Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a few very brief comments. The Greens are supporters of aged-care reform, and the Senate inquiry that our Senator Rachel Siewert has been participating in has canvassed quite a number of issues and gone into some detail about the operation of the Aged Care (Living Longer Living Better) Bill 2013, so I will leave it to her to make our party's contribution about those issues when the matter reaches the Senate.

One issue that I would like to place on the record, though, concerns the interaction between the aged-care system and those who find themselves homeless or at risk of homelessness. I raise it because, while it may seem tangential, it is related to this bill for reasons that will become clear. As you would imagine, if you were someone who was homeless, you might find yourself in a pretty difficult situation when it came to finding aged care that suited your needs. First of all, there is the basic issue of actually encountering an aged-care service in the first place and being able to sit down and have that conversation with them. Unlike those of us who have family members who will care for us and may go and make the inquiries on our behalf about what would be an appropriate aged-care service, if you are homeless you probably do not have someone to do that for you. It may actually take the service itself conducting outreach, going to where you are—and you might be sleeping rough; you might be in a shelter—and saying to you, 'We can look after you.'

Secondly, people who have been homeless for a long period and find themselves getting aged-care services are going to have issues, by and large, that the rest of the people who find themselves in aged care will not necessarily have. Being homeless ages you prematurely, so by the time that you find yourself entering aged care you may have—people do have—a large number of health issues that others do not necessarily have and may require intensive support and care. And, of course, there is the question of behaviour and interaction with others. If you have been homeless for a long period of time then you have learnt to survive and get by, and that does not necessarily involve interacting with others in the way that people who have lived in stable housing all their lives would. You are putting people together who may not have had stable accommodation arrangements for most of their lives.

I have had the privilege of visiting the Wintringham service, who have gone out of their way to be an aged-care provider for people who have been homelessness or at risk of homelessness. They have devised a system that provides quite a high level of care to the people who end up living there. They provide surrounds and physical environment that have won international awards and international acclaim. They have been awarded by the United Nations for the buildings that they provide for people who have probably lived a pretty rough life up to that point. As an employer, they are pretty beloved as well, with one of the lowest staff turnover rates I have ever seen, which resulted recently in their being recipients of an award from the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, who visited them recently. Perhaps the most admirable thing about the way that Bryan Lipmann and his team have conducted themselves at Wintringham—and have been able to expand from Flemington in my electorate out more broadly as far as Avondale Heights and elsewhere outside of my electorate—is that they have been able to make the service operate within the existing funding systems and set themselves up as an aged-care provider for homeless people. When you walk into one of their places, it is not is what one might call a 'normal' aged-care environment with a smattering of homeless people; almost everyone who is in there has been homeless or at risk of homelessness.

They are currently facing a dilemma that may affect their future viability. It is not to do with this legislation, I hasten to add, but to do with changes to the funding system that may threaten their operation. That is not something that is said lightly by the people who have spent a long time building up such an excellent service and are devoted and extraordinarily committed to it. This issue has been canvassed during the Senate inquiry. It has been raised with the minister. I understand and greatly appreciate that the minister has spoken to the operators of Wintringham and, I understand, other operators as well. It is our position that this issue should be resolved before this package passes the parliament, because we want to make sure that when this parliament rises—having hopefully dealt with this broader issue—places like Wintringham are able to continue. Wintringham have enjoyed support from all sides of politics. Former prime ministers have visited them. I do not think it would be anyone's intention that there be any threat to their viability, given the service that they provide and given what the consequences would be if there were to be no aged care for homeless people. I am encouraged that this issue will be resolved before this package is passed. On that basis, I commend the bill to House.

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