Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

There are about 330,000 people working in the aged-care sector, some in residential aged care, others in home care and some in what will be taken up by the new Commonwealth Home Support Program. It is accepted that within the next eight years we will need 55,770 suitably qualified aged-care workers. One of the first acts of this government was to get rid of the negotiated Aged Care Workforce Supplement that Labor brought in, in consultation with COTA, LASA, FaCSIA and the whole sector. Through the 2014-15 budget they put the money back into the aged-care sector. It is accepted, Minister, that there has been very little appreciation of wages and improvement in conditions as a result of that. Your assistant minister made a very interesting comment on the Australian Ageing Agenda website. He said:

Government can't escape their obligation in terms of funding workforce. Building a better skilled, more appropriate aged care workforce will improve outcomes for older Australians.

The assistant minister, Senator Fifield, made a promise back in February 2014 that he would develop an aged-care workforce strategy. Over a year later: where is this strategy, Minister? He also promised there would be an audit of government funded aged-care workforce initiatives and we have not seen that released. Where is that, Minister? In this current budget we have seen a reduction of 15 per cent—over $40 million—from the Aged Care Workforce Development Fund. The contracts and stock take in relation to this will expire in the next couple of weeks. Why did the government cut the funding for the Aged Care Workforce Development Fund—15 per cent, over $40 billion—before the audit was released and before anything like a strategy was delivered?

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