financial Review 'Nursing homes face subsidy growth limit', because this government and the minister have a problem of their own making.

According to many, aged care is the single most challenging social issue that governments will face in the future. The coalition has a plan to restore investment in the industry so that it can cope with increasing demands into the future. The coalition has spent a lot of time talking, as Senator Fierravanti-Wells and I did in Griffith in November, with the grassroots sectors of the aged-care industry to ensure that we get the plan right.

At the last federal election the coalition set out its commitment to the delivery of a high-quality, affordable and accessible aged-care scheme which meets the needs and preferences of older Australians. For the next election we the coalition are committed to reducing the inhibiting red tape this government has placed on the industry and restoring a real and sustainable plan which meets the needs of an ageing population. We will negotiate an aged-care provider agreement with the aged-care sector. The first ever aged-care provider agreement will set the framework for aged care and ageing in Australia over the next four years. We will bolster Medicare by reinstating the private health insurance rebate as soon as we responsibly can. So while this motion seeks to acknowledge the government's positive plan, we must remember that, as with all of Labor's promises, this is more smoke and mirrors.

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