David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2014 makes consequential, technical and other minor amendments to various measures in aged care. Aged care in the Lyne electorate is a very important sector of the economy and delivers care to thousands of nursing home residents. That is why this legislation is so important. In fact, one of the growth engines of the Lyne economy is the aged-care sector. Health and aged care are by far the greatest employers in the Lyne electorate, and changes to the legislation to make it a more robust and better functioning part of the healthcare and aged-care system are going to be very beneficial.

There are three main consequences of this legislation. The first is the repurposing of the Aged Care Workforce Supplement. The amount of money involved in this supplement will be retained within the aged-care and the My Aged Care space, and it will be used much more efficiently by the aged-care providers. The initial rollout of this supplement was used to entice people into union membership, and it really did not sit well with the industry or the recipients of care. It also represented a misuse of Commonwealth funds, in my opinion, and this redirection into the aged-care space at the discretion of the providers seems eminently reasonable.

In my home town of Wauchope we have a huge aged-care facility, and I am sure they will be very pleased to hear of these changes. Similarly, in the town of Gloucester there is an aged-care facility which is really quite ageing and ill-designed for the purpose for which it is used. I have been fighting to get some help to get a new aged-care provider into the town of Gloucester. We are hoping that Manning Valley Care, which runs extremely professional nursing homes on the mid-North Coast, will move into that space, and we look forward to that coming to fruition. Similarly, in the town of Taree we have several large aged-care facilities, and I am sure they will appreciate being able to apply this aged-care supplement in a way that benefits the residents and the delivery of care, rather than being an incentive for a worker to join a union.

The My Aged Care stage 2 rollout is also going to be facilitated by this. It allows the system of enrolment and information to be centralised. The first stage of it was very helpful for people entering their parents or relatives into the aged-care system. This will help complete that process. It is a very user-friendly system, at least in the first stage, and we are looking forward to the second stage being rolled out. The third thing about the way the system works that is most important is that it equates the way the system works for aged care in the home-care setting as opposed to the residential setting. That discrepancy was very inefficient and unequal. Also, the recovery of past care costs is very important. If someone is in aged care as a result of misadventure or an accident, there is often compensation reached but that legal process can take months and years. (Time expired)

Debate interrupted.

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