Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

You are the shadow minister for ageing, and you are obviously very passionate about this area of policy, which is very important to all of us in this House. In 1950, when I was born, we were transitioning from ageing in the home, with people looking after their own families, to beginning to age in residential care. Where did that come from? I do not know about the cities, because I was a country person. In the country we put in bush nursing hospitals, because four times more women were dying in childbirth in the country than in the city. Local government and communities got together with the state government and built bush nursing hospitals. The enormous rates of women dying in childbirth were cut to exactly the same levels as in the cities. That is what bush nursing hospitals did.

Those hospitals then began to take elderly people out of their communities to care for them as they aged. At that time people died a lot younger than they do today, and we heard from the member for Blair, the member for Ryan and others about how much longer we are living today. The member for Blair said that a quarter of the population will be over 65 in the next two decades. So we have an enormous task ahead of us with the changes that we have made. As we transitioned from bush nursing hospitals caring for older people, there was a very clear need for residential care for people who were ageing on their own, where communities needed to go into a household situation and put somebody into a situation where they got the specialist care they needed as they aged.

So was born the local nursing home. It will not surprise any of you that last Friday I was at a local nursing home-aged-care complex at Korumburra, Hillside Lodge, in my beautiful electorate of Macmillan. I was there to present a certificate of accreditation to the staff, because the management knows how much work the staff had put into the accreditation. Not one member of parliament has gone to an aged-care centre and not been told, 'Look at all the forms we have to fill in. We spend more time filling in forms than we do trying to give care to those for whom we are responsible in this aged care facility.' That has been the mantra for as long as I have been in aged care, and I can say that for the whole of my adult life I have had some connection to an aged-care facility in some way, either raising money or being on the committee or being part of the planning process for a new nursing home. That is what you do in the country—everybody is into everything. You go a fundraiser for an organisation—in our case it was a local aged-care attachment to the hospital, which ended up as aged-care only and not a hospital, as the world progressed.

I was at Korumburra presenting the accreditation certificate. Hillside Lodge is exactly what its name suggests—it is comfortable aged-care facility surrounded by the township of Korumburra and nestled in the beautiful hills of South Gippsland. Hillside Lodge is one of three aged-care facilities under the auspices of the Gippsland Southern Health Service, which operates out of the old Leongatha hospital. The other two are Alchera House, which also operates out of Korumburra, and Koorooman in Leongatha, and they are all fully accredited. There are 86 residents currently accommodated in the three venues.

One of the important things that all members desire for their elderly constituents is that they are able to age within their own communities, especially in country areas and that can move from home to care smoothly, though people are moving from home to care much later now because of the packages that the federal government provides. When there was a shortage of low-care and high-care beds in my area, people were finding that their partner quite often went into care away from the township. In the country you cannot just hop on the train and whip over to the next town—it has to be done by car—and so it is quite often very hard for families to maintain daily contact with their older relation if they are moved into a care facility far from where they live.

Koorooman House and places like it throughout my electorate are extremely important. There is a brand-new facility down at Foster—an absolutely beautiful facility with a waiting list a mile long. It is so important for people of Foster and the surrounding district to know there is somewhere for them to go when their time comes to go into care. It is important for every district to have such a facility, but it is all very expensive. There are 86 people, as I just said, across three facilities, and we know that model is broken. The new model is for larger facilities at less cost—90 beds, 150 beds, 200 beds. There has been a lot of amalgamation of aged care facilities and health facilities right across electorates just like mine of Macmillan.

It is important for us to reduce the burden of paperwork. I think this has been adequately explained by previous members and so I do not need to go into the details of the particular amendments. We are streamlining the forms that people need to complete when they move from one facility to another. Accreditation is not a small thing. If you do not get accreditation, you are closed down. It is harder for some of the older facilities to get accreditation than the brand new ones. I was down at Wonthaggi opening a beautiful new facility and accreditation was not a problem. Older facilities like Korumburra which have been there for 30 or 40 years are no longer up to scratch for this type of accreditation, and they have to put a lot of work into their accreditation. And it often falls to the staff, along with the management, to help carry through that accreditation.

I want to pay tribute to president the of the board of management, Mr Mark Holmes; to the CEO, Mr Mark Johnson; Ms Vicki Farthing, the Executive Director of Nursing; Mrs Marg Radmore, the Director of Nursing at Hillside. I would also like to particularly mention Mrs Helen Husband and Mrs Lyn Carmichael, who are much loved by the residents. I notice the member for Grey is in the chamber; I am surprised he is as thin as he is. If he went to afternoon teas similar to the ones I attend at these facilities, he would find it difficult not to partake in the beautiful afternoon teas that they present. I would like to congratulate all at Hillside, Alchera and Koorooman for attaining full accreditation. I thank you on behalf of the government and the people I represent for the wonderful job you do. These facilities give our parents or grandparents the most wonderful care. There are the thousands and thousands of people in residential care at the moment—high care, low care or dementia care.

I am not going to speak in this place without saying something directly to the people whose work is looking after older people. They are the salt of the earth. It does not matter where I go in my electorate, I am always stunned by the wonderful care given to residents. No matter how their ageing has affected their health, they get treated with dignity and they get treated with care—they get treated with care that in some cases even their family could not provide. The people who work in aged care have my absolute adoration. We all recognise these people and the work they do every time we go to a centre. It does not hurt to pat someone on the back and say, 'I know you get paid for your job, but well done for the job you do—well done for the care you give to the elderly people of this nation.'

It is said that this is the best time to be an Australian. The care given to the elderly people in this nation is A1-plus-plus-plus. I thank all those carers who are listening for the work that they do in our aged care centres—you are worth gold to us because you do what we cannot do; you carry us and you carry our older parents and grandparents when we cannot carry them. The work that you do is very important to us. Having had my mum and dad and Bron's mum and dad go through aged care, all of them having passed away now, we saw the care and love and attention that they received in their latter years and it is something we are very proud of.

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