Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased and very honoured to speak on the Aged Care (Living Longer Living Better) Bill 2013 today, because this bill delivers security, certainty and fairness for millions of older Australians. It delivers fairer and more flexible arrangements for people looking to stay at home or to move into aged care. This bill is very important to me and to many of my constituents. As I have said many times in this place, the electorate of Hindmarsh has one of the oldest demographics in the country. Twenty per cent of the residents of Hindmarsh are age 65 and over. Many say it is the oldest electorate in the country; I like to say it is the wisest electorate in the country, because with age comes wisdom, and I have benefited greatly from the many older constituents in my electorate.

In my electorate, there are an extra 870 high-care places and 968 low places thanks to the extra funding in 2010 and 2011. On 20 April 2012 we heard the minister announce the $3.7 billion for the Living Longer, Living Better aged care reform. That is a huge increase, and what it means is that people are being looked after when they need to be. As we have heard, many of these people have worked all their lives and paid their taxes. Many have fought in wars. They deserve the best treatment and care that we can possibly give. These people have contributed so much to this wonderful nation. They built the foundations that have allowed us to prosper.

There are a lot of wonderful facilities in and around my electorate that are providing these new places and they deserve, very quickly, due credit for their hard work in this process. They include places like St Hilarion, an Italian nursing home that looks after many more people than just Australians with Italian backgrounds; the ECH; Southern Cross; Masonic Homes; St Basil's; St Martin's; Kilparrin Nursing Home; and the Ridleyton Greek Home for the Aged. All of them do a wonderful job in caring for and looking after those in need in their old age. In addition, I would like to thank the tireless efforts of the staff from each facility who look after those residents to ensure that their lives are happy and comfortable.

This government has also delivered 475 community aged packages in my electorate of Hindmarsh. This is in addition to the 54 extended aged-care at home packages and 20 extended aged-care at home dementia packages. We know how important it is for people to be able to stay in their homes. When you speak to people in my electorate, the majority say that they wish to stay in their homes and be cared for there. These extra packages are very beneficial.

The committee that I currently sit on recently finished an inquiry into dementia and how as a nation we can best care for people living with this condition. Australia is a wealthy nation and Australians are living longer. It is fantastic that we are living longer. Medical breakthroughs allow us to live longer. They allow our bodies to keep going and to keep supporting us for many more years than people in the past. Medical breakthroughs have been good for us. But there is another story. People with dementia are unfortunately growing in numbers. We know that by 2050 the number of Australians with dementia will quadruple. We will have quite an epidemic on our hands unless we do things now to put things in place to look after those people.

We know that not everyone is going to need aged care when they get older. In fact, we would all probably—as I said earlier—prefer to stay home and have the care required to look after us offered there. That is why the government also gave over $3 million in 2011-12 to centres in my electorate for day therapy. Day therapy gives older people the chance to come along and take part in activities away from home. This is a big thing. When you get older, you may lose some mobility and confidence. Having support so that you can get out to one of these day centres is a great thing.

This bill also addresses some of the issues facing those who care for our older Australians. Aged-care workers are some of the lowest-paid workers in Australia. They perform the vital task of looking after our parents, our grandparents and our great-grandparents—the older Australians in our community. We know that most Australians who pursue a career in aged care do it for much more than the financial reward. But pay rises are a big incentive to work in this growing industry. With the aged-care workforce needing to almost triple in size by 2050 to support our ageing population, we need to act now to attract and retain aged-care workers.

That is all part of the Living Longer, Living Better aged-care reforms. The Australian government announced that up to $1.2 billion will be provided to address the workforce pressures. We know that the current workforce is one of the oldest workforces. That is what the demographics of the aged-care workforce in Australia tell us.

Funding will flow through from July by way of a workforce supplement, delivering pay rises for aged-care nurses, care workers and others in the aged-care industry who look after older Australians. An additional one per cent pay rise will be available, above minimum annual wage increases or other wage rises which are negotiated through enterprise bargaining agreements, for workers who are employed by aged-care providers who meet the requirements of a workforce compact.

What does that mean? A personal care worker, who is currently paid the award rate and who is employed by an aged-care provider who meets those requirements would, effectively, see a pay rise close to 18 per cent over four years. Enrolled nurses will receive 25 per cent higher pay and registered nurses close to 30 per cent, in the same situation.

The second part of the Addressing Workplace Pressures initiative is the Aged Care Workforce Development Plan, which will begin in mid-2013. An expert advisory group will be established to focus on better ways to support the aged-care workforce. This group will seek to ensure that, on top of wage increases, those aged-care workers get benefits, including improved career structures; better training and education; and better work practices, including lowering the high rate of workplace injuries in aged care.

The workforce supplement is part of the Addressing Workforce Pressures initiative, which will be delivered in two parts through the aged-care workforce compact and through the Aged Care Workforce Development Plan. These are very important initiatives. As I get around in my electorate and talk to aged-care providers, one of the biggest issues they raise is maintaining and retaining the workforce required to look after older Australians in their facilities.

Another big and fairly complex issue in my electorate is multicultural aged care. The Australian government is committed to ensuring equitable access to high-quality, culturally-appropriate aged care for all people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. As I said, this is extremely important for my electorate because I have a very high number of Greek Australians and Italian Australians who migrated here in the fifties and sixties, all as young men and women, perhaps in their 20s, perhaps even in their teens or late 20s, who today are the fastest ageing Australians in my electorate. They are now at the stage where they are already needing services or are starting to need them. They are not the only ones. People from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds have specific needs that must be addressed. Those needs can be as basic as having familiar food available.

We know that when people develop, for example, dementia, nothing is worse than not being able to speak the language or know what people are saying to you. We know that many older Australians revert to their native tongue when they develop dementia. It might simply be a case of employing bilingual workers who can speak the language of the resident, make them feel comfortable so they feel they are being listened to. All these things are contained within the new strategy, which aims to ensure that aged care is inclusive of people from all backgrounds.

Initiatives outlined in the strategy also include a rolling review of the National Aged Care Advocacy Program, to include an emphasis on promoting, supporting and maximising access to advocacy for older people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, their families and their carers. It also includes ensuring that the Aged Care Complaints Scheme is promoted to those linguistically diverse background communities, including the use of interpreting and translating services, and working with the culturally and linguistic diverse background sector to provide the cultural competency training for promotion and incorporation into all aged-care services. It also includes developing structured pathways to facilitate the employment of appropriate bilingual staff in the aged-care system. There has been a lot of work going towards ensuring that we have in place a system that caters for all Australians, no matter where they come from or what their background is.

I am very proud of this bill and that is why I am supporting it. One day we as a nation will be judged on how we have looked after our elderly. As I said earlier, many of the people that we are talking about today have paid their taxes all their lives, have worked hard and have gone through wars just to ensure that the foundations of this country are steadfast so that we can live a better life than they did. I am proud to support this bill and I commend it to the House.

See this speech in context