Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think the government's convictions about aged care and its commitment to delivering quality aged care can be shown by the length of the speeches presented from the people on the other side of this parliament.

The former government legislated major reforms to aged care with its Living Longer Living Better legislation in the last parliament. It was legislation that changed the face of aged care in Australia. It was the biggest revamp of aged care in over 20 years. It was legislation that put the person at the centre of aged care. The numbers needing aged care will increase into the future, so it is really important that aged care be person centred.

Mr Laming interjecting—

I can hear noise from the government backbenches, where they are saying they don't agree that aged care should be person centred. They don't believe that aged care should be about the needs of the person. When Labor was in government we were committed to ensuring that aged care was about the person—aged care was person centred; that preferably it would be delivered to the person in the home but, when older people needed to access aged care in an aged care facility, that aged care facility would be able to look after them in the appropriate way, would be appropriately funded and would have the appropriate workforce—a well qualified, well-resourced, well-paid workforce. Listening to the contribution from the member on the other side of this House it is something that government members are not committed to. They do not acknowledge the fact that workers in aged care deserve to receive a reasonable recompense for their work. The legislation that we introduced when in government was about ensuring that those workers did receive adequate remuneration for their work. Each and every day in this House we see this government moving to attack the conditions and the pay of workers.

Aged care is a very special industry. It is an industry that looks after some of the most vulnerable people in our society and we need to make sure those people have the training, the qualifications and the skills that they need to work in the industry. We need to make sure that once they do have those skills and training they will remain in that industry. Workers in the aged care industry were receiving significantly less than other workers in similar occupations in different parts of the healthcare sector. As I mentioned, these workers are looking after the most vulnerable people in our community—frail, aged people who have made enormous contributions to our nation. They have made Australia the country it is today, and the least we can do as a country is ensure that those older Australians are properly looked after in their later years.

The legislation before us today amends the Aged Care Act 1997 to reflect a measure to reprioritise the aged care workforce supplement introduced under Labor's Living Longer Living Better supplement. It was a $1.2 billion supplement going into the general pool of aged care funds, and it was a coalition election commitment. The supplement was abolished through a legislative instrument in September 2013. This legislation also makes amendments to the Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010 to support the implementation of stage 2 of the Aged Care Gateway, something that was established under the Labor government's Living Longer Living Better legislation, and minor clarifications and technical amendments to aged care related legislation. Reprioritising the aged care workforce supplement fund into the general pool of aged care equates to an investment in Australia's aged care workforce. The aged care supplement was effectively implemented through two legislative instruments, which addressed the funding arrangement.

The one issue I have to emphasise over and over again is that we need to properly remunerate workers within the aged care sector. We need to make sure we do not walk away from that. We need to make sure that any changes really do not lead to a further whittling away of the wages of those workers and leading to more workers leaving the aged care sector when it is a growing sector. It is a sector that we will be depending on more in the future as we have an ageing population, as has been mentioned already this morning. At this particular time we have more people each year receiving the pension than are entering the workforce. That shows we have an ageing population in Australia; that shows we need to make sure that we have the right sort of care provided for people as they get older. Across the industry there is a consensus that workforce issues are a priority. Unless the government truly tries to address that, rather than looking at ways it can save money, looking at ways it can lead to lower wages being paid to workers in the aged care sector, then we will have a workforce crisis.

It is, as I said, imperative that pay and conditions are maintained. The Productivity Commission report Caring for older Australians predicted that we would need three times the aged care workforce that we have now. There tends to be a very high turnover in the aged care workforce. It features some of the lowest paid workers, as I have already mentioned, so it is important that we get this right. On this side of the parliament we are committed to supporting the continued rollout of the Living Longer Living Better reforms. I hope the government does not move away from them.

I want to quickly touch on the aged care payroll tax supplement that was abolished in this year's budget. That was very important to providers of aged care. I was talking to one aged care provider this morning. That aged care provider—it is a smaller provider—told me that it means $10,000 a month to them, so for bigger providers it will mean even more to them because they will lose greater amounts. So $10,000 a month equates to $120,000 a year, which can really impact on the quality and the care that will be available for people because those aged care providers will have fewer resources available to them.

The aged care sector is not an industry. People working in the aged care sector do not make a massive profit. Most of the people involved, most of the organisations involved in aged care—be they not-for-profit, public or private—are dedicated to ensuring that older people are cared for properly and the cessation of the payroll tax will, in essence, be a cut in funding to the aged care sector.

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