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

I would like to congratulate the member for Newcastle on bringing this motion on National Carers week to the parliament. She co-convenes Parliamentary Friends of Carers within the parliament here. I know that she is passionate about providing support to carers and making sure that carers' voices are heard, not only in this parliament but throughout Australia. She has a very high profile when it comes to speaking up for carers in her electorate.

Carers Week is between the 11th and the 17th of this month. It is an opportunity to recognise and celebrate the role carers play in our society. The speech I heard from the member for Petrie also encompassed many of the issues that are really important to carers, and I congratulate him on supporting this motion and the commitments he made in his speech.

Carers provide enormous support. It can be 24-hour care that is provided by carers. They provide unpaid child care. Being a carer is often a thankless and a hard job. It can be very emotional. You cannot separate yourself from the person you are caring for and the issues that require them to have a carer. Not only is it often very hard work, but it can also be an emotional rollercoaster. It can have a terrible impact on the person who is a carer. They need support.

For instance, if you have a daughter who is caring for her mother who has dementia, it is actually a turnabout in the role. The mother cared for the daughter when she was young, and now the daughter is providing the role that the mother had. Or there is the situation of a husband and a wife. For lots of older Australians it was always the role of the husband to be that strong carer and take care of everything, and it may have turned around so that the wife has to handle the finances and do many of the jobs that her husband previously did.

Touching on a child with a disability, this is one of the greatest strains that a marriage or a relationship can have. So many relationships break down when there is a child with a disability. The NDIS will provide that extra support. It has started doing it in the Hunter, where we have been fortunate to have one of the trial sites. It will do it when it goes to Queensland and other areas. It will provide those carers with the support that they have struggled for.

Where you have a carer who has health issues themselves, it makes it very, very difficult. I have a young woman who comes into my office who is in an electric wheelchair. She has a tumour. She does remarkable work in the office. But her mother had to have a knee replacement, and there were all the extra supports that needed to be put in place to care for her daughter while she was in hospital. The statistics show that there are 2.7 million unpaid carers in Australia. More than 770 carers are primary carers, 300,000 carers are under the age of 24 and 150,000 are under the age of 18. That is an enormous responsibility for young people. At a time when they are just discovering who they are as people, they are being put into this role of having to care and support someone whom they love dearly.

In addition, I note that Deloittes conducted a study which revealed that the replacement value of care provided by Australian unpaid carers has increased to $60.3 billion per year. That is over $1 billion each week. So we really do need to value our carers, provide them more support and recognition and do everything we can to see that they are looked after. (Time expired)

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