Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

A few weeks ago in this place, a series of meetings were held with aged-care workers. We had United Voice members and HACSU members who came to parliament to brief people who work in this place about the crisis facing aged care, and to launch their campaign Our Turn to Care. Before people jump to conclusions and think they were here to talk about their wages, they weren't. I will get to the quality of wages for aged-care workers in a moment. The workers came to start sharing the crisis in what they are seeing happening at aged-care facilities and the need for there to be radical investment and radical reform of the sector.

These are the people at the front line of delivering aged-care services, and they do it because they love it. That was one of the first things that they said: 'We're here to tell you what is happening to the residents in our care, in our places of work. We're here to tell you that this is a ticking time bomb. And, unless the government acts quickly, the scandal and the crisis that is occurring in aged care is about to blow up.' They talked about the fact that some of our aged-care for-profit providers have meal budgets for residents as low as $6 a day. Regardless of what the resident is already paying in their aged-care fees and to live in the facility, the budget to spend on food for that resident is $6 a day. What can you buy with $6? These are people who require a nutritious meal. These are people who require regular meals. These are our older Australians who require respect and dignity in their later life, and they are not receiving it currently in some of the facilities in Australia.

And it's not just about food. Day programming: many of the programs, many of the activities that aged-care residents have enjoyed in some centres have been cut. There are fewer and fewer resources available for those facilities in some of the for-profit agencies that we have in this country. Workers talked about if one of their co-workers was sick, that person would not be replaced, putting safety at risk. I have met with people in my own electorate who say: 'We don't blame the staff. People get sick; they are not able to go to work. But why wasn't that person replaced? Where was the relief worker to turn up so that my mum got showered that day or my dad was taken for his walk that day?'

There are really two tiers of delivery within our aged-care services. I want to acknowledge the work that the not-for-profit sector is playing in ensuring that their quality of care is up there. We have one service in my electorate, RM Begg, which says that under the current model, unfortunately, it is slowly going broke. The staff do not compromise on quality and they do not compromise on care. If you are an older resident who might have quite developed stages of dementia, one thing they like to do is keep you active in a safe way. When I was last out there, I actually watched a nurse and an aged-care worker supporting an older gentleman who had late-stage Alzheimer's go for a walk with his walker around the centre. I said, 'What are you doing?' They said, 'We find that it helps to calm him down, he quite enjoys it and he can sleep better at night.' There are not too many facilities in Australia that could spare two workers to do that at the one time because we have no staff-to-resident ratios in our aged-care facilities. Unlike early childhood education, there are no ratios around how many people are required to work in a facility.

So from this briefing, which was backed up by a lot of visits and conversations with people working in the sector, backed up by conversations with family members, there is a real problem with staffing on weekends. We don't have enough people working in some of our aged-care facilities on weekends. You do have to pay a little bit more for people working on weekends because this is a low-paid sector where many are on the award, meaning they do get penalty rates. So rather than employing people to work on weekends, some of the for-profit providers just don't roster people on. There are no standards. We have no rules around how many people working on weekends make it safe or not safe,

The fact that aged-care workers came to say, 'It is our turn to care', and spoke about the need to reinvest in the quality of the care that is delivered in giving older people dignity and respect showed me something that really needs to be recognised. This is a workforce that is undervalued. They have skills. They require levels of education, whether it be TAFE or university, to work in an aged-care facility. They are upskilling themselves as a sector and they tell you straight out that they do it because they love the work. But love doesn't pay the bills. I want to take a moment to reflect on what the Prime Minister said in question time about aged-care workers. His comment yesterday that the aged-care worker in Burnie, the 60-year-old, should aspire to a better job demonstrated that the Prime Minister has never actually met any aged-care workers. Most of the aged-care workers I have met tell me how proud they are to work in aged care. They love the role that they are doing. They aspire to work in aged care. That's their role. That is what they love. But this government has not invested and valued their work fairly. They are undervalued. They don't aspire to be bank managers. They aspire to work in a sector where the residents have resources, where the residents have care, where the cooks have food in the cupboard, where they are spending more than $6 a day on meals, where they are able to take them out on excursions, where they are able to have sing-a-longs, and where they are able to do arts and craft with arts and craft material and not just newspapers. Their aspiration is for their sector and that is what the Prime Minister doesn't understand. Not everybody in our society wants to be a banker. And thank you to all of those aged-care workers who do put their hand up to say they want to work in this sector. Thank you for your compassion and willingness and commitment to take care of our older Australians, giving them the dignity and the respect that they deserve. I just wish that we had a Prime Minister who acknowledged their work, acknowledged that it is undervalued and worked collaboratively and collectively with the unions in that space to see an investment go into their wages.

If we're going to solve the crisis of care in aged care, we need to look at what people are being paid. We need to lift the wages and the conditions of people working in the sector. Aged care has one of the highest staff turnover rates, and part of the reason for that is that the job is demanding and complex. Workers are asked to do more and more. They are with people when they're passing, which is incredibly emotional. They form incredible bonds with these people. Yet, they are paid some of the lowest award wages in our country.

The bill before us does look to establish various functions, like a chief executive officer of the Aged Care Quality Agency, and it also talks about the Aged Care Quality Standards. It does create a single set of standards that will apply to providers under the Aged Care Act. I'm just a bit disappointed that, within this reform that's before us, we're not looking at those two critical issues that I've raised—we're not looking at wages and the undervaluing of the sector and the people who work in it, and, when we talk about quality, we're not looking at the meals, the delivery of care or the liveability of aged care and people's experience of it.

But we shouldn't be surprised that the government is again just tinkering at the edges when it comes to aged care. In this budget, we saw significant cuts, again, to the sector. For all of the talk and the huff and puff of those opposite in the lead-up to the 2018-19 budget, there weren't any new dollars for aged care. They basically overpromised and underdelivered again. They said that there was $100 billion that the government would lead from, but, on closer inspection, on budget night, Labor discovered that it wasn't new money; it was already in the forward estimates. They also talked up that there would be a significant investment in new home care packages, but they've only funded 14,000 new home care packages over four years in this budget, going nowhere near the gap that we currently have. The waiting list, just in the last six months of 2017, grew by 20,000, and other members have already highlighted the significant shortfall.

Data reveals that almost 105,000 older Australians are waiting for home care packages, with the average wait time for high-level packages blowing out to more than a year. I've had people in my electorate come and speak to me about their parents being advised that they're going to have to wait three years, that there are no new packages for complex care, for level 4 care, coming online in our region for at least three years. Another person was told, 'Look, you're just going to have to wait for a few people to die before you get access to a home care package.' That is outrageous! We've known for a very long time that the retiring baby boomers and the people a little bit older were ageing. And now that they're putting their hand up, having been assessed as needing support, we're saying, 'Sorry, you're going to have to wait for someone to die before you get access to a package.' It is wrong. People who choose to live in their home should receive the support that they've been assessed as needing.

Another problem that people in my electorate have raised with me about home care packages is when one person in a couple is assessed to be level 2 and the other is assessed to be level 4. They can get access to the level 2 straightaway, but they have to wait for the level 4. Then it comes down to billing—who's responsible? Who do they charge the cleaning to? They're a couple. Can they split it? They don't quite know how to manage the package. It's complex. It's based upon singles, not couples. So, there's a real problem with how the government is delivering home care packages.

The government also needs to lift its funding for HACC services. In regional Australia, particularly in Victoria, our councils are still largely responsible for delivering HACC services. The market is just not going to go there. They can't make enough money by delivering HACC services out in Ravenswood in my part of the world. Or go to electorates like Murray and Mallee; the council still delivers it. The federal government needs to genuinely partner and put more of its funding into these HACC arrangements. To their credit, ratepayers and local governments have really helped to fund the sector by filling that gap.

But this government's attack on our older Australians doesn't stop there. This government wants to have a higher retirement pension age than any other country in the OECD, lifting it to 70. How can you expect nurses and bricklayers—people who work in physical professions—to work until they're 70. This is one of those issues where, when I'm out in my community or speaking to people in regional Australia, they just shake their heads. It's easy for a politician on a green bench or a red bench to sit there until they're 70. It's not easy to be a nurse. It's not easy to be a teacher. It's not in any way respectful to expect older Australians to work until they're 70.

The government has also axed the clean energy supplement for around 400,000 age pensioners and, all up, two million Australians. That's a straight-out pension cut. Let's just call it what is: axing the energy supplement is a cut to the pension. Pensioners are spending more today on energy bills than ever. Last week I held a couple of discussions with pensioners in my electorate—first in Bendigo and then in Kyneton. I spoke to them about how tough life is today. Maggie shared her story. Her pension day was on Monday, and on Friday she realised she didn't have much money left in her wallet. A friend lent her 30 bucks, so she went to Coles and bought a few things to get her through the weekend before pension day on Monday. She bought one carrot, one capsicum and one potato. For a moment, everyone gathered there just stopped and said, 'When have you ever just bought one potato?' and she said, 'Yes, and it cost me $1.04.' The fact is that she is counting every single dollar and she is watching exactly what she spends. Maggie, who has worked hard her whole life, has retired and is now trying to survive on the single pension. Rather than more support from this government, what she's got is a cut. The government is trying to cut the age pension again by axing the energy supplement. Maggie doesn't know what she'll do if she loses that. She said she'd rather starve than go cold. Central Victoria is a cold place, particularly at the moment. The idea of starving is unacceptable and the idea of going cold because you can't afford the heating is unacceptable.

In conclusion, this bill seeks to establish a single quality framework, but I question the government's commitment to quality.

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